An Empathy–Oriented Drawing Method in Costume Sketching: Training Digital
Drawing Through Mindful Embodied Awareness
Recently, costume designers have shown an increased interest in drawing costume sketches
digitally. The costume sketching with pencil on the paper sifts to digital sketching where costume
designers utilise drawing programs of the desktop and laptop computers as well as the drawing
programs of touch-screen tablets. On the touch screen, a costume designer draws with the digital
pencil on the virtual paper. This paper seeks to examine the changing nature of the costume
sketching process. There has been no detailed investigation of the subject and very little is known of
the influence of digital sketching on touch screen in the costume design process while utilising the
devise as a digital sketchbook. The data collection focuses on the contemporary modernization
practices of the costume designer's sketching process and relationships with modern technology.
My main interest is to build the comprehension of how costume designers combine diverse
sketching techniques: image-editing of photos and drawing in the costume design process. In digital
costume sketching, costume designers are able to use a camera of a portable tablet as one of the
recourse to create the character. The benefit of this approach is that the costume designer can use
his/her own photos of the pose as the preference in a digital costume sketching process. In this
paper, a case-study approach was chosen to gain a detailed understanding about an empathy–
oriented drawing method. More specifically, examine whether this method facilities the costume
sketching process.
An empathy–oriented drawing works as a method in which the digital costume sketching occurs
through a mindful embodied awareness of a costume designer. In this method costume sketching
begins with the image of the character that the designer establishes in his/her mind: the way the
character moves, acts and speaks. Thus, designers internalize the nature and essence of the role while
using this method as a starting point for drawing. In this way, costume designers use an empathy–
oriented drawing to get to know the character. Paul Bellet describes: “Empathy is the capacity to
understand or feel what another person is experiencing from within the other being's frame of
reference, i.e., the capacity to place oneself in another's position”.
1.
Furthermore, creating an image
of the character in an empathy–oriented drawing method may facilitate the process of costume
sketching. The method is useful when there is a script and a strong story behind the character with
whom the costume designer empathizes. It may be less useful, however, when designing costumes
1
(Bellet, Paul S.; Michael J. Maloney,1991 p. 226)
for unscripted performances involving action and improvisation. Through this embodied method, a
costume designer achieves a deeper comprehension of the personality of the character while drawing
a costume sketch. The costume designer consumes the created costume sketch as a reference in the
communication with the creative team and expresses the nature of the character with the lines and
colours of the costume sketch. Alva Noe writes about the costume sketch in his book Strange Tools:
Art and Human Nature “Viewer doesn’t see only the projective properties of the costume sketch,
shape, form, color. Viewer sees the character.”2 The empathy–oriented drawing method assists a
costume designer in creating a costume sketch that shows the viewer how the costume looks when it
is worn in the typical way of the character.
Throughout my extensive career as a costume designer, I have instinctively utilised mindful embodied
awareness as a method to draw the character. When I draw the costume sketch, I think about the
nature, facial expressions, the posture of a character in my mind and thus explore the role of the
character. I find this method superior for sketching costumes to be used in scripted plays and movies.
Other professional costume designers using empathy-oriented drawing in the sketching process have
also applied it successfully. For example, a well-known Finnish Costume Designer and Actress Liisi
Tandefelt has shuttled between these two professions throughout her career and additionally
represents one of the pioneers in the profession of costume design in Finland. She describes her own
costume sketching process in the following way: ”I enjoy drawing the costume sketches, I can
imagine myself to live within the role of character, it was a kind of substitute role work at the moments
when I was not able to act on the stage.”3 Another example is an English Costume designer for stage
and screen, Anthony Powell, who has won three Academy Awards in costume design for Hollywood
films. Here is how he explains his approaches to costume sketching: ”For me, the process of drawing
is getting to know the characters intimately and putting oneself in their place so that one knows them
from the inside. You can make yourself feel how that person can stand and [how they] hold
themselves, their body language.”4 Powell describes drawing as a journey of discovery to create the
character. “Powell is not unique among those designers for whom character arrives during the process
of drawing; Theadora Van Runkle and Ann Roth have expressed a similar sentiment.”5 As these
examples illustrate, various costume designers utilise an empathy–oriented method as a starting point
while drawing a final finished costume sketch to clothe the character.
