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stillonmystringOMG, I really want to see Rabbit Hole. Basically because, hello, John Cameron Mitchell is awesome but it just looks really good in general. It doesn't get a wide release until January, apparently, and I don't even know if it will make it all the way over here but I hope it does. Also, I need to watch Hedwig and the Angry Inch again sometime soon. "The Origin of Love" came up on shuffle the other day after I hadn't heard it for awhile and I had to listen to it three more times because, holy crap, so awesome. <3 <3 <3
Anyway, I feel like a massive dork because all I post about here lately is the Sims. But. It's a good thing to distract me when I'm feeling stressed out which I have been lately. Between finishing NaNo (I made it about 500 words past 50k. I could have gotten more but I didn't want to force it if I didn't have to and it wasn't coming very naturally anymore. I'm still nowhere near done with the story and I do intend to work on it more and hopefully finish it someday but I need to take a long break first.), trying to study and memorize math concepts that I haven't had to use in years (I'm taking the ACT next weekend which I should have done a long time ago but, alas, I didn't so I'm doing it now.) and hitting a bit of a plateau with my weight loss (I really need to stop eating so much crap but stress also makes me eat which sucks because eating too much makes me stressed too so it's an endless vicious cycle.), I've got a lot of stressful things I need to be distracted from. Just for a little while. So that I don't go completely crazy by trying to focus on them 24/7. Anyway. The point is, yes, I'm going to post about Sims again. And it's even lamer than usual. You were warned.
The other day, I was looking back through some of my old pictures and realized just how crappy they all look compared to my pictures now, both quality-wise and just the Sims themselves. I've really come a long way in terms of custom content selection and creating unique Sims. So, like the nerd I am, I decided to paste together some pictures from each era in Photoshop to chart my evolution. (How obvious is it that this is only something I thought of doing as a way to procrastinate when I should be doing more important things? I wouldn't do something so stupid otherwise.)
Then I remembered that I still have my old blog over on Blogspot where I first posted about the oldest families I still have pictures of (I had other Sims before then but if I took any pictures I long ago deleted them, along with whatever Sims 1 pictures I once had). So I headed over there to try and figure out around when I created them. As a slightly random aside, the first thing that kind of made me chuckle as I went back and skimmed through those old entries was one in which I went on about how amazing custom content was. Little did I know I would come to think every single piece of it I was using back then was total crap. The second thing that amused me was that I've been saying I'm going to attempt the Asylum Challenge since early 2007 and still have never done it.
Anyway, here are a couple of the oldest pictures I still possess. They aren't in nice, shiny collage form because, honestly, I forgot all about them until I read that old blog. But everything about these is terrible. Questionable custom content choices? Check. Awkward angles? Check. Dodgy quality because of horrible graphics card? Check. Even dodgier quality because of in-game camera use? Check. But the worst part is that these were supposed to be Sim versions of Jenny Lewis and Kianna from Tilly and the Wall whom neither of them bear absolutely any resemblance to. God, I'm embarrassed to even think about it. These Sims are from early November of 2007, by the way.
Then, a couple days later, I started the Cross family and actually the reason I gave for doing so was because, despite having the game for awhile by then, I had never turned aging on or even had a baby born in-game before. WTF?!? WHAT KIND OF SHELTERED SIMWORLD WAS I LIVING IN?!? Holy crap! Anyway, the only resemblance these old Sims bear to my new ones is that it seems I have always been overly fond of red hair and tons of freckles. Otherwise, I'd rather forget they even existed.
Then I apparently stopped playing by March. I didn't mention the game again until September '07 and it's with these two Sims who I also totally forgot about. I thought this first girl was the most gorgeous thing ever back in the day, BTW. I apparently was once a fan of huge doll eyes and frighteningly narrow faces. I still enjoy those things sometimes but I feel like I'm much better at creating them in a more realistic, less drastic way now.
Then, in December, we got a new computer and that's from around when my next set of Sims come from. The Sims in the pictures came from four different families - Blackwood, Reeves, Harvey, and Quinn - that were all interconnected in some way or another. If I would have known to use something besides the game camera these would probably look pretty close in qualityt hey were taken with the same graphics card (though maybe the game settings weren't as high as I have them now). Mostly, what's questionable here are my bland decorating skills (I'm still not very into creating/decorating Sim homes but at least I try to use interesting colors and patterns now to make for a more interesting backdrop) and also my crappy picture-taking skills. These four pictures actually aren't very indicative of this group as a whole. Most of them are a lot worse with sky showing at the tops of houses, walls down, plumbbobs everywhere, etc. Still, I loved most of these Sims and wish I still had them sometimes. I bet they'd look as amazing to me now as they did then with makeovers. But, sadly, I knew nothing of how to extract and package Sims for later use at that time.
