I’m so proud of myself. It’s very satisfying for me when things start to click in my head and come together. I still need lots of progress and I have a long ways to go, but I feel like I finally have my foot in the door with how all this works.

So here’s the sweater I made:

And yes, it’s mostly just a modification of part of the model’s body. The nice thing about that is I don’t have another layer of vertices under the shirt adding to the total count. I also won’t have to worry about cutting with this design either when I move her around.

It’s almost as if the person that created this model did so with the crafting of clothes in mind. I only had to separate her feet from the legs. Everything else was already in pieces – even the hands are their own object, which will make fashioning gloves easier.

The best part in all this is that everything will look like it fits and I won’t need to worry about not getting it “shrink wrapped” correctly.

Eventually I’d like to become skilled enough to make clothes without a template, like what I’ve seen people do on YouTube. For now though, I’m happy with my progress.

Which brings me to the other thing I’m happy about: my stage. Made entirely from scratch without a template, but plenty of tutorials on hand to guide me. I got my globe lights to change color with the music! Just a matter of getting the colors to look right now.

Unfortunately, this set up is hard on the 32bit version of Miku Miku Moving, so I’m going to assume that the same is true for Miku Miku Dance. I can load it up on the 64bit version of Miku Miku Moving and drop models in.

With this in mind, I’ve decided I’ll release this stage as interchangeable parts so that animators can use it to build their own stages. I think I’ll just build and release all my stages this way in the future.

The next thing on my learning agenda with crafting stages is to figure out how to make mirrored surfaces. I’m rather fond of Trackdancer’s mirrored floors in his stages – almost as much as I like the VMD Spectrum feature. The motion capture screen is pretty sweet too.

I don’t have a video ready yet to show off the stage. I’ve picked out 3 songs (and debating over a fourth) so far that are Halloween themed and I can’t decide which one I like best. I may end up just doing all of them. Would be cool if I can squeeze them all into one video – assuming that they’ll fit within the 15 minute limit.

The base model showing off the sweater I made is MissMMD, which can be downloaded over at DeviantArt here. There is a commercial license available to purchase for $15, but the deviant hasn’t had any account activity for almost a year. I did send the individual a private message expressing interest.

Unless I can reach a point where I’m making my own bases, buying a license is the only way I can even think about monetizing my videos. Not the music ones. Well, unless I want to purchase licenses for every damn song or use only CC0/Public Domain music. I’m just thinking about vlogs here.

Any way, that’s what I’ve been up to lately since the boys have been doing well for the most part. Need something to keep my brain occupied and busy.

Now on to finish dressing my base! What worries me most are the making of the shoes and hair at the moment, so I’ll save that for last.