Wooho my first post!! - clothes

Hello fellow sl'ers...
Im currently SUFFERING at home ..having my laptop off for repair HOPEFULY getting it back soon im hvaing major withdrawal symptoms on my dads CRAP laptop which cant eevn hold photoshop properly lol..

Anyway ive also just started a tattoo/shape buisness and am thinkin about making clothes ( or skins..whichever comes first )
BUT im thinking of making Chinese/japanese style clothes ONLY..for a starter point.
My question is ..i know abotu the templates ..alpha etc BUT im getting slightly muddled
Say i wanted too make a top ..i mean do people in SL usually go search for a image of a top and put it on the template or ??...

Point im getting at is do they take the textures from the top and apply them onto the template ?

take the classic kimono..the silky flower textures etc
i mean where would you start lol!!!...
im jsut soo muddled now...i just KNOW that loads of those type of textures definatley cant be drawn in SL...but the textures im finding ..the quality is not the best..

have i made any sense at all?

Oddly enough yes.

Anyway, the first thing you need is a template, I use the CMFF templates myself, after that, well you are going to have to draw the majority of the top since pictures never give you a classic front view and back view, generally they are a 3 quarter view. The hard part comes in adding in the special forms on the kimino, most of the ones I have seen are like you said not very good because they pasted the design onto the template and then drew around it and never got it to match up right in looks.

I on the other hand have a different view on it, I'll take a great looking clothing picture and draw the whole darn thing by hand, that way, you don't get the badly combined look, though actually drawing it as nice is hard, why I tend to just avoid the special shapes, unless I happen to find a centered picture of it and can go ahead and just erase everything but the shape.

Now that of course is hard and takes forever, however, you do get it to match into the rest so much easier.

woot thanks for the reply..and yeah i already have th templates...been making tattoos and such ...
But yeah i see what you mean..Lets put kimonos and japanese style clothes aside and just look at clothing in general..what about the textures?...are they all made? :/...

I guess i dont really know what im asking here im just bit muddled lol!....

ok heres an example ..like is this one all hand drawn and painted in like photoshop or something??? :/ :/ :/

http://www.slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=136220

Hi Sandy Welcome to the forums! In SL you'll find clothing that's done both ways - from various photographs that have been manipulated to fit the templates, and clothing that's entirely painted by hand. You'll also find clothing that's a mixture of the two techniques. They both have their pluses and minuses. If you understand the templates well, starting with photos can get you some very nice detail, but the process of fitting the various photos to the templates isn't easy, and seam matching becomes more difficult the more realistic and detailed the textures are. Painting by hand is the easiest, technically speaking, but then it depends a lot more on your raw ability with your paint tools. There really isn't a right way to go about it. Your best bet is to do tons and tons of experimenting and figure out what works for you. Try both ways and try combining them. Somewhere along the way it'll start to click for you.

Sandy yes that is I beleive all hand drawn, or at least she spent alot of time blending what is a picture into the rest. That is either a good example of what the best drawers can do, or the best combiners can do, either way, it's a spledid outfit.

Now before you look at what you have done and say I can't do that may as well stop, keep in mind, the best designers started off at the same place you are. All of them were not very good to start off with. The biggest hardest part of doing clothes is practicing, alot. Some start out making good clothes and get better, some start off making horrible clothes and get lots better. It's all a matter of practicing until you can get the seams matched and finding what you are good at.