Fashion Illustration and Design

1.  Introduction   [28th Nov 2024]

This is my story, and this is day one.

I have tried many things that failed because they were too complicated or simply because the YouTube tutorial I followed didn’t quite work. Enough. I am interested in fashion illustration and design, primarily but not exclusively for female fashion. This all started in Second Life, where I enjoyed putting together outfits for my avatars. I became frustrated with many immodest clothing options and decided to create my own. After a few iterations, I settled on using CLO 3D for clothing design. Other options exist, but CLO 3D treats clothing as clothing, not simply a 3D object. While learning CLO 3D, I discovered that it could print out a pattern that could be used to make actual clothing, and this started my life as a seamster.

Mansplain: A seamster is the male equivalent of a seamstress. What’s the difference between a tailor and a seamster? Generally, a tailor alters clothing, whereas a seamster creates clothing from a pattern.

One of my reasons for past failures was trying to run before I could walk. For example, trying to draw a person before being able to draw an apple. The thing is, I have Fibromyalgia, so I’m not able to spend hours on any one activity. I can only manage relatively short bursts of activities, which can lead to a temptation to cut corners. I sadly even have days where I can’t do anything – which is infernally frustrating, but it’s something I must live with. As a wise woman once said, “It is what it is”.

Enough introduction, on with my story.

Currently, I am not able to draw.

Boo hoo, get over it.

There are many products out there which offer assists, so let’s make use of them. I will use 3D models from Daz 3D, Victoria, my female model and Michael, my male model.

Daz 3D will be used to create poses and static scenes. Poses can be made within CLO 3D, but I prefer the interface in Daz 3D, which allows numeric values to be entered to make changes. It satisfies both the perfectionist and the closet mathematician within me.

I should also add that to help with the cognitive impairment that comes with Fibromyalgia, I use Grammarly to help with my writing. I use it only to offer suggested corrections/changes – I have mixed feelings about using AI to create or generate things from scratch.

© Kevin Warren - fibrocreativity (fc)