Ideas Stage
My first step i creating any costume is research. What it looks like, what I like about what people did, what I didn't like. Where do I do to do a lot of my research? Pinterest. Pinterest is the epicenter of all ideas, images, tutorials, etc. on the internet. If you don't have one yet, stop what you are doing, clear everything you have planned for the rest of the day, and set one up. I get most of my ideas of off Google and Pinterest (or pinning images to Pinterest from Google). What I like about pinterest is that other people do a lot of the leg work for you, pinning stuff that works, or commenting what you should change. I usually collect images of angles, details, etc. of the costume I want. Most of my costumes are based of off characters that have definite costumes. I then take the character sketch, talk to the person wearing the costume and ask them what they like, what they don't like. After I have a general idea of what I want, I move onto the next step: planning.