Bonus Post - Character Outfit Timeline (Patreon)

I want to maintain a schedule of always posting on Fridays, even if I post something earlier in the week.  I finished my comic on my Tuesday waking cycle but I didn't have time to put together a meaningful new post, so today I thought I'd do something fun.  Going back through the comic archive I put together a chart tracking the evolution of the main characters' outfits and designs throughout the course of the story. I always like to keep a character's personal equipment and gear kind of malleable so there's been points with minor temporary modifications to their outfits, but I tried to distill their designs down to seven key points in the story where I made baseline character design changes.  To keep this post from getting too long-winded I'll cover each of the seven columns in their own paragraphs.

Background-------------------------------- 

When I started writing I worked as a bowling alley mechanic, and I would bring my laptop and USB tablet into the back office to draw during my downtime. I still have the oldest piece of Dead Winter art on my hard drive, it's this:

The original idea for the comic was more or less to stick two people with incompatible moral compasses in the upheaval of the whole world, the specifics of which I would flesh out later.  I had thought about the comic as something of a modern concrete western, with the world emerging as small patches of civilization dotting vast expanses of inhospitable wasteland.  The western thought was probably why Lizzie originally wore her bandanna around her neck like that.  Monday basically came out of the oven exactly how I needed him at the time.  As a preface, every character in this comic has some root in my experiences at my jobs and in my past, and all four main characters are more or less drawn directly from aspects of myself.

Column 1 - Start-------------------------------- 

The start of the comic gave us the introduction of these two morally-incompatible characters.  Lizzie enters the scene as a waitress, wearing a very utilitarian outfit.  Nicer diners have waitresses in nicer outfits but Frank's was kind of a dingy hole-in-the-wall so I based her work outfit on my own at the time.  She has a durable brown Dickies-style button-down shirt with her nametag pinned over one pocket worn over a white thermal long-sleeve shirt, a pair of cargo pants and some black ankle boots.  Her boots were based on a pair that I owned at the time, and being so comfortable and supportive around the ankles I thought they'd be a nice touch for a character destined to roam the wastelands.  Putting her hair up in a bun and moving her bandanna up from her neck to her head gave her more of a laborer aesthetic, dressing less for style and more for practicality.

Monday's outfit moved from the initial plan straight to the page.  He was initially planned as a very coarse personality in some degree of trouble. At the time I actually waffled on whether his background should be as a disgruntled office worker or a gun for hire, and I ultimately thought a professional killer with poor social skills being put in a position where most people are already dead would compliment a pacifist with professional social skills in a world where human-shaped things are trying to eat you much better. His suit reflects his profession, but it started out crumpled and ill-kept.  Monday's Day Zero backstory was an opportunity for me to experiment with the flow of time in a comic, flashing back to moments that happened in the past while trying to keep the present moving forward. He enters the comic recovering from an attempt on his life in his own home, so his suit looking a bit rough reflected that he was having a pretty hard time up until now.  I chose to give him glasses because I always thought of the phrase "eyes are the windows to the soul", and I thought concealing his eyes would help sell the kind of serpentine personality I wanted to build for him as the comic developed.

Column 2 - Day One-------------------------------- 

This was the day Lizzie was called in to work on her day off, so I drew her work outfit unbuttoned and more aggressive-looking.  She got a heart tanktop under her work shirt because I thought that would look cute, and she ties her bandanna on her head more rebelliously.  When I started drawing the comic I had fun giving Monday's red details some white highlights and I wanted to do the same for Lizzie, so her red bandanna got a union jack on the front, on account of her native homeland.  This was also the point where her mop first emerged as her primary weapon- I hadn't planned on that at first but it ended up being more charming and consistent with her pacifist ideals than if I'd given her a shotgun or something.  This is "I Quit" Lizzie.

