This is a much more general topic than the post regarding patterns following fabric folds. Here, I'm going to talk about just putting patterns on peoples' clothes. I'm not going to attempt to claim what is in style and what isn't, mostly because I've been uncool for most of my life. But look around you at what people wear. Many people have patterns, logos, and textures on their clothes (of course, as I write this, my roommate sits across from me, wearing a plain white t-shirt).
Al Williamson is another favorite artist of mine. I've been looking at a lot of his Flash Gordon work recently, but one of my favorite panels he's ever done is this one from "Secret Agent X-9." Part of it is the framing and poses. But I always come back to this as a great example of
throwing in some texture on some clothing can help an image so much. Think of it this way: in most comic book artwork, you have stark white areas, and stark black areas. Most of the time, you don't have any grey tones. But one way an artist can sneak around that is by creating different textures. It's kind of an "indy" thing to throw in lots of textures, but a mainstream comic can retain its style by just adding in one or two textures--probably on the most important elements of the image.
I also shamelessly note that there's really no way Williamson could have made these textures follow the contours of the clothing the characters. Anyway, my panels owe their inking to Angela Falvey, who gracefully took on the task of putting up with my desire to have textures.
Her deviant art site is www.kuroko.deviantart.com
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