New colors of Wanderlust Space Suit

I promised additional colors of the updated Wanderlust, and today they
are available. Black, purple, red, and blue, each on either gold or
silver, plus a very special black on red combination available for
only L$10 at my main store!

Also on the Marketplace: Start here
and follow the related items to see other colors. The Black and Red
combination is not available there.

Pini is currently lagged due to an infestation of griefer objects, so
until the Lindens clean up I can't rez the vendors there. That will be
done as soon as possible.

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Lanette Evening Gowns

As promised in yesterday's update, I have finished the all-new Lanette
Evening Gown, which comes in your choice of six colors. This gown has
a slender floor-length flexi-skirt, a sleeveless bodice with a small
keyhole over the cleavage, and a bare back crossed by two broad
straps. The top and glitch pants are on all layers, and everything is
mod-copy as usual. Available at both in-world stores and (in a few
hours) at the Marketplace, at the standard price of 100 Linden dollars
per color.

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"Cloud City" dress (formerly Bespin) now in four colors!

I realized that "Bespin" was almost certainly a Lucasfilm trademark,
so I have changed the name of this outfit to Cloud City. All
purchasers will get replacement copies reflecting the new name.

In addition, I made new versions of the outfit in three other colors -
navy, a dark green, and purple. The green and purple ones come with a
gold cape instead of silver, but you can recolor the capes. A notecard
is included with both cape colors (and all the shoe colors, in case
you recolor those).

Additionally, I checked the Marketplace terms and discovered that the
proposed fees that caused me to withdraw my items from XStreetSL never
materialized (they just increased the commissions to 5%). As such, I
have relisted my items on the Marketplace, so now you have one more
location to shop! My Marketplace store is at
https://marketplace.secondlife.com/stores/28076 .

Tomorrow should see a brand new outfit - an evening gown called
"Lanette" that I have been working on since the New Year. I've
finished tweaking it, and just need to create all the colors.

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New version of SL Clothing Preview is out!

For those of you who have read my GIMP tutorial, you know I
recommended a tool called SLCP (Second Life Clothing Preview) for
checking your work - it saves you both the time and money of uploading
textures to Second Life to see how they look. Back when I wrote it,
the tool was fairly old, and there was no Linux version available
(Windows/Mac only).

Today I learned that Phaze Desmenes has updated the original tool to
version 2.11. And the updated version, at least, claims to work on
Linux under WINE.

You can get the updated version at
http://metaverse.mitsi.com/Secondlife/Posts/SLCP/ . (I've also updated
the tutorial post with the new location).

Brand New Outfits - Starfleet Uniforms, Wanderlust Space Suit, and Bespin Dress

Yes, it's been something like a year and a half since I last made any
new outfits available for sale, but I'm getting back into the swing of
things now. The store is undergoing major renovations, with all old
products removed until I can take new photographs and set them up with
my new vendor system. In addition, the satellite store in Pini now has
a larger location just up the hill - I've got a couple products in the
little kiosk with a teleporter to the big store.

I'm now using the fairly widely-known vendor system from Bejambled
(BSM). This means that all customers automatically get rewards points
for every item they buy, and you start earning rewards immediately,
unlike some stores.

You'll also see that the style of my pictures has changed - dark
backgrounds instead of white, and with a new font - no more Papyrus
for me!

Finally, I have changed my pricing policy from the "upload fees only"
policy I had previously to a "100L per outfit" policy. I intend to
apply to some of the sales groups here in SL (60L Weekends, Steals and
Deals, maybe some others), and they have a minimum regular price level.

And now, the new outfits!

First, we have a latex space suit called Wanderlust in purple and
gold, originally created for a friend as a custom outfit for a
science-fiction themed party back in May. It's actually been available
at the main store since then, but I haven't made a formal announcement
before. Other colors will be coming soon.

Next, we have "Bespin," a dress and cape inspired by Empire Strikes
Back. This outfit consists of a tunic-length maroon dress, a
silver-blue cape, slightly sheer leggings or stockings, and ballerina
flats. It's not an exact duplicate of the outfit worn by Princess Leia
in the Cloud City, but it looks reasonably close, I think. For those
who want the rest of the style, the hair is from Curl Up n Dye, the
shape is Body Doubles' Carrie Fisher shape (sadly no longer
available), and the skin is a custom mod of the F-series templates
from Eloh Elliot.

Finally, we have a series of five 24th-Century Starfleet Uniforms,
based on the famous TV series. These come in the three canonical
colors, plus two non-canonical colors (purple and green). Each uniform
comes with a set of jacket overlays with rank pips and an optional
communications badge. You can wear whichever rank you want, and wear
the versions with badges if you don't have a prim badge (or you don't
want to wear it).

As always, all outfits are copy-mod, non-transfer. The vendor system
has gifting options if you want to send a gift to someone.

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New top and jewelry for Pride Month

2011_pride_top_sales_pic

Once again it's LGBT Pride month, and as is my tradition, I made a new
outfit - this time including Jewelry. The top, choker, and earrings
are available at both my stores (see left, or check my Profile Picks
inworld for Redwood Rhiadra Designs) for one Linden for the full set.

There are going to be some changes to my store sometime in the near
future. I will probably raise prices to 100L and apply to the various
daily/weekly sales groups that are so popular (60 Linden Weekend, LOW,
55L Thursday, etc.) I can't really join those right now because my
regular prices are usually less than their sales price!

I have also been experimenting more with making jewelry, and am
working on a color/texture change HUD. Once the HUD is ready, I will
be releasing a number of sets.

GIMP Clothing Tutorial - Main Entry

I've been making clothes with GIMP for over a year now, and I've noticed the severe lack of GIMP-specific tutorials for making Second Life clothing. Most tutorials I have seen involve Photoshop. Additionally, even the Photoshop tutorials are very limited, and the clothing produced looks flat and painted-on. Sadly, you can see a lot of clothing in Second Life, even from professional creators, that looks like this.

But it's not that difficult to make clothing that actually looks good. You don't have to be able to hand-paint individual wrinkles or shadows. And you don't have to spend hundreds of dollars on Photoshop. In the following links, you will see the steps needed to make quality clothes, including some secrets I've not seen in other public tutorials (i.e. I came up with many of these techniques myself).

  1. Files you'll want and other resources
  2. Preparing a Master File
  3. Creating an Outline or Template
  4. Base Color and Shading
  5. Texturing and Edging One
  6. Texturing and Edging Two
  7. Drop Shadows and Final Product
And here are a couple pictures of the finished product. Note that I show two different texturing techniques.


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