Introduction

Hi,

My name is Kevin Warren, I am 55 years old, and I am a student on the Visual Communications course at The Open College of the Arts.

The closest term to describe the start of my creative journey is virtual wardrobe stylist. In a few words, this is someone who clothes 3D avatars.

This interest began in 2022, when I transitioned from playing the single-player offline game called The Sims 4 to the multiplayer online game called Second Life. This new platform provided me with the opportunity to style my avatar using various pieces of virtual clothing acquired from online clothing stores.

Although I had a lot of fun doing this and even created a Flickr account solely for presenting my virtual photo shoots, it didn’t take long before I grew dissatisfied with the available clothing options and began investigating the process of making my own.

To cut a long story short, this investigation didn’t work out so well. Basically, I am a perfectionist, and I couldn’t reconcile how clothing in Second Life does not behave like clothing should. For example, consider a knee-length skirt. Second Life animates this by basically attaching one half of the skirt to the avatar’s right leg, and the other half of the skirt to the avatar’s left leg. If the avatar is walking and the avatar’s steps aren’t too large, this doesn’t look so bad, but if the avatar sits down on a park bench and crosses their ankles, which is a very normal thing to do, it looks hideous.

I broke off trying to create clothing for Second Life and began making clothing for 3D avatars, which led me to develop a stable of avatars for different clothing styles. Also, although static photos are lovely, animations are even better – so my journey took me to where I am now, where I not only create 3D avatars and the clothing to dress them with, but also seek to animate them, not only in walking up and down runways in virtual fashion shows, but in any way imaginable.

I have only been working with my tools since April of this year, and my Fibromyalgia has meant my progress has been painfully slow. Literally.