I do this disappearing act whenever I'm working on a new project. This time, I was sitting around the fire at Midsomer in
InWorldz on Monday with Leanna talking about how I wanted to make a new dress. We got to talking about flowers, and I was pretty sure the design I wanted to do would be springy and flowery.
While chatting about fabric options, I came up with the bright idea of just wandering out into my yard and snapping a pic of some flowers and making my own fabric. I mean, how hard can this be right? So, here we go, flowers. Now.... how to make a dress from this? I loaded it into Gimp then went wild with applying filters until I had a springy floral print in a nice blue color.
If you think taking a pic and turning that into digital fabric, and then making a virtual dress out of that is easy, I suppose it could be. being a do-it-yourself dressmaker has its good points, but it's also rife with a mess of mistakes and do-overs and not much to show for yourself during the in-between times. So yeah, that's pretty much what I've been up to. A whole lot of mistakes and do-overs.
The first attempt at fabric came out pretty decent, untill I messed it up doing the shading for fabric folds. I was going for this gauzy gathered at the shoulders roman goddess kind of look.
Hmm... not even close. In fact, this attempt almost made me completely run for the hills, throw away the keys to my shop and give up on digital fashion design. Ugh.... not pretty!
So back to the drawing board! I completely scrapped that top, played around with colors a bit, and started with a new design, this time a midriff baring, long sleeve, gauzy top tied at the front.Getting closer!
I like the overall feel and shape of this top, but it needs a lot more work on the shading to make it look and feel more realistic. The elbow creases for instance, way too dark, but I'm beginning to really like where this is going. I played with the hem of the skirt fabric, not wanting a boring straight line, but a subtle wavy hemmed edge.
Good so far, except now I've got the dreaded "alpha" issues to deal with. Hmm, not sure how to fix that so it may be awhile until this dress is finally done. You can see in the picture below what I mean, where you can see the "edges" of the other skirt panels showing through because of alpha issues (If there's anyone out there that knows how to fix this when using an alpha texture, please let me know!). I may just end up taking the texture back to a boring flat bottomed line, but ugh, not if I don't have to.
Ok, so I thought, why don't I try a sculpted skirt. I like this idea! Well at first anyway. It wipes out the dreaded "butt crack of doom" issue that you get when making a flexi skirt over a pant layer. Why not use a system skirt you ask? Because in all the 4 years I've been in virtual worlds, I've always HATED the big butted waist-gaping system skirts common in SL and most other virtual worlds. I refuse to buy them from vendors, (yeah, that means Nicky Ree, much as I love her designs, please drop the system skirt) and I sure as heck don't want to make one to sell. Yes I know you can wear a "no butt" shape to help reduce the "too much junk in the trunk" effect, but it still is not enough for me. I'll just have to keep trying to perfect my skills and make it work another way. Mesh, now that would be something. But that is neither here nor there, so here we are.
So here we have my attempt at a sculpted skirt, flirty, frilly, fun, great for a photo, but not for moving around in virtual avatar life. Once you hop off the pose stand and actually move around, walk, lean over, anything at all, it looks horrid.
Sculpts, as you know do not move at all, it's just like wearing one of those "cone of shame" hard plastic cones that the veterinarian puts on your pet to keep them from messing with their stitches. Hmm.. maybe I should wear one of those instead. I'm definitely messing with my stitches and still more stitching to go before this gets to the "I like it" point, if I can be so lucky.
Last Leanna heard from me was Monday morning before I skipped off with my camera. She probably thinks I'm a bad friend, not even saying hi when I've been online the last few days, but it's just that I get a project going and it's all I can seem to focus on. Like a dog, chewing a bone. I get an idea and then I hound it until I can finish it. Well, here we are, days later, and I'm still at it. Most sane people would have just given up by now, thrown their hands in the air, grabbed the virtual wallet and zoomed over to Snowpaw to buy up the 3 gorgeous new dresses she announced. Hmm... I may still do that!
But for now I'm still working on the details of making my own creative pixels combine and cooperate in a way that makes me say... "Yeah! I like that!", and I get that tingly feeling that says I've done a job well. I'll keep you posted on the progress. For now, it's back to the digital sewing machine with me.
Kisses!
Boudica
