chronicled & illustrated

Last post I was speaking of being immersed in SL so I thought I’d post this photo of Aplomb inappropriately dressed in a pool owned by one of my neighbours. The outfit is one of my early designs. It needs work but I still like it.

I was totally caught off guard by how many things there were to learn about designing clothes in SL. I’ve been slogging my way up the steep learning curve for the last two months. Now I feel I’ve definitely crested and am enjoying the ride (though I have no doubt there are many other hills in front of me.)

Designing in SL is mainly done off-world on my computer. I use both Paint Shop Pro and Photoshop Elements. Not because I recommend that but because that’s what I have. In fact, my Photoshop Elements is an old version and that’s probably why I need both. It’s working but I have to flip the images back and forth, so a new PS version will have to come my way at some point.

Most of the blouses, pants, regular skirt and jackets are drawn in a graphics program. For that reason, even though I’m spending a lot of time on this SL activity, I’m not logged into SL that much. I’ve learned an amazing amount about using the graphics programs in two months. Many of the formerly mysterious terms (alpha channels, for example) have now become tools of my trade. This has given me an almost daily need for the digital tablet I got last summer. I’m still in the process of learning the trompe l’oeil techniques that make the clothes look *real*—but I’ve come a long way.

There are two other ways of designing SL clothes. The first one is done in-world. In SL, residents build things—the houses they live in, the trees, roads, airplanes, pets—by using basic shapes called “prims” (short for primitives.)

Basic 3-D shapes such as cubes, spheres, cylinders, cones etc are manipulated and linked to other shapes and texturized to make up what you see in the world. Some clothes are made with prims.
The “flexi skirts” that move with your avatar and react to the physics of the world are constructed in-world. This was another learning curve.

Thirdly, there’s a type of construct that is a combination of a graphics program and in-world build and that’s the sculpted prim. In these, you design a three-dimensional object on your computer, upload it to SL, rez a prim, put the uploaded bit-map into the prim and *voila!* your design appears in SL. I’m still a real beginner at this but it’s good for making accessories to outfits such as belts, scarves, hats and so on. I had great fun making a martini and a top hat to go with a design I call Tuxedo FUNction.

Aplomb having her first martini; the chair she’s sitting in is one of my sculpted prims.

So those are the basics of fashion design in SL. So good-bye for now and I’ll leave you with Aplomb in one of her outfits—looking pretty darned sassy.

The last post was about my tentative toe-pokes into Second Life.

Then I disappeared (blog-wise) for over two months. From wading to immersion. Well…that’s how it goes, right?

From my initial apathy to the secondary intrigue to a subsequent and prolonged love-hate relationship, sometime in late March it all became addictive, all-consuming, and just fun. I recently met a newcomer to SL and asked her what she thought of it. She said, “It’s so silly and so profound all at the same time.” This sums up what I feel too. One day I heard or read the phrase, “What do you want to do with your Second Life?” and it hit me in the way that this virtual interface often does. You know it’s not *real* but the question is profound.

If I had a second life and this—silly virtual world that it is—was IT, what would I want to do?

I decided to start designing clothes. Though I’ve never had anything to do with commercial fashion in Real Life (RL), I loved it as a child, was always involved with fabrics because my mother sewed and made our clothes. Eventually, I learned how and made almost everything I wore during my teens through twenties. At that point I had kids (boys!) and we started wearing only jeans and knit shirts and sewing wasn’t fun anymore. So this is a return to an old love. A second childhood, perhaps. A second childhood to go with a second life seems just right.

More soon about my learning curve.

The photo is Aplomb at home in front of a painting done by SL friend, Luta Lussard (and RL friend, Sherry Ramsey). Her shop: A Space to Dream (link coming soon). Aplomb is wearing one of our newest designs from the Art Nouveau line. Once I get ready to *come out* I’ll do another blog/ catalogue for Aplomb’s designs. It and our shop will be called Dress with Aplomb…but I’m not ready yet.