It all depends on how the character fights.

If the woman with the pencil dress often has her legs still and needs strong poise to maintain focus in battle, then a restrictive dress dress would be more suitable to keep her standing tall.

If the woman with a dress train prefers to utilize her attire in battle, possibly as a means of defense or even attack, then the train may come in handy very well. It can even be used as a hyperspace.

Any costume can prove suitable; you'd be surprised with the many ways they can.

Except we have the benefit of already knowing Kitana's moveset. Can't imagine her doing Pretty Kick in a pencil dress.

Almost all of the mortal kombat games have sexy women fighters. That is how it gets a lot of fans.

That's because a pencil dress wouldn't suit her.

However, an loose elegant dress would. She runs, flips, spins and has heavily launched kicks. A dress would make a wondrous spectacle of her fighting style. In this sense, she tends to remind me a bit of Zelda in Super Smash Bros.

Not really.

Most hetero dudes shame themselves if they play with those women characters.

Those women only affect the Satyrists or sex addicts, not the normal hetero guys, they rather play with Sub-Zero and Scorpion...

Wow, its cool they are going for the 20+ years in the future route. Casey Cage looks awesome nice to see shes wearing official looking clothes instead of her mothers awful open vest outfit.

While I agree that the MK9 costumes were too much over the top, I have to say that I absolutely digged both Kitana's and Sonya's MKvsDC outfits. Both did show skin, but the outfits looked like they would not fall off the instant their wearers tried to move, and they felt fitting for the respective characters.

Icebaby, you're sketches reminded me of concept art I drew for Kitana back in 2011. I had to root out my old sketchpad and take a quick camera phone photo of these to show you. Great minds think alike! ;) (excuse the bad proportions for her "Princess" costume, it was a drawing that never intended to be a finished sketch).

Proof that girls can have realistic costumes with fantasy elements to them.

(largely inspired by her MKvDC costume)



This one's more practical. No heels, no cleavage, and actual armor whilst still being feminine and true to her character. It's what I could imagine her wearing during her time as one of Kahn's assassin's.

Princess outfit



This one's more formal, with an oriental style dress, and a lighter embroidered pattern flowing across the dress and elaborate broaches as fasteners. Simple pair of dark brown tights and a matching pair of heels. Authorative and formal but not restrictive enough to stop her from taking an opponent down if needs be.

I do find it so interesting and funny that in the finished product of MK9 artists were paid to put the girls in nothing but bikinis and lingerie that lack any overall design or general aesthetic yet fans can produce costumes that are a million times better for free lol. Delighted though that they actually took that complaint on board. In credit to the last designers, the male costumes were fantastic. Still in love with Rain's costume to this day!

They are really nice outfits. And i agree that fans design better outfits for free. Doa is doing that right now.

I really like Chinese dress influenced design. Maybe not during her "Kitana - Kahn's assassin" phase but certainly during "Kitana - the Princess" phase. That is if she had that backstory in the retcon.

Okay I figured I'd try making my own design too. Just a few notes since I'm not good enough of an artist to depict what I imagine xD
-Lower layer of dress is translucent material.
-Dress opens in the front of legs for mobility.
-I personally gave her leggings/pants underneath but you could lower the opening in the dress a bit and have her legs bare.
-Got lazy and said screw it with shoes and headpiece.
-Couldn't make up my mind if I wanted her hair down or in her long ponytail thing she has in MK5-7.
-Sorta hard to see but the dress does come up like a collar around her neck. Why? Cuz she's a boss. -Scribbly stuff would be assorted patterns. Mostly swirls/leaves/flowers/etc.

See? I have nothing against her being in a dress xD

Well, if you guys share art, I want too. :P



I prefer the MK style of design. ^^

I don't get why you all are making Kitana an Asian style princess, tbh.

I've always thought that kind of style would suit her more than anything else.

Because Outworld usually looks like a gothic version of Feudal Japan? Y'know, pagodas in most of the stages, Kahn dresses like a Samurai, Li Mei and Bo' Rai Cho look like Asian people, Mortal Kombat in general, at least the first couple games, were designed to look like a tribute to Hong Kong kung fu movies...

I guess if you were drawing Kitana after the freeing of Edenia, she should look more western since Edenia is more like a cross between Camelot and Aladdin...

For me it's easy... I just choose what I feel like going with at the moment. The way I look at it, you can't define "Earth Fashion" and neither should you be able to for "Edenian Fashion." We can really only go off of what we have been shown in the past and find a common thread in coming up with designs. I think of it this way... I always feel like Kitana has sort of a elegance to her designs, Mileena has a bit of sexiness to her, Sindel has a bit of a gothic vibe to her fashions, etc. I just so happened to pick an Indonesian inspired look for Kitana because I felt it had a certain elegance while still having a bit of a foreign quality that feels exotic. I was thinking of making a middle-eastern inspired look for her next.

Is that sleeveless? I like the idea of it being sleeveless with long gloves or wrist jewelry.

Here's what I think a "princess" costume for kitana should look similar to:



Much more edenian and practical kombat attire while still maintaining a regal and conservative quality. Link. (the link idk how to resize pics)

I'm not a fan of the Asian inspired costumes. There some aspects of your drawings that I do like. But I would rather see some "Kitana-ish" variation of Mileena's MKD costume. I guess that's kind of what Kitana got with her alternate costume in MK9, but I liked that the costume from MKD was a robe. It seems a little more practical and made more sense than the separate piece costumes Kitana and Mileena had in MK9. It's like their wearing a backwards apron, and the sleeves were a separate piece too, what the hell, that doesn't make sense.

I like Kitana's MK9 primary and Jade's MK9 alternate though.

Nice!

Thanks. ^^

Yes it is sleeveless with long wrist jewelry going up the sides of her arms.

Not really digging these conservative versions of Kitana. Maybe its just none of covered up concepts I've seen have struck me as good designs so much as just covering her up for the sake of covering her up.

I find myself going back to the notion of keeping the practically clothed girls reserved to characters like Sonya, Cassie, Ashrah, Frost, etc. The Edenians belong to the opposite side of the coin: they don't need to be as shameless as they were in MK9 but beyond the sexy one piece standards they wore in older games leave them be.

And before we bring up realism I'd like to once again point out no one seems to care if clothing in a fantasy game is realistic unless its backs up an agenda. I've never met an anti-skimpy costume advocate that gave two squats about a non-skimpy costume being grossly impractical in real life.....

Confirmed. Kitana is a Super Japanese Princess. Just like Kenny!

I don't understand this complaint. Almost all of the designs posted have cleavage and exposed legs. With the sole exception of MK9, that is Kitana's trademark. MK2, MK3, MK4. MK5, and MK7 never had anything but her cleavage and legs showing. I contend MK6 was due to them palette swapping Mileena whenever Kitana appeared in an ending rather than being a "Kitana design" but I would be willing to concede on that point. Which still makes it a 5 to 2 ratio on how revealing Kitana's clothes are.