Category: Adventures in Virtual Fashion Design

When It’s Time to Let Go of a Dream

The banner of my brand on the Sansar Store (December 2017 to September 2019)

My getting angry over the unexpected drastic changes to the default Sansar female avatar has led me to make two conclusions:

  1. That I need to get a life; and
  2. That I need to let go of a dream onto which I’ve held too tightly for too long.

Part one is obvious to anybody who reads this blog 😉 and, I do assure you, I have made valiant, continued efforts to have a real life outside of virtual reality and virtual worlds! But part two is something I only realized today, after some quiet thought over my lunch break.

There is a category of my blog called Adventures in Virtual Fashion Design, where I posted about my learning how to use Marvelous Designer to create avatar clothing in Sansar, and where I shared my dream: to become a virtual fashion designer and own and run my own store, my own brand, and be able to make a little side income to supplement my pension when I retire. A creative outlet. A hobby. Maybe even a tiny fashion empire like those I had seen people build in Second Life!

Today, I realized that one of the reasons I got so upset over the changes to the default female avatar in Sansar is that it would mean that I would need to remake all the clothing that I had already created and put up for sale in my store on the Sansar Store. And frankly, it has been so long since I taught myself how to do all that work in Marvelous Designer, that I’d forgotten almost all of it, and would need to start all over again.

You need to keep working on a skill to strengthen it, and I had let that particular set of skills wither, as I worked on my paying job during the work week, and as I worked on this blog and the Metaverse Newscast in the evenings and on weekends. And I discovered that I was good at those things! Perhaps better at those things, than I would be if I were to take up avatar fashion design again (although of course you never know).

So, reluctantly, I will shutting down my store today, and taking all my avatar clothing items off the market, except for one. I don’t want to offer clothing items that were designed for avatars that no longer exist, and I don’t want people to have to fuss and fiddle with my clothing to make it fit Avatar 2.0 avatars. So it’s all coming down. I did get a small thrill every time I sold an item, though, and every time I saw someone in-world wearing a T-shirt or a dress I made!

I don’t know when I will be able to resume work on this project. I might wait until Linden Lab finalizes the body morphing on the current Sansar avatars, which is supposed to happen within the next four to six months, according to Landon Linden. Or I might wait until I take full retirement from my paying job and I have more time. We’ll see.

But I do know that it’s time for me to let go of my dream, as least for now.

Image from this blogpost

Learning How to Use Modular Patterns in Marvelous Designer to Create Avatar Clothing for Sansar

Two very experienced Marvelous Designer users named MD-Angel and Vintorix are sharing their avatar clothing creation expertise with us on the discussions in the Fashion channel of the official Sansar Discord server. This information is much appreciated by newbie users of MD, like me!

One thing that I did not know until today, is that MD has modular pattern pieces stored in a library, which you can use as a starting point for your own garments. I was playing around with these today, just to see what I could make. The first thing I tried was a men’s dress shirt. Here is what my men’s white (untextured) dress shirt looked like on the first try. It still needs a lot of work to look better, but it’s a very promising start! It would have taken me HOURS of working my way up the learning curve to try and build such a nice-looking buttoned shirt collar on my own.

MODULAR Men's Dress Shirt 7 Jan 2018.png

The second garment I tried to make was an oversize women’s V-neck T-shirt, and it turned out so well that I am placing it for sale on the Sansar Store! Here’s what it looks like on Vanity Fair (see picture, below, taken in my own experience, Ryan’s Garden). Here’s a link to the T-shirt listed for sale on the Sansar Store. I’ve priced it at S$5, like my other clothing in the Store (except for a few freebies). I don’t think it’s fair to charge too much money for items made while I am still learning how to use the Marvelous Designer software properly. I also want people to buy my clothes, so I am deliberately keeping my prices affordable! I get such a thrill whenever I make s sale, and whenever I see someone wearing a piece of clothing that I made 🙂

RSVF Oversize Women's Grey V-Neck T-Shirt 2 7 Jan 2018

I would like to thank, from the bottom of my heart, the very talented and experienced Marvelous Designer creators like MD-Angel and Vintorix, who are freely sharing these valuable tips and techniques with us! These people are working hard, for no pay, to provide truly helpful advice for the entire fledgling fashion designer community in Sansar, so please be sure to thank them when you meet them in-world or on the Discord channels!

Three Floral and Watercolour T-Shirts for Female Avatars

Well, I’ve been busy this afternoon making women’s T-shirts! I finally settled on a more comfortable, roomier-fitting T-shirt design, and here are three new shirts for sale for only S$5 each on the Sansar Store!

There’s a light blue floral pattern:

Listing Blue Floral Pattern T-Shirt 1 Jan 2018.png

And the same floral pattern in pink-and-red:

Listing Red Floral Pattern T-Shirt 1 Jan 2018

And finally, my favourite, a watercolour pattern!

Listing Watercolor T-Shirt 1 Jan 2018.png

Free Women’s T-Shirt!

Today, I spent a couple of hours working on a T-shirt for female avatars, this time with proper sleeves and a proper collar. I fiddled a lot with it, adjusting it here and there, and I think it turned out pretty well! My first try was a little too tight, so I made it 105% larger and that seemed to do the trick.

Looser Fit Women's T-Shirt 1 Jan 2018.png

There’s only one small problem that I can find with it. When I wore my VR headset and looked at myself in third-person mode, then raised my avatar’s arms, I noticed that her skin poked through the cloth at the armpits and a little bit at the top of the shoulders. I need to figure out how to fix that problem, but in the meantime, I’m going to make a plain white (untextured) version of this women’s T-shirt available for FREE in the Sansar Store (here’s the link). You will need to press the Simulate Cloth button, and tug at the bustline and around the hemline of this T-shirt, to get it to fit your avatar properly!

Please accept this T-shirt as my Happy New Year present to you. I’ll keep tweaking it until I get a design that I’m 100% satisfied with and I’m willing to sell for actual Sansar dollars! I find creating clothing using Marvelous Designer for Sansar to be incredibly satisfying!