Fashion Research Institute's Shengri La

Avatar Apparel Design 101

This fast-paced course includes 20 hours of instruction and concludes with a virtual fashion show.  It covers 3 critical areas of avatar apparel: how to create a garment, how to develop a label/brand, and creating a virtual goods retail store experience.  The course includes class work and home work and follows an aggressive schedule successfully piloted with real life fashion design students.  Students have full creation privileges in the classroom as well as an assigned space for the duration of the class. Students receive tool kit resources as part of their tuition.

All texture work is expected to be accomplished off line as part of the homework assignments.  Extensive resources and documentation are provided in the classroom, and students have full access to the classroom during their course.  All work is graded and receives feedback from the instructor. Students will complete 3 outfits, develop an initial label concept, and complete an initial showroom/store design. They will show their work on a runway at the final class, using their avatars as models.

Tuition is $350/student/session.  Students must provide their own computer, internet connection, and image editing program(s) as well as have Second Life and Skype accounts. No academic discount is available.

About the instructor:

Shenlei Winkler (Shenlei Flasheart in SL) is a 30 year veteran of the fashion industry.  Her work spans both couture and mass market design and development for the real life apparel industry.  A successful designer, her lifetime sales of her real life apparel designs have now reached more than $70 million USD, with more than 25 million-dollar styles in her portfolio.  Her couture work has appeared extensively on stage and movie screen.  Winkler has also enjoyed success in Second Life, where she has designed fashion since 2005, with three popular brands including Prim & Proper (one of the top 400 Second Life earners in 2006), Flash & Trash, and Debutante. Her educational background includes three design degrees, including two from the prestigious Fashion Intitute of Technology.  Currently, she is the CEO and founder of the Fashion Research Institute which is focused on researching and developing virtualization technologies with particular emphasis for the apparel industry.  Her research areas include content licensing for virtual goods, virtualization of enterprise in immersive workspaces, OpenSim enterprise application development, and user immersion in virtual worlds.

Register for Avatar Apparel Design 101 for Fall 2009.

To see work from previous students, please see: http://blip.tv/file/2057206

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