2
(Noe, A, 2015, 150)
(Weckmann, J. 2015, p.161)
4
(Nadoolman Landis, D. p. 329)
5
(Nadoolman Landis, D. p. 18)
3
There are examples how the designers of League utilise the same method while they create characters
in the industry of video games. Before a drop of digital ink hits the canvas, splash artists often take
pictures to reference. The online article Making a Splash with Reference Photos describes how Splash
Artists of the League of Legends video game consume their selfies as reference in the character
creating process. League of Legends (LoL) represent one of the most played PC game in North
America and Europe and has the largest footprints of any game in streaming media communities.6
The Splash Artist Victor “3rdColossus” Maury, shortly 3rdColossus, enlightens his own experience
of an empathy–oriented drawing method:
“There’s also this weird phenomenon when you act something out where you empathize
with the character you’re drawing. I know that sounds weird, but it leads you to certain
decisions that make your drawing feel like the real thing that wouldn’t have necessarily
occurred to you if you drew it without experiencing it.” 7
3rdColossus points out that designer can waste a lot of time on a drawing that doesn’t work, but
photos provide a quick proof-of-concept and allow for a ton of variety camera angles as reference for
sketching. Another League Splash Artist HUGEnFAST notes that if you ever need to figure out how
something works in the process of creating the character, the easiest thing to do is pull out your phone,
grab a room, and start snapping selfies. While snapping reference photos HUGEnFAST thinks about
the body language and the facial expression, inevitably inhabiting some of the mental space of the
character. When mimicking a character’s gesture and emotion, the Splash Artist can gain new
understanding about how their feelings would affect their pose.8
On the digital character drawing courses, related to my research, I have arranged similar exercises,
where the costume design students have consumed their own photo as a reference and the starting
point of the sketching process. A costume designer can easily import reference photos on the virtual
paper because the camera is included in the digital sketchbook, as well it involves also the papers,
pens, bushes and colours. The tablet with the touch screen contains all the necessary tools in the same
devise, in contrast to the Splash Artists, who have to transfer images from their phone to device on
which they draw the characters and thus had one extra step in the sketching process. The digital
sketchbook improves an artistic work of costume designers; by offering more options for the costume
6
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Legends
http://nexus.leagueoflegends.com/2017/03/making-a-splash-with-reference-photos/
read 5.3.2017, published 3.3.2017
8
http://nexus.leagueoflegends.com/2017/03/making-a-splash-with-reference-photos/
read 5.3.2017, published 3.3.2017
7
sketching process. The immediate collaboration with the costume designer’s body, mind and digital
medium in the empathy–oriented drawing method can create a faster process for costume sketching
and give more options for the artistic expression of costume designer.
Artists have always utilised models and mirrors to research and figure out how the human body is
supposed to look like and which angles felt appropriate for the limbs. “Reference pictures are the
unsung heroes behind every splash art, used for inspiration while never seeing the spotlight.”9 An
empathy–oriented method where the own body works as a reference to the sketching process is not a
new technique —it is a bridge between traditional painting and digital art we make today. The digital
sketchbook containing the camera enables the costume designers consume photos as reference while
drawing costume sketches digitally. “Sometimes there’s a very specific thing, like a facial expression
that you can’t find a good reference for, so you just make it yourself. HUGEnFAST narrates the
benefits of utilising reference photos: The human body, and light, and color, are so complicated. It’s
too much to keep in your head, even as a professional illustrator, and references help us create art that
accurately reflects reality.”10 The costume designers own body can also work as an unsung heroe
behind the character designing process.
Tan Huaixiang, the author of Character Costume Figure Drawing, emphasizes in her book, that
during figure drawing the costume designer should take into account the respective essence of the
character. Huaixiang reminds us of the significance of an empathy–oriented method in the costume
sketching process: “Keep two important ideas in mind when creating figure poses: one, use the poses
or gestures that will express the character’s personality; and two, use the poses or gestures that will
show your costume designs at their finest.” In other words, when the designer draws the costume
sketch with the respective essence of the character, the costume sketch transmits the idea not only
through the lines of the drawing, but also through the expression of the face and the position of the
character. By drawing the character using mindful embodied awareness, the costume sketch transmits
the nature of the character to the viewer and assists the interpreter to understand the essence of the
role better than in the costume sketch with a faceless figure and a rigid pose, where a designer in the
sketching process concentrates only on the materialist aspects of the costume.
