PULLMAN — Clothing is a mandatory part of life, whether for real people or video game characters. And if digital gamers need to be covered up, why shouldn’t they be fashionable?
This was the basic idea behind Colby Van Dyk’s master’s thesis at Washington State University.
“My inspiration came when I was thinking about what I like outside of fashion,” said the Enumclaw, Washington, native, who defended her thesis in July. “I like playing video games and thought, ‘Why not combine those interests?'”
Using the expertise he gained during his undergraduate and graduate studies at WSU’s Department of Apparel, Merchandising, Design and Textiles, Van Dyk created virtual designs meant to be worn only by pixels.
“I wanted to explore the process of creating digital fashion for video games using design programs commonly used in the fashion industry,” said Van Dyk.
She used 3D fashion design software called VStitcher and CLO, which she learned during her AMDT courses, and then ported it to Unreal Engine, a video game design program. She also surveyed 50 people who were at least 18 years old and who said they played video games at least weekly to get a sense of what people wanted from their characters’ fashion.
These reactions led her to design a line of three cyberpunk outfits. Cyberpunk, a science fiction genre generally set in a futuristic time with advanced technology, was nothing new to Van Dyk.
“It was a fun challenge and I’m really happy with how the collection turned out,” she said. “My graduation collection, which was part of the 2022 WSU AMDT Fashion Show, had a princess theme. It was sweet and cute, and this one is dark and a big contrast to that. I enjoyed designing something I wouldn’t normally design.”
Van Dyk noticed several major differences between designing clothes that are physically manufactured and designs that are only digitally represented on mannequins.
“In the Unreal Engine, clothes can’t have zippers or buttons,” she said. “In real life, you have to think about that a lot, but in games, it doesn’t matter. The same goes for pockets. I had to think about things like that in a completely different way.”
Van Dyk did not have any specific people in mind when designing her clothes, but rather created figures that fit the aesthetics of the clothes she designed.
“I was allowed to design the characters to fit well with the clothes I had already made,” she said. “I just said, ‘I want you to look like this,’ and then I made it happen.”
Van Dyk’s designs are not currently available in any game. This is mainly a proof of concept.
She said she found while researching the topic that most of the clothing worn by characters is traditionally designed by video game developers. That’s changing as games become more popular with larger groups of people, but she believes there’s still room for expansion.
“I think there is still room for more fashion design companies to get more involved in designing characters in games,” said Van Dyk. “I think I enjoyed that more than the collection I designed for the fashion show, which surprised me. It was a very personal feeling.”
Colby Van Dyk shows how she designed her video fashion line.
Van Dyk’s clothing line designed with VStitcher fashion design software.
