Strangetown extras: Grunt Family Portrait

[strangetomato]

So, I finally decided to try my hand at making a custom painting with SimPE, and the process was super easy. I'll definitely be making more of these to customize the artwork in my story. More specifically, I'm going to decorate homes with photos of the characters in my story whenever appropriate. This will include family portraits, wedding portraits, and so on. I'd really like to recolour that cluster of smaller frames with random snapshots (but I don't recall seeing that template in SimPE. I'll have to look into how I'd go about doing that.)

My first first project was, predictably, a Grunt family portrait. I wanted to have the boys discover this stashed away with the General's belongings. It would be something he put away after Lyla left, since he couldn't bear to be reminded of her. I have no idea when this might turn up in the story, so I decided to just share it right away.

Ripp: Wow. I haven't seen this in forever!

Buck: I found it with Dad's things.

Tank: We're all so happy looking.




I've never made a group of sims view art at the same time before. They have a conversation, just like they do while eating or watching TV. The boys all stood around and discussed having 5 best friends (how appropriate!), and maxing out a skill, while they thought about the portrait.




The general behavior was mostly positive, especially from Ripp, and they made some of those puzzled expressions like the one that Buck has in this shot.

And what was their final reaction?




 

It's enough to just break your heart. They were all really sad about it.




Here's a better look at the source material. I posed them as if they went to a portrait studio. (I guess Buzz must have chosen the background colour.)

The photo is a little blurry when you get really close to it in-game, so I'm going to see if there's a way to improve it, but this might be as good as it gets with a .jpg file from the in-game camera. It will work just fine for story purposes as it is, so I'm not too concerned.

Pretty cool, don't you think?





ETA: I followed this tutorial from MTS2 to make the custom painting.

Comments

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

I also like that fact that the Maxis paintings come in different sizes and *gasp* formats (I get so sick of that upright portrait canvas on the easel). I love the square format of the Bella painting. And they have FRAMES too! Detailed frames.

Hmmm, I wonder why that is? Has the glitch been around since Nightlife? You'd think that someone would care enough about art to make a fix for it.

[madame-ugly.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the different size thing would be nice (and the frame). I think I read that FT has frames for paintings (or something like that, don't quote me on that, though).

I think the sunset glitch (man, those two words go so good together) has been around since Nightlife. I think part of it might be that the game doesn't really save a the picture you paint. So when you tuck it into inventory (or, I thinkt his happened to me, you install a new EP) it resets it. When it resets, it doesn't have a pic to use, so it uses the sunset.

When pets introduced the custom paintings, I did an experiment and (if memory serves) the custom ones survived being put into inventory. BUT, just recently, I had one of Loki Beaker's custom paintings go sunset. So I don't know.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Free Time does have frames, from what I've seen, but they are all the same width, and just come in different colours. They're all just plain and straight too, and some of the frames on the buyable paintings are nice and ornate (and they are all different).

It's just sketchy to put things in the inventory at all, I think. I lost a headstone that way too (from the Goths - I was attempting to move them to another lot). I'll think twice before I move a painting that way (and I'll double check before installing a new EP).

Saying that the painting "went sunset" sounds so epic.