Virtual Fashion Technology

I am working on the Intro to Second Life for Fashion Students audio/video series on my  Fashion CAD OpenCourseWare site that is now available to anyone for non-commercial use. The level I & II Basic Function Adobe series (TeacherTube, YouTube and BlipTV) videos have already (at this post) had about 23,000 views since I bagan uploading them last December. Educators are more then welcome to use these basic function videos as resources for Fashion Photoshop and Illustrator courses. My own students view the videos that I create directly from the college servers.

When I taught one week customized Adobe workshop for retailers the first two 8 hour days consisted of reviewing level I & II of Adobe Photoshop basic functions and Level I & II Illustrator basic functions. All designers come into a company with differing Adobe skills background and these basic function reviews got us all to the same level to address specialized skill building functions that a company requests.

This spring is the second time I am teaching the Intro to Second Life for Fashion Project as part of my FashionCAD class. This project is only for a 6-7 week portion of my 15 week FashionCAD course. In addition to many other projects involving skill building in Illustrator and Photoshop, students develop several garments in Virtual Fashion PRO. It s a jam packed highly accelerated course.

 Vodpod videos no longer available. from www.teachertube.com posted with vodpod

 My apologies for uploading the raw video of  the Buffalo State Island fashion Project by mistake and linking it here – I managed to get the edited version of the TeacherTube video uploaded and posted to this WordPress Blog with VodPod.

This video will provide you with a tour of the fashion project areas on the Buffalo State island in second Life. It starts out in front of the Research building and shows you how to copy or buy for $0L flexi skirts and use the video tutorials. Then you fly to the students work pier and can copy/or buy for $0L the Franimation Overider. There is an example of the student fashion vendor exhibit there as well as a new Jim Wheeling vendor for you to copy and/or buy for $0L. A student example of a Brand Logo board is also there. Then we fly to Poseball area and pose our avatar to position it for a Snapshot to disk. Next, we fly up to the Fashion Runway and wear the Franimation Overider and practice walk up and down the runway.

 Now it’s time to teleport over to the student fashion collection vendor exhibits from last springs Intro to Sl project. Then we walk over to the Sears Industry exhibit and dress our avatar in one of the garments. Now we visit three of the student fashion boutiques and wear some of the SL items and check out the same items in RL on the students ZAZZLE pages. The tour concludes by showing you how to operate the fashion project slide show in the big black box over the exhibit pier.

The goal for the Intro to SL project is to get acclimated to Second Life as quickly as possible and begin immediately creating fashion garments using the Appearance Menu, then they add their custom textures to flexiskirts [after they practice with the ones on the BS Island] and build simple prims to add to the fashion outfits they create. Students have already researched color palettes and developed a series of print and weave patterns for previous assignments. They can convert these previous assignments for uploading to SL.

Some of the assignments for this project are:

• Snapshot of fashion outfit created in Appearance
• Create and upload a T-Shirt using Robin Woods T-Shirt Tutorial
• Snapshot of T-shirt on posed Avatar
• Four complete fashion garments w/ snapshots Created in Appearance with a combination of flexi skirts and simple prims.
• One outfit w/snapshot using a portion of the outfit that was created using Robin Woods UV template.
• Posed mannequins w/ transparent backgrounds of all fashion garments uploaded to SL Presentation
• Presentation packages created and loaded with fashion outfits [all permissions opened]
• Fashion Vendor exhibit (Jim Wheelings SL Vendor) customized with your textures and loaded with Fashion Collection.
• Develop Fashion Brand Logo and Upload.
• Create image of entire SL fashion collection.
• Select music from Creative Commons and practice walking with animation overrider.
• Place fashion vendor exhibit in display area
• Create video of Fashion show.

After my first introduction to SL last spring students communicated on a feedback questionnaire that they really liked flying and making fashion in Second Life. They were not too crazy with the file organizational requirements. This is something as an instructor that I find very valuable for students, since organizational skills are critical for working professionally in groups once they are in the real working world. My belief is that one of the most important skills the fashion students gain from their SL experience is to learn to conceptualize, create and work together in a 3D virtual environment. The fashion product development and marketing worlds are moving swiftly towards multidimensional applications.

I have tried to set up my OpenCourseWare Website with a breakdown summary of the sequence we work on with the Intro to Second Life project. I use an ANGEL teaching site with the class and I post notes, communicate directly with students and post grades there. We meet in RL and SL and I do multiple demos during class. This semester I have tried to reduce the stress, increase the student skill levels and also reduce my need for repetition by creating a series of videos with audio for the projects I assign.

I use links to popular SL video tutorials for general Getting Started in Second Life introductory skills. For the specialized fashion skills we work on I have created a series of about twenty videos i uploaded to Teacher Tube. I plan to modify and update them this coming summer but I wanted to get them posted quickly to serve as an aid for others wanting to integrate a SL fashion Project into their classes. My students use video links to the servers at the college.  Here is the Link to my Intro to Fashion Stuff in Second Life Group page on Teacher Tube.

On my FashionCAD OpenCourseWare site I have posted a series of ten modules for Intro to Fashion in SL. I have placed the TeacherTube videos on the appropriate pages in addition to notes and assignments. The flexi skirts, textures, [112,110,25 on BS island in SL] animation overriders [92,13,23 on BS Island in SL] that are used on the video tutorials are all on the  Buffalo State Island in Second Life. Here is a link to a note I included explaining why I created the Intro to SL Fashion series. You are welcome to use the material on a non-commercial basis for yourself or your classes.

Adobe Photoshop Level One Introduction to Adobe Photoshop Basic Function series

Level Two: Photoshop Functions

Adobe Illustrator Level One: Introduction to Adobe Illustrator Functions

Level Two: Illustrator Functions

Practice Assignments: Level One Adobe PS & ILL Basic Functions

Introduction to Second Life for Fashion Students

SURL – BSC Fashion Student exhibit in SL