It occured to me the other day that people who don't create in SL and just enjoy all the many things it has to offer by other people may not realise just how much effort goes into not only designing fashion but all the other things that is involved.
I'm sure so many of us have gone shopping in SL seen a fab outfit and with one or two clicks they've bought it for a relatively small cost compared to RL and within seconds are wearing it and are on their merry way, not even thinking about the many hours of creating, making up the item in world, packaging it, and all the marketing that comes afterwards.
I don't know about any other designers but for me, this is a brief (well, trying to keep it as brief as poss!) look behind the virtual scenes.
First off is the idea for content creation, it could come from an item of clothing in my RL wardrobe, a novel I read, a movie I've seen and not necessarily even seeing an item of clothing in a movie, magazine etc and thinking I'll recreate it but it sparks off an idea of what I could create. Maybe even creating an item of clothing that I would never wear in RL but would love to do so or just simply making items I want to wear in SL but have not seen before.
Or as with the Gothica outfit, I was just messing about with some prim sleeves, just seeing what I could do with them when the outfit just slowly started coming together and once I saw how striking it looked I went crazy making a load of skirts to go with it!
Of course then there is the hours in which I am not in SL playing with prim sleeves or skirts, packaging and marketing but in a graphics program on my computer. This can take anywhere from a couple of hours for just a fairly simple top to 8hrs (sometimes more) over the course of a week for one outfit (in a few different colours as well). And if I'm making several different new releases for that one week then you can see already, a lot of hours spent just on the creating side. Of course that is the fun part along with making and texturing prims in world for skirts and sleeves etc. Although I am often to be found swearing at the computer when SL decides to have a fit as it so often does and a prim I just textured or changed the size of reverts back as soon as I head out of the edit window! Doing something 20 times is not fun lol
Then there's uploading textures on the Aditi preview grid to make sure seams match and it all looks the way you intended it to. Yet another hour goes by, more if you have to head back to the graphics program to tweak something.
Finally when ready to upload the textures, the outfit is put together in world, permissions set on all of them. Then each item is photographed, this can takes ages, SL has a habit of rebaking textures every 30 secs when I try to take pictures so everything goes blurry, (insert more swearing here!) then there is the editing the photos, I don't make items look better, I just collage all the pics together into one, add text etc. Then these need to be uploaded for texturing the vendors. Which leads me to...
Packaging everything, double checking permissions, putting outfits into boxes, setting permissions on the box itself, putting it into the vendor, typing out the name of the outfit and description so it shows in search and when you hover over the vendor. Putting in the scripts in each vendor and prices on those scripts. This is the part I don't like, it's tedious and takes so long, photographing, uploading, making the clothes up in world and the packaging combined for just 3 outfits can take me 6hrs!
Then I have to go set out the vendors in the main store and a couple of my satellite stores. But that's not where it ends, oh no!
Next is sending out group messages about the new release, to my own group and 2 large fashion groups. Blogging about the new release, putting out new release posts on forums. As well as adding them to hippo vendors and the XStreet boxes (and the Xstreet marketplace, writing out listings).
Also involved is trying to find new satellite stores for exposure and that's not always easy.
Phew, I'm exhausted just blogging about it! Why do I do it? I love being able to create and trying to improve my skills all the time and see others wearing them, enjoying them and I am simply a person who loves to have a project on the go.
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