Trying something new in SL

Playing around with GIMP, a new drawing tablet, and the clothing/skin templates making system clothes for my avatar.  It's kind of fun making the "fabric" to paint the clothes with. Here's a pic of my first shirt - made the material too. I put some more at the end of the post.

There are so many things to take into account - necklines, wrinkles (which will take me forever to figure out i think - they're just lines of black/white/gray, but they add so much depth to the clothes), hemlines, accent bits, remembering to turn the guide layers off before uploading (it's embarassing to have a grid pattern falling out of the bottom of your skirt!)

What was kind of cool to realize is that you just "paint" the clothes. I learned to sew as a kid - either for a girl scout badge or for an achievement in AWANA's (the church group we belonged to) and i sucked at it. I suck at painting too..but at least there's no sewing machine to thread or bobbins to keep full (do sewing machines even still have bobbins?)

Maybe should have learned GIMP first...but figured this was a good project to learn it with since i
need layers and filters and different brushes. There are some good tutorials out there for GIMP and i've found a couple for making clothes for SL with the templates and GIMP so i have some help.

The drawing tablet will take some getting used to - it's not like a mouse in how you move where it's pointing to (jus tpick the mouse up and move it to where it's physically more comfortable with the pointer not moving - - well, maybe the drawing tablet does that but i haven't figure out how yet since i haven't read its instructions yet

And yes - I realize system clothes aren't the prettiest  or the most original...but to start thinking about fabric and folds and seam matching and alpha channels...they're not so bad. And after I get some that don't look totally awful..i can think about making prim attachments, flexi prims skirts, then sculpty attachments. or sculpty skirts...

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