9
http://nexus.leagueoflegends.com/2017/03/making-a-splash-with-reference-photos/
read 5.3.2017, published 3.3.2017
10
http://nexus.leagueoflegends.com/2017/03/making-a-splash-with-reference-photos/
read 5.3.2017, published 3.3.2017
In this paper the study focuses on the effects of the empathy–oriented drawing method on the costume
sketching process. The study material is collected through the digital character drawing courses that
I have taught, since 2013, in Finland and abroad. The material of the costume sketching methods
consists of digital costume sketches from both professional costume designers and budding design
students. The participants in this study were recruited from the costume designers who utilise tablets
with touch screens as their digital sketchbook while designing costumes. The teaching materials of
the courses arise from the specific needs, interests, and expectations of the group, as well as how
familiar the students are with the methods for digital drawing on the touch screen. The
different exercises support the costume design students’ own personal way to express themselves
with the digital media. It is important to note that in the digital character drawing courses the objective
is to focus on digital drawing on a touch screen and costume design students’ experiences with it, as
opposed to the validity of drawing skills or on specific styles to express the costume sketches by
drawing digitally.
The tablet with the touch screen works as a sketchbook for the costume design exercises in the digital
character drawing course. I have selected the Autodesk Sketchbook software, as the primary sketching
program, not only because of its uniformly positive impact with my own practical experience as a
costume designer, but also because it combines easily both digital image-editing and drawing within
the costume sketching process. The teaching takes place through examples, each digital costume
drawing exercise begins with an introduction to explain the tools and means. Initially, students get
familiar with the digital pencils, brushes, colour palettes, fill tools and layers–the pile of virtual paper.
When students start with familiar methods, such as drawing with a pencil on the “paper”, it lowers
the threshold of the learning process of a new digital medium. During a one-week course, the students
first did exercises on digital drawing and image-editing, and then exercises where they combined
these two techniques in the costume sketching process. To coach costume design students on digital
character creation related to my research, I introduced them to empathy-oriented costume sketching.
In an empathy-oriented costume sketching method, I describe the nature of a character to the students
in words and encourage them to adopt the gesture of character action and facial expression by
themselves. In other words, they should place themselves in the shoes of the character. In this
narrative-based approach to the task, I presented the following questions related to the personality of
a character regarding the role. Students answered these questions before the photo-session. [Figure
1]
These several questions aim to illustrate the persona of character from different viewpoints, hence
facilitate students to internalize the role of the character. Margaret Wilson from University of
California has written an article Six views of embodied cognition, in the article she describes humans
ability to form mental representations about things that are remote in time and space.
We can lay plans for the future, and think over what has happened in the past. We can
entertain counter factuals to consider what might have happened if circumstances had
been different. We can construct mental representations of situations we have never
experienced, based purely on linguistic input from others.11
The students advantaged this characteristic human ability in the empathy-oriented costume sketching
task. After completing the mental representations of the character in their mind, students prepare for
the digital photo-session and took the photo of pose to their own digital sketchbook. This method has
similarities to the role playing and the body-storming. (P.2) [Tähän lisää mikä on body-storming. A
Novel Gesture-based Interface for a VR Simulation: Re-discovering Vrouw Maria Ferhat S¸en
Department of Media Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture PO Box 31000 00076
11
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 2002, 9 (4), 625-636 THEORETICAL AND REVIEW
ARTICLES Six views of embodied cognition MARGARET WILSON University of California,
Santa Cruz, California (p.2)
Aalto, Finland ferhat.sen@aalto. Lily D´az Department of Media Aalto University School of Arts,
Design and Architecture PO Box 31000 00076 Aalto, Finland lily.diaz@aalto
[17] A. Oulasvirta, E. Kurvinen, and T. Kankainen, “Understanding contexts by being there: case
studies in bodystorming,” Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 125–134, 2003]
Tommi Horttana Department of Media Technology Aalto University School of Science P.O. Box
15400 FI00076 Aalto, Finland tommi.horttana@aalto.
The figure 2 shows an example of the position of the character, created by the costume designer
student photographed with the camera of tablet. The students applied the captured “self-portrait”
photo of character to Autodesk Sketchbook program to create the final costume sketch and consumed
the image of posture as a starting point and reference for sketching. In the left-hand side of the figure
2, the costume design student poses the character with empathy–oriented method and afterwards
consumes the “self-portrait” as a starting point to clothe the character. In the adjacent picture in the
right-hand side is the final finished costume sketch. [Figure 2]
This type of exercise in a creative process requires students to immerse into the task, use imagination
and keep an open mind. The first students who posed the nature of the character to the camera
experienced it in the new situation as difficult or strange. It was challenging to approach the role
through their own body and mind experience. After breaking the initial excitement, and after seeing
others succeed in the task, the students considered the posing as a positive and worthwhile exercise.
Using digital medium while drawing the costume sketch, a costume designer experiences a stronger
bodily connection and interactivity, which is not part of drawing by traditional means. The “virtual
paper” of the tablet is an active space with its touchable surface. With a touch screen, a costume
designer is able to draw, manipulate, import and combine images in the costume sketching process.
