To build your own GC furniture you use the same program as you use to design your own GC Clothes - LiveSwif. If you have already downloaded and installed LiveSwif you can ignore the instructions below in pink and carry on with the rest of the tutorial!

LiveSwif Lite is a free to use program and if you don't already have a copy that you use for designing GC clothes. you can download it here .

If you cannot connect to the server listed above, you can download the LiveSwif Lite software by right-clicking on here and choose 'Save Target As..' Save the file somewhere you'll remember.

To build your furniture you will need our file 'Furniture.lmv' containing the background of the GC room to draw on top of. You can download that by right-clicking here and choose 'Save Target As..' Save the file somewhere you'll remember.

Some of you may already have used LiveSwif Lite to create clothes and accessories for Girland City, following the tutorial here, and that's probably the best way to start as creating the furniture can be a little more complicated. Follow the Step by Step tutorial on that page to create some clothes (even if you don't upload them and use them in GC!) so that you get the hang of the tools of LiveSwif Lite. Once you're happy with your progress, return here and start making your furniture!

Introduction to the Furniture.

There are 5 types of furniture object you can create:

Base Furniture
These are objects that can act as a 'base' for other objects, so they are objects that things can stand on top of - for example, a table would be a base object as you could put lamps, vases, books on top of it. You can stand both base objects and decoration objects on top of a base object. So in your GC room you could have a table (base object) on top of which is a pile of books (base object) on top of which is a Teddy Bear (decoration object). Characters will also be able to stand on base objects - you could have a stage (base object) in your room, with a microphone (decoration obejct) and have a karaoke competition!
Decoration Objects
These items stand on top of a base object or on the floor, but can't have other things standing on top of them. Examples of decoration objects would be a vase of flowers, a standing lamp, candles, an award trophy etc. It's really up to you whether you decide to make your object a decoration or a base object. If you want to stand things on top of it at some point in the future - make it a base object. If it will never have anything standing on top of it, make it a decoration object.
Wall Decorations
These are objects that will cling to the wall - things like pictures, wall lights, doors, windows etc. You can even 'paper' your walls this way. Other objects can't stand on top of wall objects, and they are flat so everything appears in front of them in your room.
Rugs and Carpets
Things like rugs, carpets, tiles and wooden floors are flat and stay on the floor and GC characters walk on top of them. You can also put other objects (base and decoration) on top of them.
Static Furniture
These are clickable items that you must have in your room - the wardrobe, the doors, the fridge etc. They stay in the same position as the current wardobe and fridge etc, but you can draw anything to do the same function, so you could have a statue as a wardrobe, or an umbrella stand instead of a fridge if that's what you wanted!

There are 5 tutorials, one for each type of object, and it's best if you go through them in order, even if you don't upload the items and buy them in GC because each one builds on the lessons learned in the previous tutorial.
Base Object Tutorial
Decoration Object Tutorial
Wall Object Tutorial
Carpets and Rugs Tutorial
Static Object Tutorial

Troubleshooting
Sometimes there are problems with objects when you upload them and I can't stress enough how important it is to check your objects thoroughly before you click the buy button! When you test your objects in the closet remember to zoom out and move around in the room - sometimes colour leaks don't show up unless you are zoomed out and moving.
The three most common problems and their solutions are listed below:

1) If your item seems to have big chunks of colour missing, or there are lines of colour streaking across the room in GC, that means that a line isn't joined up properly, so delete your item and go back to your liveswif file to find the line that isn't joined up.
You can get an indication of which part of your drawing has the leak as the colour will be streaking in that position. In your .lmv file, move the parts of your object in that area across so they are on their own and you can see them properly. If you have removed the lines on them, put a line back on while you check them by selecting the part with the arrow tool and changing the 'line' property along the bottom of the screen to be 1 instead of 0. You can change the colour of the line with the colour selector if it makes it easier to see. Now choose the curve tool so that you can see all of the points on the object - zoom in quite a lot so you can see if there is a gap in the anywhere. Sometimes it's easier to see gaps if you remove the fill on the part. You can do this by clicking and holding the fill tool until the menu pops out and then choose the 'Remove Fill' option (it looks like a no entry sign). With the part selected, click on the fill with the Remove Fill tool (it sometimes takes a couple of clicks until the fill goes)

If you suspect there might be a gap, click and drag on the point to check - if your line on both sides of the point move with the point then that one is ok and properly joined. Check all of your suspect parts in this way until you find the leak or leaks and then re-assemble your object by filling the parts with colour, removing the lines again if necessary and moving the parts back onto the object. Then export, upload and test again.

2)If your character gets smaller when you move around with the new object in the room, it means that there is a tiny invisible square that liveswif occasionally puts into the sprite without you knowing. To get rid of it, open your liveswif file and go into Sprite 2. Use the arrow tool to drag a square around the top left corner of the stage and a small square will be highlighted. Press delete to get rid of it. If it is a base object, do the same check on all of the sprites in case the square has been added in any of them.

3)Positioning problems. For some objects, depending on the shape it can be hard to find the right place to click to position them. Each type of object has it's own method for getting the positioning right. Please read the instructions at the bottom of the relevant page:

Base Object
Decoration Object
Wall Object
Carpets and Rugs
Static Object

Please make sure you have read and understood the whole page, particularly the 'Troubleshooting' part before you 'Buy' an item