This is also the point in time where Alice first shows up!  At the end of Day One is when Lizzie gets in her car wreck and Alice spots her and nurses her back to health.  Alice's original design was meant to look soft and comfy, so she has an unzipped hoodie with a rabbit tee underneath, a plain pair of jeans and some Chuck Taylors. Her short hairstyle curled in the back seemed like a comforting style at the time, with the flips in the back almost looking like angel wings.  I wanted Alice to be kind and supportive, but also look like she had just clocked out of work and changed out of her scrubs.  She ended up being a better match for Lizzie than Monday's antagonistic personality and the two bonded extremely well right from the start.

During Day One Monday rescued the young girl Sally Weissman from the house he was hiding out in and brought her safely back to her parents.  The more I drew Monday the more his hair sort of tended towards less of an all-directional scattered look and more of a backwards-leaning jagged shape. His outfit didn't change as much here, but he did use basically all of his twin pistol rounds rescuing Sally, and wouldn't really be able to shoot them again for much of the middle of the comic.

Column 3 - Team Up -------------------------------- 

When the story cuts back to Lizzie emerging from her dreamscape she had been in a car wreck that would scar her for the whole rest of the comic, as well as a cut on her neck from where her ex-boss tried to give her her severance.  She's covered in bandages but is still more or less dressed in her loose work outfit.  She picked up a second tanktop layer underneath her heart tank.  I'd been experimenting with different ways for Lizzie to wear her bandanna, and this period was the Metal Slug style, having the cloth's tail tuck underneath the knot tying it in the back ala Eri Kasamoto.  Escaping the house with Alice, this was the point in the story where she could have ended up with a different weapon, but mop-fighting became her iconic battle style.  I always treated it like a polearm wielded by someone whose only martial arts knowledge comes from Shaw Bros. films, and the floppy cloth parts trailing behind it also give the motion a fun trail to draw.  

Alice escaping from the house with Lizzie is basically the same Alice who pulled her from the car, with the addition of a frying pan from the kitchen and Officer Bradley's police hat.  She wore it for a while as a reminder of a kind gesture from the man who saved her life, but over time she would end up wearing it less and less as she built a deeper bond with someone who isn't a cop.

Monday has been roaming the streets for longer than anyone else, on account of his gunpowder eviction prior to the rise of the dead, so he's a bit more haggard here. He picked up a longcoat from some highwaymen and has grown a scruffy half-beard.  Since he's immediately out of bullets he does a lot of his fighting in this arc with a knife.  In Column One Monday uses a switchblade, but when it came time for him to knife fight again I decided he also happened to have a butterfly knife.  Around this time I was a big fan of Team Fortress 2 and I thought the Spy click-clacking a butterfly knife around was a lot more fun, so I made the change here. He also got a cut on his cheek from a knife fight with Frank, and since enough time hasn't passed for that to heal I would end up drawing it there for the rest of the comic.

While Lizzie had picked up a new best friend in her time before she could be saddled with Monday, it was only fair that Monday should find a friend too.  Or rather, a friend should find him.  Lou appeared already-present in a cut from Lizzie's side of the story back to Monday's.  He is drawn mostly from my own constructive nature, always trying to build things or take things apart to see how they work and improve them.  He's a friendly personality but he's a bit crude, but he'll always have your back when you're in a pinch.  His outfit was originally very "on the job", with a disposable white tee, backwards hat and a toolbelt with a wrench and a plunger.  He's always had this kind of round-toed leather boots like a boss of mine used to have that seemed durable but in an old-fashioned sort of way.

As the title implies, this is the point where the core team of characters central to the comic was formed.

Column 4 - Chantelle's-------------------------------- 

Arriving at Chantelle's apartment was the first point of real relief, safety and comfort for the characters since the comic started, so I used this time to try out some design revisions for all the characters.  Everyone had their own sort of iconic look when they started, but here I wanted to give them all a fresh change of clothes, so lots of really new designs emerged.  Timeframe-wise the setting is around late Semptember to early October so the air is beginning to get chilly, which influenced some of the new designs.