In the present study, students who utilised their own image as a reference to draw the character, felt
it to be beneficial in several ways. First of all, costume designers found the drawing of position of the
character easier, because they utilised their own photo as a reference for the sketching and did not
draw the first scratch on the plank “paper”. Second, an empathy-oriented costume sketching method
facilitated costume designers to create the facial expression of a character. Students regarded the
starting point of the sketching as one of the challenging steps in the sketching process, especially how
to figure out and create the correct position for the character. By importing their own body-stormedphoto of the character to the bottom layer of the digital sketchbook, costume designers could start the
costume sketching in a novel way with the digital tools. Digital drawing with the medium of a touch
screen enables this type of experiment that applies embodied awareness in the costume sketching
process.
….loppu on vielä melko keskeneräistä. tarkoitus on analysoida video ja haastattelumateriaali, jonka
olen kurssien kautta kerännyt ja tehdä siitä johtopäätöksiä…..
To begin this process, the research material consists of my personal experiences of digital sketching
processes, learning diaries, observation and notes from the digital character drawing courses. The
first step to collect material from costume design students in this process was to record the costume
sketch drawing with the video tape recorder and with the time-lapse-video of the device. The
Autodesk Sketchbook program has a possibility to record the drawing process line by line in
chronological order from beginning to end. The video is recorded and saved into memory of the
tablet. Samples of digital costume sketching will be analysed for to examine whether an empathyoriented costume sketching method facilities the digital costume sketching process. The second
method used to collect material for the research was an interview questionnaire for the costume
designer students who have participated to the digital character drawing courses. The interview
questionnaire was sent via email to the participants. The data of the interview questionnaire will be
analysed in order to understand what impacts the self-portrait use as a reference in the costume
sketching has to the costume designers artistic work and more specifically, in this case study data
were gathered to understand impact of esthetic quality and technical quality of the method to the
costume sketching process.
A part of the model questionnaire:
What chances in a costume sketching process while you imagine yourself to the role of
character and utilised the self-portrait as a reference while creating a digital costume sketch?
You can answer with a category 0-5, in this case the number 0 means no impact on the costume
sketching and the number 5 means the very positive impact on the digital costume sketching
process.
1. The first, the impact on an of the costume sketch, includes three items:
1.1 pose of character 5
1.2 movement of character 3
1.3 expression of character 3
2. The second, the impact on a technical quality of sketching, includes three items:
2.1 starting of sketching 5
2.2 time of sketching 5
2.3 flow of sketching 4
3. The third, the impact on a technical quality of the costume sketch, consists of two items:
3.1 proportion of the costume sketch 5
3.2 level of detail of the costume sketch 3
4. The fourth and final, the impact on an esthetic quality of the final costume sketch, consists of
three items:
4.1 creativity of the final costume sketch 4
4.2 originality of the final costume sketch 2
4.3 harmony of the final costume sketch 2
References
Bellet, Paul S.; Michael J. Maloney,1991 p. 226, The Importance of Empathy as an Interviewing Skill
in Medicine, JAMA
Huaixiang, T. 2004. Character costume figure drawing, Step-by-Step Drawing Methods forTheatre
Costume Designers. Focal Press is an imprint of Elsevier 200 Wheeler Road, Burlington, MA 01803,
USA Linacre House, Jordan Hill, Oxford OX2 8DP, UK
http://nexus.leagueoflegends.com/2017/03/making-a-splash-with-reference-photos/
read 5.3.2017, published 3.3.2017
Landis, D. 2012. Hollywood Sketchbook, A Century of Costume Illustration. Harber Design, An
Imperial of HarberCollinsBublishers, New York
Noe, A. 2015. p.150, Strange tools art and human nature, ……..New York
Weckman, J. 2015 "Kun jonkun asian tekee, se pitää tehdä täydellisesti" - Liisi Tandefelt
pukusuunnittelijana 1958-1992, Aalto ArtBooks, Helsinki, (translation by author).
WILSON, M. 2002, p.2, Six views of embodied cognition. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 9 (4),
625-636 THEORETICAL AND REVIEW ARTICLES MARGARET University of California, Santa
Cruz, California
A Novel Gesture-based Interface for a VR Simulation: Re-discovering Vrouw Maria Ferhat S¸en
Department of Media Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture PO Box 31000 00076
Aalto, Finland ferhat.sen@aalto. Lily D´az Department of Media Aalto University School of Arts,
Design and Architecture PO Box 31000 00076 Aalto, Finland lily.diaz@aalto