What is better for optimizing the game: draw the appearance of the characters or let the code do this work?

Question

Game development

What would be better: draw a bunch of characters and they already have clothes on them, or draw clothes separately, and then write everything in the engine using code?
It will take more time in the first option, but I’m not sure with the second one, because the code will work and this may affect the optimization of the game, but what if there are bugs with this, the clothes simply may not overlap with the characters, anything can happen.

Ps so that there are no questions, in this game I want to make sure that after certain actions of the player npc come.

Answer 1

Draw at least one or two characters, give them stupidly different colors, and don't bother with monotonous routine details until you have at least something that works.
Read about MVP.
There is a chance that neither the first nor the second option suits you, and the project will stupidly die because it is too complicated for your experience.
It may happen that this is the best option, and you can do something more productive, simple and even interesting for you.
There are also collections of ready-made free well-drawn assets on the Internet. Let them, perhaps, not quite suit your style or idea, but do not find fault. The main thing is to make something working, more or less playable. If you can do this and don't drown in the endless tossing of a perfectionist who is not allowed to start the business of thinking about how to do everything "right", then you will succeed. There will be colleagues who will want to draw characters for you, there will be programmers who will want to join your team in order to customize your Persians...
The main thing is the ability to highlight the main thing and concentrate on it.