| If you are serious about
Designing and Want to Learn and Improve, here are our
TIPS
Quality Sells. Period.
BRANDING
Get a brand / logo for your business (make something
unique) and stick with it. Do not use images that you
don't own copyrights (you can have some hard time later
on :) ).
Don't think of the quick dollar.
SHADING AND TEXTURES
Pay attention to the shading of your designs. Either
download the free SL templates (with helping guides
on edges and shades), buy a kit (full perm) shading
for clothes or paint your own shadow/highlights.
Don't buy a texture kit and just place it over the
dress/ shirt/ pants texture panel!!
Don't buy a shoe kit and just place new colors over
the same model !!
And PLEASE! do not copy - paste a snap of RL blouse/dress/jeans
into the SL template and leave it like that. In the
3D world "art" is considered "PAINTED",
hand-painted, hand-shaded..Not some fuzzy, pixely, over-patterned,
copy-pasted "design". That does NOT mean you
cannot have it as a reference, but the more hand-painted
and hand-drawn the outfit (blouse / dress / pants) the
better.
Putting together a whole outfit:
Just because you want to add some small accessories
to your outfit you made, do not add recklessly build
jewelry or shoes bought form KIT with just changed color,
disattached prims and bad pattern.
Do not over pattern your dresses. Having a "cool"
texture and just applying it to the Dress panel does
not work quite good all the time. You should add CUSTOM
shading - shadows / highlights to the prim (flexi) dress
texture. Be careful with ALPHA channels
(masks) on the flexi prim dress or Semi-Transparent
Clothing Textures, because when those panels overlap
you will get ugly transparent look ( the texture doesn't
show up on semi-transparent items under certain angles,
when another alpha-texture is underneath it).
As far as I know the solution is to set apart those
panels (not to touch each other).
Either buy a nice dress script - or a nice Dress (BLANK
DRESS) kit (read reviews before buying)
ADBOARDS / ADS/ ADVERTISING YOUR DESIGNS
Lighting of ad boards - one of the most important
things when you shoot your modeling pictures for advertising
is LIGHT. Second Life gives you the opportunity
to play with the Light on World > Environment Settings
> Environment Editor and Advanced Sky.
Type on boards - as a general rule, don't use more
than 3 colors for type in your ads. Use readable fonts.
Graphic Design is not an easy job and some people are
not born with a natural talent for it. With years and
experience someone can perfect in it (as it applies
for anything in life). Avoid Bevel, Emboss, crazy effects
on fonts and crazy colors :)
SKINS!!! of the models in your products. If you do
"fashions" be very careful what skin you present
your creations with.
Please, do not use freebie skins for the models
of your product. If you don't have a quality
skin, contact Rosablanka Allen to help (to get a free
skin from a designer of Fashion-R-Us you
MUST be accepted as Vendor in our group).
After photo shoot is done - Cutting out the Model and
placing in new image with different background.
First of all - when shooting in SL, in Snapshots - make
custom settings for taking pictures - above 2000. That
somehow helps the edges of the model later. Choose a
pure ONE color background behind your model, so you
can easily erase it later.
Also be careful when using RL photos of models, clothing
(and images you don't have the copyright) in your Adboards.
PRICING
Wisely choose between quality of your product vs needs
of the market when you decide your prices. Don't overload
the already packed market with poor quality.
If you really want to stand out - make something different!
The market ALREADY suffers from overload on "the
next amazing 2 part dress" or "another reseller
shoe".
AND FINAL TIPS AND ADVICE
Managing a store is not one day assignment.
Do not jump from location to location moving your store..
You will loose clients who will not follow up with your
new landmark.
It is also a bit annoying to overthrow your just-came
customer with personal messages, automatic note-card
givers and so on.
To be respected and taken for serious do not offer
freebies who were unsuccessfully attempts of a potential
"great design".
Well, more to come.... :)
Rosablanka Allen |
