Audrey Ermintrood

I have a few questions...

First of all, which free 3D program should I use? And would the easiest one do the job just as well as the most complex?
I read somewhere on here that using a sphere for the base and a torus for the foot would be a good way to start, though I'm not sure what to use for the heel?
And how would I go about making a mirrored duplicate of one shoe?

Also, If you can reccommend any good sculpty tutorials it would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks guys.

Compulsion

blender is great for doing sculpts, it has a sculpting mode which is very usefull for doing very curvy shapes like shoes. no need to mirror shoes anymore you can do it easily within second life itself. which shapes you use really depends on the style of the shoe you are making.

Sobriquet Kryakutnoy

There's really no right or wrong answer to *how* you should be building the shoes. Experiment with each of the primitive shapes available for sculpting (sphere, torus, cylinder, plane), get to know how each stitching type works on your maps. (I say to get to know this well, as it dictates where and how the seams on your maps will lie, which will likely be somewhat of an issue unless you are using an application to paint your textures directly onto your model.)

http://blog.machinimatrix.org/ has great tutorials on working with Blender to make sculpts.