This is sort of the prototype of Lizzie's final design.  She wears her bandanna more loose on her head like the way she did at the start of the comic, this time with her union jack design facing up and visible.  Her hair is still parted in the middle but it's less combed now and sort of hangs a bit rough to frame her face.   The switch from her work shirt to a zip-up hoodie was meant as like, she's finally free of her old job and her old boss so she can relax a bit more, and hoodies have always represented "practical comfort" to me. The hoodie has a flower print on the back, which I thought complimented Alice's butterfly tattoo in a cute subtle way. It's also got a little zippy pocket on the right sleeve, which is a small design detail I was never sure anyone knew to look for.  She also got a new pair of cargo pants- when I designed these ones I based them on a kind of pants with zip-off bottoms that can be converted into capris, but I don't know if that particular design element was ever fully apparent to readers who didn't know those kinds of pants existed.  The little zipper tassels hanging out from beneath the zip flap were really fun to draw while Lizzie was running and jumping about, though, so I don't regret the confusion. Her previous mop had been kicked in half by Frank, so she is mopless at this juncture.

Alice's design was likewise a fairly big shift.  I've always been a big fan of shirts and jackets with stripes down the sleeves so I thought I would give her a shirt of that sort so I could have fun drawing it.  She got a scarf as well- I tried to design the end with an abstract snake's head sort of design to evoke a caduceus symbol.  The apartment was also where she got her first real medkit so she could begin giving out lots of medical care to her friends, and really fill her role as the team medic.  Her hair started to get a bit more ragged, with bits of stray ends sticking up and her framing parts falling forward from behind her ears more.

Monday's design changes in this scene were partly inspired by Clive Owen's design in Shoot 'Em Up.  Rather than another suit I thought I'd give him a striped sweater underneath his duster, but still keep nice slacks and shoes, so he's dressed more warm and casual but still clean and somewhat professional.  Alice put a bandage on his facial cut, and he managed to borrow Chantelle's revolver when he slips off to make his first hit on his list of names. A big cigar temporarily substitutes his ubiquitous cigarette.

Lou's new design is a bit different from the others.  Rather than scavenging other peoples' clothes he had his own van parked right out front, where his own clothes were right there for him to wear.  Lou's outfit changes here were less a redesign and more of the addition of the rest of his outfit, wearing a Carhartt-style jacket over his t-shirt.  He switched from his baseball cap to a knit cap to match the jacket and stay warm in the chilly autumn air.  He'd lost his first plunger recovering his van so he's just a wrench boy for now.

Column 5 - Omni-Mart-------------------------------- 

Leaving the safety of the apartment to venture back out into the wasteland for supplies, the characters gear up for adventure.  Their designs from here tended towards "warm and durable", while trying to pin down what would ultimately be their iconic looks.  If they had a bunch of design change experiments prior to this point, this was the bottleneck that led to a more final, absolute design theme for the characters.

Lizzie's outfit doesn't really walk back her changes so much as it combines her design history into a single look.  She waxes poetic about her crusty old work shirt as a sort of emotional armor for her, and wears it buttoned-up over her orange hoodie.  I used to wear my own button-up workshirt over a hoodie like this in the colder months as a back-room mechanic so it's sort of tying back to a familiar, practical look for me, the way she dressed at the Start.  Her hair starts getting more jagged here, with stray bits falling over her forehead.  She picks up a new mop here, a gross old one with a stamped steel head she affectionately names Rusty.  The old one was plastic, this one is much more sturdy and worthy a weapon.  No one will be kicking Rusty in half, I can assure you of this.

