Whatever the case may be, I have officially launched my unofficial venture into Second Life clothing design and it’s called Strawberry Panda Clothing Co. Why Strawberry Panda? It’s cute as hell, that’s why Actually, my friend Melanie has raved on and on about Panda cookies with strawberry filling and though I have never sampled one, I thought it was a perfect name for some equally sweet fashion treats.

Where can I buy these designs, you are asking? Nowhere…yet. But I am working on it. Maybe having the feeling of a real company/storefront will help me feel like I’m doing some real work from now on

Good gawd!! Every time I think I’m getting closer to producing a testable article of clothing a new (please excuse the pun) wrinkle in the process throws me off. It’s alpha channels on lace or adding wrinkles or baking shadows or pgn vs. tga… I’ve been working on the same dress since October last year, sputtering along when I have the free time, and trying to make this one just perfect so I get the process down

I started a plurk thread, too, following designers who build what seems like full time. And it seems you almost have to if you expect to survive as a businessperson in Second Life. I can’t. And it’s discouraging. As soon as I’m super psyched about something I’ve accomplished, there’s another process I need to learn or tip or trick.

Ugh. Well, it’ll happen. I’m determined to make it so. I just have to keep looking ahead.

RL calls sometimes, right? Hopefully back on track and more updates as they come.

If you are reading this, tell me… system skirts? The good, the bad & the ugly. I have my opinion. What’s yours?

The land I was selling is gone. It wasn’t a pretty transaction, but I did it anyways. And now that albatross has been removed and I can get on with the business of business. So, it’ll be a very happy, and hopefully productive, holiday.

I leave you with this. Turn it up.

Beautiful sim. Great neighbors.

Shelf Life Media is selling our main parcel in Hattori and will be forming a business partnership with Mela’s!

Melanie Kidd has always been a wonderful friend, confidant and sounding board to everyone at Shelf Life and we’re pleased to be joining her at the new Mela’s flagship store in Lo Lo.

Take a look at the pics of Hattori here. It’s a great spot of rolling green land on a quiet, PG sim. And a nice view of the beach and ocean.

We hate leaving Hattori, for sure, but are quite excited about joining with Mela’s soon.

P.S. We’re not totally leaving Hattori, as we still have an unattached parcel we’re using as a work space. It’s 3072 m2 with 703 prims and we’d entertain an offer for that, too.

I don’t know why I have such an issue with this. It’s probably because I wanna say I built my first dress absolutely, positively, 100% by my hand. From scratch. Homemade. Whatever.

Whatever’s right. I need help! It’s not like I can’t buy some fabric, make a scan, create alpha channels, etcetera. I can do all that. I just can’t do all that and maintain a 9 to 5 and a life off the computer. So here I stand at USC Texture Tavern, feeling a little like a fool for my indecision and a little like a fake for considering a prefab texture (though I know they’re indispensable and quite necessary for many SL builders) but if it gets me a little closer to completing my builds and opening a shop, then so be it.

Oh…so be it, I mean, with a smile

Just to get this off the ground, I am a designer in RL and trying to be in SL too. I’m currently doing work for the virtual design and branding agency, Shelf Life Media, and this blog is a bit of a diary about my work and also a resource for links, tutorials, etc., concerning designing for Second Life.

Who I’m designing for is under wraps for now but what I’m designing is a clothing line based on hand made pieces from RL. And though I’ve been in SL for a while, this is my first foray into bona fide designing…so I’m a bit of a beginner but because of my RL design experience, hopefully adept enough to merge some quick learning with all my Photoshop and Illustrator skills and design some unique and lovely clothing thousand and thousand of avatars are dying to wear

What I have done so far is combine clothing templates from Chip Midnight and Robin Sojourner as suggested by Pixelbox Creative. And I have spent countless hours on the Virtual Fashion Technology site. Without VIT I would surely be lost or at least way further behind in SL designing skills that I already am.

So what’s in store for today? Lace.

I have built the basic template for my first dress (at least the upper body portion) and am very pleased with the results. Especially squaring up a photograph I took with my trusty Nikon D70 of the basic fabric design, finding the repeating pattern and saving that as a base fabric pattern in Photoshop. I am continually surprised (and humbled) by the amount of stuff I don’t know in PS though I’ve been using the product for 12 or so years.

Oh, getting back to lace… I’m scared

Not really. But we’ll see how this goes. More later