The costume designer for the film, Deborah Lynn Scott, also explains why they chose to make most outfits by hand.

Avatar: The Way of Water is a monumental project that required a lot of work in many different areas, including costume design. While costumes might not be the first thing that catches the eye among the dizzying array of strange plants, alien creatures, and sci-fi tech in the film, it’s still a crucial aspect of the world of Pandora. The costume designer for Avatar: The Way of Water, Deborah Lynn Scott, spoke with Variety on the process, which took hundreds of hours for even a single costume:

“We followed a lot of the template of the first movie and took it to a higher and more complicated standard. With the Na’vi world, I think on average it took around 200 hours per garment. That was without the research time before that to decide if it was going to be a real shell, a 3D-printed shell or a laminate shell. We kept returning to the natural world and the natural shells because those are the ones that really give life. We found that all this magic of 3D printing, which we did in some cases to augment, wasn’t as good as what was real, handcrafted, sculpted by hand and individual bespoke pieces.”

While 3D printing may be cheaper and faster than making something by hand, many times, it pays off to craft the real thing, according to Scott. It’s something she learned while serving as the costume designer for…