Which was unfortunate because I ended up losing them all in a hard drive crash (which, apparently, I forgot until now even happened at all) and was so depressed over it that I didn't play at all for almost a year. Then, in November 2008, I started posting here and the first Sims I created that I actually cared enough about to photograph were the residents of Belladonna Cove. Yay, everyone (all... one of you?) knows what I'm talking about now! Hopefully. I can't believe it's been more than two years since then! At the same time, it also feels like ages ago that I played them. Does that make sense? Probably not. Anyway, as you may know, most of the Sims here were supposed to resemble the picture I had in my head of characters from my first (and only so far) completed novel, A Skeleton on Display. At the time, I thought they were all really good. Now I think they sucked. I'm working on remedying this. More on that at the bottom of the post. For now, here are the old ones. (Actually only the first of these pictures is of an actual character and the rest are Sims-specific creations. Also, there's a noticeable leap in quality from the first three to the fourth picture because I took a break of several months between them.)
Next of course came the Newbury legacy! I got bored of the above Sims and wanted to try a legacy because I'd actually never gotten past the childhood of the third generation in any family before. Whenever I look at pictures of the Newburys, I get all happy and nostalgic (well, as nostalgic as you can get over something that ended less than a year ago) and sometimes wish I had continued on with them. As far as the pictures go, there seems to be a distinct point in the legacy where a huge change abruptly took place. This happened around the middle of the seventh generation, I believe, and is still pretty much the way my pictures look now. You can see the change here from the top two pictures to the bottom two.
Then I went on a mad Sim-creating spree and ended up with so many that I attempted to use them to populate a whole new neighborhood which was called Ville de Coeurs even though I never liked that name much. I still miss them in their original incarnations dearly sometimes too but it's just too hard to keep up with that many Sims all at once! It's difficult for me to switch between multiple households on a schedule because I get so invested in playing one that I don't want to leave. I think that's why I eventually went back to the legacy style of play.
Which leads us to the Alphas, aka the present, finally! Obviously, I love them and the way their pictures look and they're quickly becoming some of my favorite Sims ever. But I think I feel like that with all of my Sims when I'm playing them, until I'm distracted by some new idea and then suddenly the results of that idea become my favorite Sims ever. Anyway, I haven't even actually got to posting the updates the bottom two pictures here come from. So consider them a preview of what's to come! Really, all they spoil is that kids grow up and they are predictably cute.
Oh, how far I have come, right? A better graphics card and computer can make a huge improvement but, really, it's amazing what some slight sharpening and brightening in Photoshop and more quality control when it comes to custom content can do too. Because my graphics have been roughly about the same throughout most of these transitions yet the newer pictures look so much more lively and colorful. It also helps that I now know which angles look good and which look ridiculous. And that I should never take a picture with the walls down or with the sky showing where the ceiling should be. It sounds weird but I think I can actually say that the Sims turned me into a decent photographer. Okay, not really, since it's much easier to press a button on your keyboard than line up the perfect shot with an actual camera but still. All of these hours wasted on pixel people hasn't been for nothing!
So, yes, there you have it, my Sims evolution. Anyway, about my plans to remake the Skeleton on Display characters mentioned above... I also talked about them briefly in an earlier entry. At that time, I only had Eliza done. Then I started working on Andy but stopped halfway through. That was several months ago. Recently, I finally managed to stumble across some custom clothes that are actually great quality and fit him perfectly (I had a hell of a time finding clothes that worked well for his character; I'm very picky about that kind of thing) which inspired me to finish him up. So now I have two of the five main characters done and I'm going to share them now because I have no clue when I will get around to doing the rest and I just love them so much I can't keep them to myself anymore! So here's Eliza first, both the old and new versions.
She is so cute now! She was always my least favorite of the originals because I didn't think she looked right at all. But I really like the way the second version turned out. It's much, much closer to how I see the character in my head.
And now, Andy, who I just completed last night. I once thought the old version of him looked totally awesome. Now, quite frankly, he scares me. His features are very weird and exaggerated. The new version looks much more like a real person.
I am honestly completely in love with him! So, here, have a few more pictures because I couldn't decide which I liked best.
