Dr. Nystrom’s Journal #3 — Outfit Drafts (Patreon)

Hey everyone!

So… as you know, I picked up the brush.

It started small. I wasn’t planning on diving into character art or outfit drafting, but while we were reviewing some visuals, I felt like a few of the casual outfits could use slight tweaks. Nothing major—just small adjustments to make them feel more natural (make it so Irelia is not just wearing her bra and Akali her top when in their casual outfits).

That’s how this began.

After working on Irelia and Akali, I suddenly realized something: Karma didn’t really have a proper casual outfit. That didn’t feel right. So instead of adjusting something existing, I tried building one for her from scratch.

It was challenging—but also surprisingly fun. There’s something very different about designing clothes versus writing a character. With writing, you imply personality through dialogue and description. With outfits, you have to express it visually and instantly.

From there, Dove suggested I try swimsuits.

I took that as a challenge. 🔥

So I gave it a shot—and decided to raise the difficulty by adding accessories to give each one a bit more personality.

By this point, I was feeling a little too confident. So naturally, I escalated.

I tried drafting schoolgirl outfits. I leaned into a sailor fuku-inspired design, since Ionia draws heavily from Asian aesthetics. I wanted something that could also show the girl's personality (this included changing Karma's hair a bit).

And because I apparently didn’t know when to stop—and had a bit of free time—I also drafted two concepts based on suggestions from people on Discord.

Now, just to be clear! These are drafts. Early concepts. They still need to be redrawn and fully adapted into Dove’s style if the team decides to move forward with them.

But experimenting like this has been refreshing. It’s helped me reconnect with my artist side—and hopefully, it eases some of the pressure on Dove when it comes to early-stage design ideas.

I’d genuinely love to know what you think.

Which ones work? Which don’t? What would you tweak?

Thanks for letting me experiment a little.

—Dr. Nystrom