HOW TO DRESS A CARTOON CHARACTER

Traditional animal characters were often naked below the waist. Maybe that's one reason they were so appealing and funny. You wanted to laugh before they even did anything.

Modern designs are sometimes pantsless but they're designed in such a way as to de-emphasize the nudity.

For human characters the obvious way to go is clothes that are either too small or too big. I like the way Curly's jacket fits in this photo.

All my thrift store jackets are deliberately either too small or too big. I wish I could show you a picture of the miniature Uncle Eddie jacket John gave me a long time ago, but I don't have it anymore and I think I'll take a minute to tell you why. It spotlights an age-old wives trick that men need to know about.

It works like this: the wife waits til her husband is busy with something then asks him a few questions that have an obvious "no" answer, questions like: "Are you saving this ball of lint?" "Do want this pencil stub?" "How 'bout his used Kleenex?" She gets a nice litany of automatic "no's" going then casually throws in the important item, in this case: "Do you want to save this ugly old Uncle Eddie jacket?" The first ten times my wife tried this I reacted with horror that she could even think of such a thing, but she persisted and one day when I was seriously distracted I found myself saying, "Huh... oh, yeah...sure...whatever..." and that was the last time I ever saw my jacket. Now I live in fear that my more-precious-than-rubies Wrinkle Jacket will suffer the same fate.

But I digress.

 I like one-of-a-kind outfits myself.

Cartoonists should be fashion leaders, not fashion followers.

I like suit jackets (above) that flare out and stay flared.

What kind of dress shirt? One way to go is bulky one-size-fits-all shirts that always look ironed and new, like they just came out of the wrapper.

A certain kind of character should tuck in his shirt even though that's not the style now. In real life tucking it in requires constant adjustment and that's a great bit of business for a character with OCD.

Besides, tucked in shirts look great when they're pulled out (above) and allowed to hang loose. They retain their beautiful wrinkles at the shirt's bottom.

BTW, how do you like the crumpled forearm fabric and long cuffs?

Dress shirts come with all sorts of biases. This one is tight at the shoulders and loose everywhere else.

I wish I could have found a picture of a ballooning "parachute" backed tuck-in but, Alas!, it was not meant to be. Maybe next time.

WHAT THEY'RE WEARING IN BULGARIA

Embroidery is a huge subject which I won't even attempt to do justice to here. I just want to promote an exceptionally good book on the subject, the one pictured above by Sheila  Paine. 

The book has a number of pictures of textile bazaars, like this one (above) in central Asia.  If you're there and you're an artist, then this is where you'll spend most of your travel money. 

Here's (above) a market place in Guatemala. A riot of color!


Above, a Peruvian textile scroll depicting all sorts of deities, including river gods. Ma-a-a-an! Very Nice!

Embroidery is still alive and well in Spain and Portugal. The guy above is wearing a shirt with symbols of love on it.  I find that touching. The man proudly wears a shirt that declares that he's loved by a woman who's handy with a needle. It's so charming and primal.

White shirts with understated red trim like this also used to be common in Poland and North Germany. 

 

Oddly enough France, which taught the world about color during the Impressionist period, put most of its embroidery energy in recent centuries into plain white lace.

Not so with the Czechs. Here's a Moravian girl (above) in traditional dress. A long time ago Moravia used to be a separate country but is now incorporated into The Czech Republic, Slovakia and Germany.


Elaborate embroidery is often associated with power or status, as it is with these African chiefs (above). It's a mostly woman's art.  You could say that it's a gift that women have been giving family members and the powerful for possibly thousands of years.  It's a terrific present, but I find myself wondering how people who live in the outback manage to keep it clean. They must sell a lot of stain remover in those countries. 

You've probably seen variations of this Pakistani costume (above) before. There's a village there that outdoes everybody in the region.

Here's (above) a small hanging from Tajikistan, which I assume is near Afghanistan. It's mostly blue anchoring down red with an amazing greenish-grey highlight. I've never seen grey used as a highlight color before.

Here (above) a Transylvanian woman wears an outfit consisting of different kinds of wool. The region is still famous for its embroidery but it's transitioning into weaving and other techniques. Embroidery is becoming a lost art; it's just too labor intensive.

Did anyone do more elaborate embroidery than the Chinese? Here's a detail from an official court robe, replete with the dragons, cranes, and traditional flaming pearl. The multiple shades of blue blobs (clouds?) with white highlights are an awesome background for the dragon.