So. I realized I’ve never actually talked about the design process for the new Captain Marvel costume, and I thought that’d be a good way to kick off November.

When I came onto the book, one of the first things myself and the editor talked about was the design of the costume. Not so much that we HAD to do a redesign, but just some things that we had the opportunity to take a second look at now that we had the chance. I really wanted to take this moment to make the costume just a little more “me”.

But the Mckelvie costume isn’t broken, so it didn’t need to be fixed. I just wanted to add little flairs. One of my jumping off points is that I love the Warbird costume carol used to rock, so I wanted to take elements of that and bring it to her Captain Marvel costume. This is where the gloves, and the ideas of the knee pads and straps on her torso came from. I submitted two ideas that were just initial passes, but were basically the extent that I wanted to provide changes. One was a look more or less what was already in existence (it’s the one that was picked), and the other that just returned the “red belly” look.

We were approved for the first design, with a few alterations. The belt was the only specific note: instead of just being a sash, making it into a real belt with pouches so it can serve a function. I kept the sash hanging off it because I liked it for the visual drama. I made a few other small tweaks throughout the design for the final (the boots, the collar). But we also wanted to flush out the hair a bit. Everyone on the book liked and agreed with my desire to cut Carol’s hair really short (I just really liked it visually and it happened to also fit the direction of the book), so I took a few passes at other short cuts; trying to find the right balance of formal, short, and feminine. Ultimately F was chosen.

And then it was a pretty short step to get to the final design. Although even after the official announcement of the book and design I still made some tweaks (notably the collar, if you go back and compare to the original design sheet). and thats basically it. probably the least pain-staking redesign I’ve done haha. probably to make up for all the other designing I had to do for the book *wink*