For Roka’s snow outfit, I wanted to stick with his established style of elongated vertical shapes, so I gave him a long coat with vertical banding to accentuate the length. The pouches on his belt also have long flaps to continue the motif. I threw in the horizontal bands on the sleeves to break up the verticals a little and also because I just thought it might be an interesting look to have these slight bulges of fabric between each band on the arms.

As I mentioned in a previous post, with Bocce, I wanted his snow outfit to be very similar in style to his regular clothing. So it sticks to the same black and white palette, with the three wraparound bands at the abdomen. I thought the alternating clasps was an interesting look to go with those three bands.

Bocce’s coat collar is a nod to Star Trek, specifically Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. I love the uniform designs in that movie and really love the jackets/coats that Kirk, McCoy, and Saavik wear when investigating the space station Regula I. The collar here is directly inspired by the collars on those Regula I jackets.

For the most part, I try to portray characters realistically as far as gun holsters and belts go. Generally, when they’re lounging around the ship, they aren’t armed, since I figure a gun belt has to be a bit clunky to wear all the time. Only when they’re headed for a potentially dangerous situation do they get strapped up with weapons. So a lot of the scenes in The Big Snow Job don’t actually show Bocce fully decked out with his gun belt, as shown here.

For Sky, the outfit is probably reminiscent of Princess Leia’s Hoth outfit. I can’t say I deliberately intended it to be, but that’s sometimes the problem with people like me who grew up on Star Wars. The images become so iconic over time, that you actually start to lose track of what’s “normal” and what’s been burned into your brain by repeated viewings. For instance, when I think “female snow outfit,” I think “quilted pattern.” But I have no idea if that’s actually a common look for real-world snow parkas or if I just think it is because of Leia’s Hoth outfit. The white color is most definitely not inspired by Leia though since I had already decided long ago that all of Sky’s outfits would be predominantly white since I really like that white-on-blue look.

I deliberately wanted the types of fur to be a bit different between characters. So while Roka has a bit longer fur in his hat and collar, Sky has much shorter-hair, fuzzier fur on her outfit. It just seemed like a softer, more feminine look. Of course, Cember has that same soft, fuzzy fur on his outfit as well. Masculine? No. And yet, very Cember.