Sunday, June 5, 2011

Victoria 4.2 plays "dress up and pretend." Uh, pretend to be what?!




Hi all -- just touching base today ... remember that splitting headache from yesterday? It grew. It still hasn't quit, so I'm going slooooowy. I was just passed by a snail in the fast lane, and three funerals processions overtook me this afternoon, while I was making best speed.

So here's Victoria 4.2, wearing a kind of corset and a hat, playing "dress up and pretend." Pretend to be what, is the question! She sure as heck isn't playing at being a fireman or an astronaut.

Incidentally, the "native" textures that ship with this costume are, uh, leather. It looks very menacing with the actual textures from the designer applied! I basically changed the leather for a nice fabric texture and then gave it a soft, gauzy, lacy look by adding an opacity map. All this gives the shots a nice, harmless "dress up and pretend" flavor, whereas the original textures are shiny black horsehide.

The corset style item is "Lace-Up Teddy" by Billy-T, which I bought a while a ago to do a commission job. The hat and hair come all of a piece, a prop called J-Lo Hair. Victoria 4.2 is wearing one of my characters (I call her Betty); and she's wearing the Jenna skinmap. I like the way the billowing drapes work in this, with a Bryce sky I did a long, long time ago. What makes the drapes so nice is the lace pattern opacity map.

And I hope to be back tomorrow, a bit more coherently, without the headache! Could have a lot to do with the weather, which has gone from blue skies and warm(ish) winds to dark, cold and bucketing down, today!

Jade, 5 June (think about this: six months from now, the Christmas tree will be up and there'll he a heap of parcels under it. Ye gods.)