Character Costume Help!

Hey guys, seen as how I cant post in the Multi-Media Fan Creations area, I decided to post this here. I'm pretty stuck creating my characters costume, I decided to go for a Barbarian look, I'm pretty set on the pieces I've got now, but I just cant seem to find colours I like. I have black and white at the moment, but it just looks too dull and boring! Do you guys have any suggestions?

I like gold for trim colors and tend to use dark reds for face/body markings. Good luck making the fur boots look anything but garish with colors :/

I honestly like the look you have there already.

This is going to mark 1 of many times I wish I were at home, and not at work, today.

If you don't like brown, you could try a tan color.

If I'm not entirely retarded, it's on the 'golden' yellow line (like row 3 I think?), either way, the last color in the the line on the right comes off as a tan color, like tanned hide, or something similiar to it. It's not as brown as I'm sure you've tried.

If you were going for something of a true barbarian look that would be a color I'd incorporate in.

Really, any of that far right colors would be subject to being used, because they aren't as bright as many of their counter-colors.

Edit: After looking at your screenie again, I'd, personally, make the mask on his face look like some kind of war paint, either blood ( #3 from the left on the red line to give it a 'dried' appearance) or some other kind of 'berry' or even camo color.

Wouldn't 'woad' blue be appropriate?

Be Well!
Fireheart

"Woad" is a natural blue dye used by a few cultures, notably the Picts et al. A similar dye, which has lent its name to a color you might be more familiar with, is indigo.
On the color palette, this would be the lowest blue row, the one with a very slight purple tint; either the furthest right (desaturated) or the furthest left (dark tones, nearly black).

What you have there is a good start, but I'd suggest making the belt's buckle and metal studs a brighter gold (for contrast).

While I realise you're happy with the costume, those pants don't look like barbarian attire to me. They have a zipper down the crotch and a tailored seam across the middle, plus they're skin-tight. To me, these look like the kind of synthetic leather you'd see Angelina Jolie or Kate Beckensale stuffed into to accentuate the shape of their butts, rather than something a barbarian would fashion from the hides of what he kills. The gloves and boots are pretty spot on, I have no complaints about them, but the pants just don't work, I don't think. I would strongly suggest looking for that older pants texture that had large, secondary-colour matches roughly sewn into a hide base lair. I believe those will say "barbarian" a lot better.

Of course, if you're looking for a "modern barbarian" look, i.e. someone who ascribes to the barbarian lifestyle of physical strength, domination and self-sufficiency, but still embraces modern technology to do so, thus representing a mixture of styles, I guess that could work. However, if you ARE going for a mixture of styles, I feel there are better ways to achieve this by giving the modern end of the spectrum greater weight, perhaps with a pair of jeans for the bottom to contrast the muscular, tattooed top.

That said, I really have no complaints about the costume, aside from the colour scheme - you've picked something that's VERY monochromatic. You have a reddish brown for the fur trim (red and green), a yellowish tan (green and red), a red face mask, brown hair (red and green) and all of this over Caucasian skin that's quite reddish, itself. Your entire colour scheme is between red and green, with only slight hints of black and white, which don't really serve to diversify most colour schemes. I feel very strongly that you need a contrasting colour, at least in one specific element somewhere on the costume.

Specifically, you need something in a blue-like hue. It could be a bluish purple, it could be teal, just something of that nature. You can take a cue from Blizzard and give your barbarian blue body and face tattoos, or you can perhaps give him a belt with a blue jewel or some such. Hell, you could probably even use cyan-ish metal instead of the cast iron matte black look.

Of course, that's still your costume, so ultimately, it's your call what you do with it. What matters is that you're happy with the look.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

for celtic warrior use spirals on upper body - blue
face should be spots - blue
face can be hideous with one bulging eye (Cu Chulain did this)
use a kilt and make green and either blue, red, black
sample dramatic Celt
http://209.160.28.41/ds_img_direct.p...&l1=863&l2=619

for savage barbarian
for face use war paint or battle paint - make it bright red,it looks like you smeared blood down your face
for pattern on upper body try slash - make red for blood, or white which would be ash
for bracers use a blueish grey color for the metal - makes a nice steel look
for pants go with tucked in baggy, then scales as pattern. Brown pants with a light brown scales looks like animal hide/leather

An interesting conversation! I've been having the same exact issues as the OP trying to make a (contemporary) Native American. It's really tough coming up with costumes using tan and brown with occasional (very) small pops of color, without making the poor thing look like she hails from the Planet Bland.

