Day 78: Leopard Dress

Day 74: Black and White Dress

Today's soft-focus images seem to have blurred out most of the details of the eyes and skin that I wore for this shoot; however, the focus has cleaned up the jaggy edges created by cutting away the background, so it's somewhat of a compromise.


I can't remember if I mentioned this previously, so I'm going to go ahead and mention it anyway - I'm using shades of off-white in all my work now, both to reduce the starkness of a pure white, and in preparation for requiring a surface to do highlights and shadows on when I get around to learning to create wrinkles in fabric. I'm also using off-white as my background in images, which makes it easier to see the clothing.

This dress was inspired by a design I saw in a sewing magazine. I included plenty of panels to smooth out the pleated look of the skirt somewhat, and used plenty of flare to give a nice sense of flow, though it looks even less like the original that way.

Today's skin and eyes are by Robin Sojourner; I don't recall the names, exactly, but if you search for Robin by name, she has her stores listed in her picks. Today's hair is the ETD/Aveda Flip, a Black Pack, I seem to remember.

This last shot shows me walking with the dress on; I wasn't quite sure whether to attempt to match up stripes on my skirt with my pants, whether to leave the pants all white, or to use some combination. In the end I left it as you see it: off-white pants, with black stockings from above the knee. It still looks odd, to my mind, but better than it looked in the other combinations.

I'd love to know what my avatar was thinking when I took this shot. She has a real brood on :)

Day 71: BowCollarJacket

I was quite happy with how this jacket turned out until I realised that the detailing was too subtle to show up properly. I think I will re-do this soon to take that into account.

The bow has become somewhat distorted through blurring here, and looks better inworld.

Day 70: Cut Out Shirt

This shirt was remarkably easy to throw together. I used a slew of guidelines in the Gimp to line up the cut-out positions, and put the shirt template on to work out where the row of cut outs should go.

Day 69: CyberShirt and Butterfly Back

I have been busy the past few days; busy enough with outfits and garments and work that I haven't had the time to blog about it!

A thing I learned about Sharpening and Blurring: it's a great idea to Sharpen before saving a texture to be uploaded to Second Life, because of the blurring you get when compression causes information loss, and an even better one to Blur before uploading photos to this blog, especially if I have cut away the background, to get rid of jagged edges.



To make today's two shirts I very simply used some Gimp brushes that I found online. Effective, aren't they?

Day 68: Blue Military Jacket Two

This is how I originally conceived this jacket - with the frilly bit around the bottom. And I think it works well like that. It's a feminine frippery thrown around the bottom of a more severe jacket, and that's how it was all designed to go together. Then, obviously, in the making of the garment, I had the chance to see it without the frill - and it looked as good if not better.



The jacket took quite a while to figure out, but not long to pull together after I worked out how to do what I was doing. I wanted to have wrinkles and all sorts of complicated doodads, but I'm just not that advanced yet, so I made do with a few symbolic lines and some totally pinched buttons. I did make the belt buckle myself :)

And today I'm on location somewhere else! But where? Contact me with the answer, and I'll arrange for you to get something nifty.

Day 67, Tues 10 07 2007: Black Frilled Skirt and Bling Shirt

This skirt has really had its issues. We've fought, and we haven't really made up. The thing looks right only if you stay still, and stand in a particular way. It's not conducive to posing, walking, flying or much else. Especially sitting with one's legs crossed.

Th concept seemed simple enough. Make two halves of a skirt with the LoopRez Generator by ged Larson. Attach each half to the appropriate upper leg. Obviously still not the best for walking or crossing legs, but there you have it.

Maybe it's just the animations I'm using. I'd hate to think that I needed a set just for wearing THIS SKIRT, and this skirt only. That would be ... disappointing, to say the least.


The shirt - now the shirt is much more reasonable. I made that using Robin (Sojourner) Wood's T-Shirt texture thingy, because I'm really not proficient with wrinkles in fabric yet. The image on the front is a reference to Tateru Nino's web comic, in her blog "Dwell on it" (it is best to go back to the beginning and read from scratch, which you can also do if you follow secondlifeinsider.com). If you can't quite make out what it says ... um, too bad! Read the comic, leave a comment or talk to me inworld, damnit!

If you know where I was when I took this shot, let me know, and, err, I'll give you something nice. Heck, even if you make a fair guess I might give you something, just for participating :)