Re: Real Shoes and fun with shoe templates
No real drawing skill. I grab side views of shoes from Zappos.com and a bunch of other shoe sites, rotate them, make the backgrounds transparent, shift bits around using layers in Paint.net so they fit the shoe template... and that's it. Oh, and I outline the shoes and sharpen the interiors with a little line drawing. Takes 10 to 30 min per shoe.
Last thing I do is borrow from others on the site to make the screenshots look good. You may recognize the yoga pants paired with the gym shoes. Thanks for making them, Ison!
The other stuff like the bathtub takes longer, much of it time spent searching the internet for the right "container", a bunch of cleanup, and then the frustrating process of trial and error in Flash getting it sized right.
I guess this is my long-winded way of encouraging everyone to give mod-making a try.