When it comes time to return to the field Alice's design walks back the most out of anyone's.  I felt like the caduceus snake scarf look was too ambitious, and her medical cross hoodie was much more iconic for her.  During the Omni-Mart segment she ends up painting a cross on everyone else's main shirt back, establishing it as their team symbol.  I thought this would help establish the team as being helpful adventurers, rather than the kind of murderous looters one might find in an apocalypse.  They all wear Alice's cross symbol and they all carry a bit of her spirit in doing so.  Since she's geared up with medkits and other items she adds a messenger bag to her outfit to carry it all- the specific bag she wears is actually based on the messenger bag I carried all my stuff in when I was in art school, and later would bring my laptop and sketchbook into my old job to draw the comic on.  She wears the police hat again for good luck, even though it ends up creating one of the bigger conflicts in the story to this point, though she ends up clipping it to her bag strap halfway through.  This is also the point where Alice's little angel-wing hair curls begin to really break down.  Alice's hair is like the bellweather of civilization- the further the story drifts from the age of rules and laws, the more rough and jagged Alice's hair gets.  She never stops smiling, however.

Since there's not really a clean suit on hand, Monday maintains his Clive Owen look on into the streets- if it was good enough for a firefight at the bank it's good enough for anything.  During the course of that firefight a bullet grazed his right shoulder, putting a little tear in his duster.  I've tried to remember to always draw this little tear, but sometimes I forget.  It's still there if you look for it.  The style of his hair begins to take shape into its final form, where the front spike of hair kinda sticks out and up from the top edge of his hairline, and then a wave of jagged points roll backwards towards a final point at the back of his head. He loses the bandage on his face and picks up a Luger pistol from an undead visitor. A behind-the-scenes fact on that: I'd originally thought about making that undead character Jenny Everywhere, a free-to-use public character, but I thought it was too mean and ended up making some edits to distance her from that design.

Lou's new outfit likewise stuck around for this segment, though he earned himself a bandage on a neck wound he incurred in a high-speed shootout.  He acquires a second plunger at Chantelle's place before embarking on this adventure.

Column 6 - Streets-------------------------------- 

After their encounter with their friends at the well-guarded and well-stocked department store the characters approach their final-final designs, having had an opportunity to pick up all the essential items they might need for the journey ahead.  When they come home and are ultimately cast out into the streets, they're not as poorly-equipped as they were the first time.

Lizzie's hair design has slowly gotten messier and has always been a lazy middle-part, so while she was at the Omni-Mart she got a surprise haircut, styling it more off to one side.  This was also the point where the tail of her bandanna began to flip upwards more, combined with her first little cowlick her top-of-the-head silhouette was becoming more distinct amongst a growing cast.  She conned a gun off a would-be captor and really only wears it because it has a flashlight attached.  I gave the gun a kind of holster with leg bands, since Lizzie is the most mobile and agile character on the team a better-secured holster seemed like the right call, so I gave it to the guy she took it from in that condition.  She also got a little shoulder-bag of her own, partly inspired by the TF2 Scout's satchel. Also, a notch was shot out of her right ear when she jumped in front of a gun to save Alice from meeting a premature end. 

Alice's hair continues to fray and degrade at this point, becoming more of a jagged shoulder-length cut than the up-turned bob cut she had before.  I genuinely, honestly didn't mean for this to happen, but as I looked back over the archives to write this article I noticed the gradual decline into scrufftown.  Alice got herself a folding carbine at the Omni-Mart, so her role as a team medic expands into one of a more active Team Support, being able to cover her friends from any distance.  In addition to this she acquired an ammo belt to keep her spare magazines at the ready- she has three spares for her rifle, and one spare specifically for Lizzie's handgun.  She got a new pair of running shoes from the Omni-Mart as well, having little V-shaped swooshes on the side rather than the shell-toes of her old Chucks.  Her plain jeans were replaced with a pair of carpenter pants, with neat little pockets on one side and a handy loop that is also more fun to draw than just an ordinary pair of pants.  One of the other additions I tried to give her was a butterfly hairclip, to keep with her little butterfly motif, but I don't know if I was ever successfully able to convey this tiny detail with much clarity in my art.  Like Lizzie, Alice has a matching notch shot out of her left ear, from the same bullet.

