Archive for the ‘pet projects’ Category

Some good and somewhat unexpected additions to the maid dress today:

• Fixed the front of the skirt, it separates from the legs a bit more now.
• Finished up the corset lacing, the bow specifically.
• I’ve redone all the pleats and trims to be more consistent, with some variations too and made sure they all fold with the right side out.
• Built a bib for the tea apron, it looks pretty good, but it doesn’t work well combined with the tie at the moment.

Those black trims on the apron are just great.

Steady progress on the maid dress over the past two days, I’ve redone the back of the corset once more, tightened it and made all the trims a bit more even. I also got in a few attempts at making the tea apron which I think really “ties” the outfit together (no put intended).

I did try a 4-hook version of the corset, but 3 appears to be plenty.

I might just reuse the lace knot I made a long time ago for the corseted suit because I had another look at it, and I’m not re-making one of these from scratch, absolutely not.

The skirt needs a bit of reshaping in the front in order to move it away from the body and legs, a lot of parts still need to be creased up, and the apron is going to need a nice fancy bow…

Debating on whether I should start on the alternate pieces (sleeves, bib apron, a longer skirt?) after I’m done with this variant or if I should get onto the low-polygon model and discover whatever problems this outfit may have, right away.

Back to work on the latex maid dress.

I had an attempt at trying to get fuller folds in the skirt until I eventually realized that what I was trying to do didn’t look that good. Sometimes the first attempt is the best one you’ll get I suppose.

Shape wise, the skirt still need some tweaking and, maybe more volume? I’m always a bit wary with skirts, they tend to clip through the legs or the butt really easily if I don’t give them enough room, and this one is short enough that I’d rather not end up hiding the body under it, if I can.

I’ve added the rear zip, nothing really special there, it looks just like the front one.

The corset is in a very good place at this point, I’ve refined it a lot and added boning, edge piping, paneling and a first attempt at lacing it. I don’t really want to have fully modeled laces, and with those flat ones, I might be able to get away with a normal-mapped flat polygon strip. I’m not 100% sure there. There is also enough space on the front to have two corset bones really, it looks a bit bare compared to the backside.

Next step is going to be the apron I assume, before tying up the corset, I need to check how the apron’s is going to fill the space.

With all the detailing on the sleeves, corset and skirt, the top is starting to look a bit bare. I’ve added a decorative groove into the tie, I still want it to be a little leather “strap” but it doesn’t look quite like that yet.

I’m calling this a pseudo-update, because I still don’t know if this is going to be relevant to SL at all.

Without going into details, one of my relatives has been hospitalized this weekend, and It is unlikely that they will walk out of it. As a result I’ve been occupying my head with random projects, and for some reason, I couldn’t really get my head into the latex maid uniform project.

There is a couple of other things I don’t feel comfortable to show for now, but well… this is today’s update. I want to get back into the swing of things… but at least it is still modeling, right?

I’m hoping things will improve, but they won’t. So all I can hope is to get over it quickly… or at least enough to focus.

I’ve done more work on the latex maid uniform’s corset and built a fairly decent-looking skirt (on accident, really), I will most likely redo it as it doesn’t look quite right to me… That being said, it helps me to shape the bottom of the corset for the time being.

The corset itself need a few more boning channels, the front of it looks somewhat okay to me, the back? Not so much. It is definitely better than earlier now that I’ve opened it and started shaping the lacing area, something is still a bit off. I had to spend most of the day outside, commuting between appointments, so this is yesterday’s productivity urge.

I also got distracted with a bit of a side project (last picture), I’ll let you ponder on that one and say no more. Some of you might get the reference, but then again, maybe not.

Good start for the week, the corset is actually taking shape!

I also did some tweaking on the chest to accommodate the bikini top (so that it won’t clip through) and added the front zip & zipper pulls. I’ve started fleshing out the corset, but I’m trying to keep it to a minimum for now, because the shape is not 100% final.

So far so good, nice and tight.

I finally managed to get the short sleeves in a state where I’m actually somewhat happy about them.

That’s a sleepless night of sculpting that I’m not getting back, but that’s ok.

I’ve also quickly added some non-final seams to the body, just to get things looking a bit better (the body will get its own sculpting pass once I have more details in).

Now that this (big) hurdle is out of the way, I guess the next step will be to get the corset/waist cincher in place and the skirt of the dress.

The sleeves… I was dreading this part, and I was right. It has been a bit of a pain so far. I’ve included various iterations, the “smooth” ones are a bit of a template for the next versions, kind of a rough “idea” of what those would look like if stuffed with cotton, just to get the volume right.

The next phase, which took a bunch of attempts was to make a version with those little pleats on the edge where the sleeves are glued into the body and into the cuff. That’s the step that took the longest so far, it is horrible, and I hate it. It is a flat sheet with all the pleated edges on it that is wrapped into a cylinder and then shaped in place with a lattice cage. I hate it, but it does the job.

I’m trying to get it as close to where I’d like it to be before I get into the sculpting. Mainly because I’m not very good at it (at all) so the more I can do beforehand, the less I’ll randomly stumble in the dark.

I need more practice, that’s for sure.

Oh yeah, one last thing. Someone was asking if it could be made lock-able like the Hired Help Uniform, so I quickly added a hypothetical lock point 🙂

A promising first modeling draft… and also more reference/sketches.

I realized that I hadn’t tried to put long sleeves on it, I’m very fond of the loose cuff variant, it looks very cute and comfortable. The closed cuff variant is more “formal” I suppose, if you can consider latex formal.

I haven’t made this “type” of model in a really long time, and that’s one of the reasons why I’ve been procrastinating so much about it. There is nothing I hate more than trying to get something right, over and over, only to end up trashing it all up because I’m not satisfied.

But this? So far I’m pretty satisfied.

The next step is either going to be the short sleeves, or starting on the waist & the corset that goes there.

I added a picture of the back, but there isn’t much going on there. Maybe that’s something I should fix at some point.

I wish I had something better to show for the new latex maid project, but this is all I have done since Monday: iterating on simple “sketch” references.

It is loosely based on the latex creations from “Studio C2“, which I am linking here to make it easier to understand what I am actually aiming to produce.

I have a lot of ideas as far as options I want to incorporate, and I really am not sure that I can do it all:

• Corset at the waist, to add more details and slim the waist like I did on the Regina suit.
• Removable dress collar (to accommodate for posture collars and other options).
• Zip front design with an open-able “slit” at chest level.
• Ability to also zip open the skirt in front (and maybe the back too?).
• Short & long sleeve option. (earlier sketches have oversized sleeves, that’s a mistake not intentional)
• BDSM-style ring & “tie” to gently pull the wearer around.
• Removable tea apron (possibly a full apron option too).
• Box pleats… lots.

Ambitious… and that’s probably why I’m dragging my feet instead of getting straight into the modeling…