Textures Question

Where can I find actual textures to start making clothes. Is there a website ya'll go to with them, do you have to them yourselves, or what? I figured out how gimp works, downloaded the body templates, but now I want to make the clothing. Please help.

If you own a digital camera that has a good resolution (2000x3000), take your own shots under natural outdoor lighting. It will give you great reference material. Best of all, you'll know that no one else will be using the exact same thing (unlike the few things found on the web that you can legally use).

In addition to using your own photos from your digital camera you can find free and full permission textures on the web. But, one of the previous posters pointed out that anyone else can use those too. I would suggest you do like I do if you use those free textures you find on the web.............alter them. Cut, distort or change them to a way you like for your project. I, too, use The GIMP and it works great for stuff like that............an added benifit too is that you now have a semi original that you made and the original to make more but different ones in the future.

Another thing to do is don't get locked in on a texture for a clothing item having to be some cloth texture..........construction textures work great for clothing. For instance, a concrete texture with a little manipulation in the GIMP looks just like wool. And a tranquil picture of a partly cloudy sky can be made to look like a tie dyed piece of cloth. Use your imagination.

Of course you can had draw your textures too.......it's not very easy but it's fun if you have patience. I start with a background that is 100% transparent and just bucket fill to a white or some shade of greay and use various tools to select portions to cut, resize, distort and recolor. you can duplicate and add those as layers to move twist or bend to your liking. Then merge it all and you have your own, hand drawn texture. And when you get real brave you can use the pen, pencil, brush and air brush tools to draw............but, your hand and wrist are going to get tired from using that mouse LOL

Have fun with it..............if you are anything like me you will be sort of sad when you back off and say to yourself: "It's done...........nothing more I can add".

Good luck.

Yes, filters are your friend!