Silhouettes In Good Omens

Silhouettes in Good Omens

So I’m seeing on my dash some posts about a reporter asking Michael Sheen if he wore a fatsuit to play Aziraphale. There are all sorts of very astute comments on why someone would assume Sheen was heavier in the role than he actually was – Hollywood’s unrealistic body standards, him wearing a lot of layers and standing next to a snakey fellow, etc and so forth – but one of the biggest the fans are missing is deliberate costume design.

So for the sake of artists and cosplayers (or more likely, people who just like to read blog posts) here’s some shaping hacks that trick the eye in Good Omens. PS, these hacks tend to be geared toward traditionally masculine body types:

In the present day, Crowley wears modern slimming clothes in dark colors. The shoulders and overall body length are emphasized. He wears a structured jacket with wide, angular, straight shoulders. It’s short to make his legs look longer, but the waist is lower to make his torso look longer and his belly look smaller by suggesting his waist doesn’t start until his hip sockets.

Tight jeans, obviously, because unlike other kinds of tight pants, jeans have enough structure to be slimming. 

His jacket collar points sharply upward and creates a downward arrow-shape, along with his v-neck tee and long, narrow, loose tie-thingy that all lead the eye downward, tricking us into thinking there’s more length and less width. The fabric is cut close but hangs, doesn’t cling, from his midsection.

Meanwhile, Aziraphale is dressed in a very old fashioned style – that is to say when clothes were designed to make one look fatter wealthier:

In addition to oft-mentioned layers, he wears light-colored clothes in bulky fabrics. His frock coat is long, making his legs look shorter, but his waist is higher, firmly holding the eye higher on the body and drawing attention to the widest part of the stomach. His coat has large pocket flaps and its shoulders are on the narrow, round side, which not only makes his arms seem plumper but deemphasizing his shoulders makes his middle look wider. The coat has a wide, rounded, downward-pointing collar that tricks the brain into thinking the wearer is wider in the middle.

He wears a snug waistcoat with lots of buttons and a watchchain across his tummy that draws your attention. His clothes are rumpled and unstructured and tend to be baggy in the legs and back. Lastly, he wears a bowtie instead of a necktie, directing the eye once more toward width rather than length.

If you’re interested in drawing or cosplaying Aziraphale, you can use all the above information to get that soft angel look at any weight. You can even see some of it working for Crowley in his Elizabethan doublet.