"Sorry, dude, I don't hug dopplegangers."
Anyway, I think I'm going to put them into my current neighborhood as townies. And someday create the rest of the characters to go along with them. But I have to go now because this is way too much time spent talking about my Sims. Jesus. I feel extremely lame right now.
Anyway, I feel like a massive dork because all I post about here lately is the Sims. But. It's a good thing to distract me when I'm feeling stressed out which I have been lately. Between finishing NaNo (I made it about 500 words past 50k. I could have gotten more but I didn't want to force it if I didn't have to and it wasn't coming very naturally anymore. I'm still nowhere near done with the story and I do intend to work on it more and hopefully finish it someday but I need to take a long break first.), trying to study and memorize math concepts that I haven't had to use in years (I'm taking the ACT next weekend which I should have done a long time ago but, alas, I didn't so I'm doing it now.) and hitting a bit of a plateau with my weight loss (I really need to stop eating so much crap but stress also makes me eat which sucks because eating too much makes me stressed too so it's an endless vicious cycle.), I've got a lot of stressful things I need to be distracted from. Just for a little while. So that I don't go completely crazy by trying to focus on them 24/7. Anyway. The point is, yes, I'm going to post about Sims again. And it's even lamer than usual. You were warned.
The other day, I was looking back through some of my old pictures and realized just how crappy they all look compared to my pictures now, both quality-wise and just the Sims themselves. I've really come a long way in terms of custom content selection and creating unique Sims. So, like the nerd I am, I decided to paste together some pictures from each era in Photoshop to chart my evolution. (How obvious is it that this is only something I thought of doing as a way to procrastinate when I should be doing more important things? I wouldn't do something so stupid otherwise.)
Then I remembered that I still have my old blog over on Blogspot where I first posted about the oldest families I still have pictures of (I had other Sims before then but if I took any pictures I long ago deleted them, along with whatever Sims 1 pictures I once had). So I headed over there to try and figure out around when I created them. As a slightly random aside, the first thing that kind of made me chuckle as I went back and skimmed through those old entries was one in which I went on about how amazing custom content was. Little did I know I would come to think every single piece of it I was using back then was total crap. The second thing that amused me was that I've been saying I'm going to attempt the Asylum Challenge since early 2007 and still have never done it.
Anyway, here are a couple of the oldest pictures I still possess. They aren't in nice, shiny collage form because, honestly, I forgot all about them until I read that old blog. But everything about these is terrible. Questionable custom content choices? Check. Awkward angles? Check. Dodgy quality because of horrible graphics card? Check. Even dodgier quality because of in-game camera use? Check. But the worst part is that these were supposed to be Sim versions of Jenny Lewis and Kianna from Tilly and the Wall whom neither of them bear absolutely any resemblance to. God, I'm embarrassed to even think about it. These Sims are from early November of 2007, by the way.
Then, a couple days later, I started the Cross family and actually the reason I gave for doing so was because, despite having the game for awhile by then, I had never turned aging on or even had a baby born in-game before. WTF?!? WHAT KIND OF SHELTERED SIMWORLD WAS I LIVING IN?!? Holy crap! Anyway, the only resemblance these old Sims bear to my new ones is that it seems I have always been overly fond of red hair and tons of freckles. Otherwise, I'd rather forget they even existed.
Then I apparently stopped playing by March. I didn't mention the game again until September '07 and it's with these two Sims who I also totally forgot about. I thought this first girl was the most gorgeous thing ever back in the day, BTW. I apparently was once a fan of huge doll eyes and frighteningly narrow faces. I still enjoy those things sometimes but I feel like I'm much better at creating them in a more realistic, less drastic way now.
Then, in December, we got a new computer and that's from around when my next set of Sims come from. The Sims in the pictures came from four different families - Blackwood, Reeves, Harvey, and Quinn - that were all interconnected in some way or another. If I would have known to use something besides the game camera these would probably look pretty close in qualityt hey were taken with the same graphics card (though maybe the game settings weren't as high as I have them now). Mostly, what's questionable here are my bland decorating skills (I'm still not very into creating/decorating Sim homes but at least I try to use interesting colors and patterns now to make for a more interesting backdrop) and also my crappy picture-taking skills. These four pictures actually aren't very indicative of this group as a whole. Most of them are a lot worse with sky showing at the tops of houses, walls down, plumbbobs everywhere, etc. Still, I loved most of these Sims and wish I still had them sometimes. I bet they'd look as amazing to me now as they did then with makeovers. But, sadly, I knew nothing of how to extract and package Sims for later use at that time.
