Look! I made a creepy line-drawing of myself!
Isn’t it just the cutest thing you ever did see? Ok, maybe not… it’s kind of creepy lol.
I was inspired to make one of these after reading chapter 2 of the Colette Sewing Handbook, A Thoughtful Plan. It is suggested that you make your own croquis to aid with planning out future sewing projects.
This is not normally something I would use – garments look sooo different on a bunch of stylized croquis than they do on normal ol’ bodies, plus, I’m pretty ~aware~ of how my body looks – so I didn’t see much of a point. But now little mini-me’s are popping up all over the internet, and I’m a sheep at heart so I took some pictures and drew out my own. Mine has a little outfit (bathing suit?) because I feel a little creeped out at the idea of a nakey me floating around the internet.
The book suggests printing your picture & tracing around the lines to create the croquis – which is fabulous, but I don’t have a printer at home and I was a little skeeved at the idea of printing out a picture of my undie-clad body on the office printer (or at Kinko’s! Oh God!). Hence, the all-digital LT.
And guess what? The process was pretty easy, so I made a bunch of screen shots so I could share the tutorial with you 
And the best part is, you don’t have to have Photoshop I used GIMPshop, which is a FREE software that is very similar to Photoshop (except free). Yay!
First, you are going to want to take a picture of yourself – in something very form-fitting (like leggings or a tank) or just undies. My actual picture was taken in a tank top and undies, hence why I picked a different picture for the tutorial But you – you are going to want to wear something that shows your shape!
Some photo tips that I wish someone had pointed out to me:
- Stand in front of a plain (preferably light) backdrop. The less noise you need to edit out of the background, the better! This also makes it easier to see where you figure ends & where the wall (or whatever is behind you) begins.
- Make sure the camera is pointed straight at you, and not at an angle. My first croquis did not heed this warning, and as a result, she hashad very short legs (Had. I deleted her lol). Apparently I take my pictures at slightly MySpace-esque angle, which is great for outfit photos but not so great for croquis.
- Ensure that there is plenty of light & use a flash if necessary! It doesn’t matter if the picture is “blown out” or you are making a derp face – we are just dealing with the lines here, anyway.
Ok, so you’ve got your picture – tutorial time! These pictures are also located on my Flickr in their own set if you feel so inclined. Click through any picture to make it bigger if you need to!
I decided to use this clover picture as an example, saving y’all the pain of viewing an undies shot. You are all welcome. And again, I’m using GIMPshop. It’s free! And please note that I am by no means a professional when it comes to digital image manipulation – I just kind of hacked my way through until I came up with something suitable
(I know, it should be “Croqui” not “Croquis,” my bad. I did not realize until it was TOO LATE!
I made myself wear the Pastille dress:
In the future, I will be drawing the actual clothes with a pencil & a piece of paper. It is hard to adjust the lines of the garment in GIMP to correspond with the lines of my body.
At any rate, I’m excited about my new little friend
Now – go print out a million little images of yourself & draw up a new wardrobe! Yay!
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Tags: colette sewing handbook, croqui, tutorial
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I love your little mini-me… mini-you i mean
and the fact that it’s modest – how sweet ^_^
I was skeptical about making one as well, for the same reasons as you – I know my body and what looks good on it… but just for laughs and giggles I’m willing to try just about anything so perhaps I’ll be parading my own mini-me around soon! LOL
I was intrigued by this chapter, but never got around to doing anything. Thanks for the tutorial. Do you think it is or will be useful to you?
I think it will be useful – I can pair separates and see how they look on the croqui. And it will be nice to stick on my fabric board for a visual reference of what I want to sew up next!
Kudos to you! And thanks for the step by step process on some sweet free software. That’s what I’m taling about! I must admit the idea of a croquis is still kinda freaky. I’m not sure why but it just is for me… Shall give this a bash though!
Thanks for the tutorial! That’s what I always wanted to know!