Try using the zombie tights option and a lightly tanned skintone. It gives you a bit of a tough and dirty look, also draws attention to some of the muscle outlines.

While I like what you've done, since the first post, OP, keep in mind that 'barbarian' was a terminology the Greeks used to describe the Persians in ancient times.

That being said, Persia was a desert land, and clothing that was worn was kept light in color to act as a reflector of the sun, but also as a camoflauge.

Barbarian would have, in some fashion of history, been used to describe the slaves kept as pit fighters (Spartacus for example). It could have also been used to describe someone like Ghengis Kahn as he was 'barbaric' (used in the 'uncivilized' context) in nature the way he took civilizations by storm.

What you're going for looks great, in my opinion. If you do add brighter colors, and if you are going for some historical reference in the way of Ancient Greece 'barbarian slave/pit fighter' the ONLY thing I would do is add a sash/belt and off-set the colors so the primary is the 'brighter' color of the two. Woad Blue/Tan with the Circle of Thorns belt for example.

Either way, it's not like there isn't 10 Costume slots, and you can't sit there and play with it over and over until you are 100% satisfied with it.

A lot of times, I'll make a toon, have a concept costume in mind, and it won't come to full value until long after I've gotten fairly far in the game, and sat in the tailor for hours on end getting that 'perfect' balance of what I want people to see. Hehe, I've been known to skip out on joining teams, more than once, because the costume just doesn't look 'right' to me.

actually barbarian just referred to anyone who did not natively speak Greek

I present to you, the Barbarian Dude:



Here's what I did:

I swapped all your metal to white. That's the metal on the belt, the metal on the ring strap and the metal on the gloves. I'd have given the gloves a two-tone colour scheme, but it turns out I... Can't. Huh. This fixed a problem with the costume I didn't even know I had - it was far too overwhelmingly dark.

I swapped out the buckle belt for the Barbarian one. The buckle belt just seems too modern for a Barbarian for my taste. Or maybe not so much "modern" as common. I originally wanted to go with a plain cloth belt, but decided to go with the Barbarian one to give it more flavour. You wanted something super-heroish, after all

I swapped your pants to the ones I had in mind - the patched ones. Originally I wanted them to be in a brown/orange colour scheme, kind of like you'd killed a bunch of lions and tigers and bears and sewn pants out of them. Same for the boots. However, when I saw the whole costume with the white skin and the blond hair and the blue tattoos, it began to look far too colourful and funky, so I went with brown/black for your fabrics. Mostly brown.

Also, I swapped your brown. You were using a very reddish brown which melded with the very reddish face paint which melded with the very reddish hair which melded with the very red background to make a whirlpool of red. My brown is a line down from the reddish brown and is actually a yellowish-brown. I don't know if it's authentic, but it seems a bit more neutral. Black only for accent colours where they exist.

I also swapped your tattoos. I wanted to go with blue ones from the beginning, but the rings just didn't seem to have much "character," so to speak. They looked more like a tights pattern than like tattoos. I swapped them with Tribal, but you should feel free to swap them back to the circles or to another set. I would, however, suggest something that looks more like tattoos and less like just patterns. And yes, I forgot the face toattoo. My bad.

I also swapped the hair for blond and added a beard. I don't know why I think "viking" when I think "barbarian," but let me put it like this - you get thousands of Arnie barbarians with the pale white chest and the long black hair. I figured a blond beard gave him an only slightly more unique look. It's no less cliché, I admit, but it's a cliché you see a bit less often.

And that's about it. Your Barbatian is still mostly dark and gritty, but he has the shiny metal to toss some contrast into the mix, plus the pale body and the blond hair. It's a nice duality, I think, though I seriously suggest picking shoulders of some kind. Even if it's just something small and subtle.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Sam,

How would that same setup look if you changed the "fur" or whatever it is at the top of the boots to White as you did with the metal?

Would it give an actual fur look to it?

Also, would it be possible for you to go into the tailor screen, save the file and then copy/paste the text of the file into a post?

Then the OP could create a .costume file of his own and then copy/paste the text into it, save the file changes and then load it in the tailor screen.

^^ I like your take on the barbarian Sam

More specifically, I like how male toons can be bare chest with tribal tattooing on them.

One day Devs, girls will have a better tattoo option than the 'gloves'.

-shakes angry 'i'm at work so i can't back up what i'm saying cause i'm not in front of my computer' fist-