Which was unfortunate because I ended up losing them all in a hard drive crash (which, apparently, I forgot until now even happened at all) and was so depressed over it that I didn't play at all for almost a year. Then, in November 2008, I started posting here and the first Sims I created that I actually cared enough about to photograph were the residents of Belladonna Cove. Yay, everyone (all... one of you?) knows what I'm talking about now! Hopefully. I can't believe it's been more than two years since then! At the same time, it also feels like ages ago that I played them. Does that make sense? Probably not. Anyway, as you may know, most of the Sims here were supposed to resemble the picture I had in my head of characters from my first (and only so far) completed novel, A Skeleton on Display. At the time, I thought they were all really good. Now I think they sucked. I'm working on remedying this. More on that at the bottom of the post. For now, here are the old ones. (Actually only the first of these pictures is of an actual character and the rest are Sims-specific creations. Also, there's a noticeable leap in quality from the first three to the fourth picture because I took a break of several months between them.)
Next of course came the Newbury legacy! I got bored of the above Sims and wanted to try a legacy because I'd actually never gotten past the childhood of the third generation in any family before. Whenever I look at pictures of the Newburys, I get all happy and nostalgic (well, as nostalgic as you can get over something that ended less than a year ago) and sometimes wish I had continued on with them. As far as the pictures go, there seems to be a distinct point in the legacy where a huge change abruptly took place. This happened around the middle of the seventh generation, I believe, and is still pretty much the way my pictures look now. You can see the change here from the top two pictures to the bottom two.
Then I went on a mad Sim-creating spree and ended up with so many that I attempted to use them to populate a whole new neighborhood which was called Ville de Coeurs even though I never liked that name much. I still miss them in their original incarnations dearly sometimes too but it's just too hard to keep up with that many Sims all at once! It's difficult for me to switch between multiple households on a schedule because I get so invested in playing one that I don't want to leave. I think that's why I eventually went back to the legacy style of play.
Which leads us to the Alphas, aka the present, finally! Obviously, I love them and the way their pictures look and they're quickly becoming some of my favorite Sims ever. But I think I feel like that with all of my Sims when I'm playing them, until I'm distracted by some new idea and then suddenly the results of that idea become my favorite Sims ever. Anyway, I haven't even actually got to posting the updates the bottom two pictures here come from. So consider them a preview of what's to come! Really, all they spoil is that kids grow up and they are predictably cute.
Oh, how far I have come, right? A better graphics card and computer can make a huge improvement but, really, it's amazing what some slight sharpening and brightening in Photoshop and more quality control when it comes to custom content can do too. Because my graphics have been roughly about the same throughout most of these transitions yet the newer pictures look so much more lively and colorful. It also helps that I now know which angles look good and which look ridiculous. And that I should never take a picture with the walls down or with the sky showing where the ceiling should be. It sounds weird but I think I can actually say that the Sims turned me into a decent photographer. Okay, not really, since it's much easier to press a button on your keyboard than line up the perfect shot with an actual camera but still. All of these hours wasted on pixel people hasn't been for nothing!
So, yes, there you have it, my Sims evolution. Anyway, about my plans to remake the Skeleton on Display characters mentioned above... I also talked about them briefly in an earlier entry. At that time, I only had Eliza done. Then I started working on Andy but stopped halfway through. That was several months ago. Recently, I finally managed to stumble across some custom clothes that are actually great quality and fit him perfectly (I had a hell of a time finding clothes that worked well for his character; I'm very picky about that kind of thing) which inspired me to finish him up. So now I have two of the five main characters done and I'm going to share them now because I have no clue when I will get around to doing the rest and I just love them so much I can't keep them to myself anymore! So here's Eliza first, both the old and new versions.
She is so cute now! She was always my least favorite of the originals because I didn't think she looked right at all. But I really like the way the second version turned out. It's much, much closer to how I see the character in my head.
And now, Andy, who I just completed last night. I once thought the old version of him looked totally awesome. Now, quite frankly, he scares me. His features are very weird and exaggerated. The new version looks much more like a real person.
I am honestly completely in love with him! So, here, have a few more pictures because I couldn't decide which I liked best.
"Sorry, dude, I don't hug dopplegangers."
Anyway, I think I'm going to put them into my current neighborhood as townies. And someday create the rest of the characters to go along with them. But I have to go now because this is way too much time spent talking about my Sims. Jesus. I feel extremely lame right now.