What an interesting idea! Now how do you add the colette patterns to your croqui?
Thanks!
I just outlined it as before & copied+pasted it over the croqui. Obviously it doesn’t exactly mirror my shape (it’s just the line drawing) and I couldn’t figure out how to fix it, so in the future I am just going to print out my croqui and hand-draw everything on
This is so great, thanks for that tutorial!
I don’t think it’s creepy at all. Thank you for the tutorial!
Ok, so I am off to lock myself in a room, don the skin-tight clothing and try this myself…and then the fit of giggles (amidst the tears) will start…and they say a camera never lies…
For some reason I enjoy seeing everyone’s self images pop up in their sewing blogs recently. Hopefully that’s not too creepy. They just seem so fun and practical.
Thank you for putting this together!
There are so many mini-me’s appearing on loads of blogs, nice work ;o) Its really great that you shared a ‘how to’, because I’ve been tempted to try this, but didn’t actually know how to do it. Thanks!
Thanks so much for this tutorial! I’ve had the Colette book for several weeks now, but I’ve put off doing a croquis, because it seemed like too much trouble for questionable benefit. But the more I think about it, the more useful it seems. Your tutorial has inspired me.
I just casually flipped through that section of the book because I ate a little too much over the holidays. AND i just ate a cooking. Geez.
cookie*
The croquis I’ve seen have been pretty neat-looking, and your tutorial is great! The croquis still seem like busywork to me…. but now I love GIMPShop, I’ve been using the GIMP since my last laptop died and I can’t afford to buy Photoshop again, but GIMPshop looks less mind-boggling!
This is a really useful tutorial thanks! My boyfriend is pretty good on photoshop so i plan to rope him in when i make my croquis, but if he takes ages getting round to it i will definitely use this.
This is REALLY useful Lauren, thank you. I’m a plodding old dinosaur when it comes to both computers and manipulating photography – I thought I’d never be able to make a croqui. Now all I need to do is strip off and I have my very own! Hoorah. x
Great tutorial thanks! I’ve been waiting for the Christmas, um, bloating to go down before doing my own croqui… And how amazing would it be to make a whole little cardboard cut-out wardrobe of one’s makes to plan outfits on one’s own little self?!
Coo! This is super helpful Lauren, thank you. I’ve been waiting for someone to teach me gimp, but I think this will get me started. I’ve got so many ideas … Ill be able to try new hairdos, draw the effects of an exercise programme without having to lift a finger! What awesomeness!! Thank you
Thanks for the Photoshop tutorial! I don’t have access to a printer other than at work and it would just be too weird to print out my leotard/tights-clad body there.
Just thought I’d share if you ever plan on making another croquis (and, I think it is “croquis” and not “croqui”–it’s a French word that translates to “sketch”), there is an easier way to cut out your figure from a picture. It called using a layer mask. Here’s a tutorial: http://puteraaladin.blogspot.com/2008/08/tutorial-layer-mask-in-gimp-for.html
Creating a mask is kind of like making a selection, so once it’s created, you can select the area and paste it onto another layer and delete the original layer.
Thank you so much for the tutorial.
Love the tutorial! I’ve been struggling to make my own croquis. It’s the height (or angle?) of the camera that keeps getting me: my tracings always end up with really short legs and a really wide belly. The other attempt made my head look apple-sized. I know I have those traits, but jeez, not to that extent! Do you have any idea on how tall my camera tripod should be/what bit of me my photographer should be focusing on to get the ‘truest’ proportions? We’re hypothesizing that it should be eye level– what do you think?
I totally hear ya – I had the same problems with my first attempts at getting a good photo. I ended up setting my tripod height to about my belly button, made sure it was pointing straight ahead, and then backed waaaaay up to make sure I got my whole self in the picture
Hope that helps!
Ah, great! Glad to hear that someone else was having the same problem. I suspect that we weren’t backing up far enough, so I’ll try that next. Thank you so much!