Monday gets his own old-is-new-again redesign after someone shot a big hole in his sweater.  Rather than a crumpled suit and a skinny black tie, he dressed up in a nice three-piece suit with his shirt tucked into his pants.  Similar to Lizzie, his design takes the idea of his original suit and combines it with the clean look of his sweater, so he looks a bit more like a proper professional.  To accent the illicit nature of his trade he has also started wearing a pair of leather gloves with his suit.  He also picks up a hatchet, since he was finally able to reload his dual pistols and wanted to have other options to prevent running dry again.  Being back on the streets again, Monday sports another five o'clock shadow, looking a bit scruffy in contrast to his clean suit.

Lou scored big at the Omni-Mart so he hit the streets loaded for bear.  I wanted to really highlight the practical, inventive nature of this character so he got himself a power drill to replace plunger number two.  A shoulder harness attached to his toolbelt supports a holster for a sawed-off shotgun, and on the back panels of his harness he has solar panels he took from garden lights and wired into the battery charger for his cordless power drill, so just by walking out in the daylight he could keep a power tool charged!  He carries the spare battery on the back of his belt, I thought this was pretty clever.  Also, to accent his constructive nature and new drill he sports a pair of safety goggles, to keep all manner of yuck out of his eyes.  This is also the point where Lou begins growing a five o'clock shadow of his own.  Everyone is at their scrappiest here.

Column 7 - Tombstone-------------------------------- 

The characters arrive at a more permanent home base, and so their designs take on what is more or less their current and final form.  These are the designs I based their sprites on for the Dead Winter game we've been working on, so they're really the pinnacle of "practical, durable, iconic" for these characters.

Lizzie's design degraded a bit from the changes made between Omni-Mart and the Streets.  She had a nice haircut, but it begins to fall apart in that sort of way a nice haircut might if you just don't really brush it or maintain it.  The goal of shifting her hair part more to one side was achieved, but she's fallen back into being somewhat low-maintenance working person.  The shoulder bag conflicted a bit with Alice's design so a couple zombies tore it off her back when she was leaping from rooftops, so her main upper body design is her crusty old button-down workshirt.  The somewhat confusing zip-off cargo pants have been replaced with a pair of pants with reinforced knees, to keep the design of a gun holster strapped overtop of a cargo pocket from looking too convoluted.  Her union jack bandanna swaps out for one with a jolly roger painted on it, since that is a more personal gift from her closest friend.  She also started wearing a bandage around her right hand again after losing an arm wrestling rematch to Corporal Ross.  She has also pretty much stopped wearing the engagement ring she had on at the beginning of the comic.

Alice's hair has fully degraded to just being a jagged shoulder-length cut.  The butterfly clip wasn't really working, and I wanted to have a spot of color in her hair on either side of her head for use in the game, so she sports a pair of plain rectangular colored hairclips.  Her white hoodie is half-zipped, with a blue colored shirt underneath for accent, and she ditched the V-shaped running shoes for her old Chuck Taylors again.  The scruffy parts sticking out of the top of her hair have matted down, giving her head shape a more distinct silhouette from her teammates. Lizzie's old union jack bandanna is tied around the front of her rifle.

Monday ditched the hatchet to keep his three-piece suit aesthetic uninterrupted, all his weapons are small and he keeps them inside his suit jacket.  A clean shave and two pistols later and he's basically the final form of who he was at the start of the comic.

Lou's design shifted a bit to combine elements of all of his design iterations.  He's sporting the backwards cap from his initial white-tee debut, he still has his Carhartt and his utility harnesses, but he's got a third plunger now.  With the bandage off his neck he has a little nick in his right side.

 -------------------------------- 

I didn't really know for sure how this would pan out before I started reviewing my archives, but I think the results ended up pretty interesting.  All four characters ended up looking like seasoned versions of their original debut appearances, but still keep the personalities they've built along their evolution, like they've been through the crucible and they're stronger for it, but they're still themselves.  As a writer I've always let my story grow in an organic way, so I'm kind of surprised by how well the characters grew as well.

This week I'll be working on gamedev animation, so I'll hopefully have something fun to share with you next Friday.  Thanks for reading!