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

[simgarooop.livejournal.com]

Awww! What an adorable portrait! And thanks for the link to the tutorial. Back when I played Sims 1, there was a lovely Maxis program that let me create all kind of paintings for my Sims houses. I remember making a TON of silly kiddie paintings and some watercolors. That's the closest I've been to a custom creator :P.

It's a pity they didn't release a similar program for the Sims 2.

I love the family portrait. True, they look so happy and "normal". Tank and Ripp even look like fraternal twins (same height and everything), although we know those two are completely different! And Lyla is beautiful!

I had to re-create her too, because when I lost Strangetown, I also lost Olive's ghosts at her graveyard. Like someone said above, I extracted them from a new Strangetown because I wanted to re-create them at CAS and kill them again, but for some odd reason they kept crashing my Bodyshop over and over, so I had to make my own versions in the end :S. I like how Ophelia's parents came out, but Lyla is a bit... odd (well, she's basically my gen 5 Lyla as a blonde with a few tweaks, so you could say she looks a lot like her grandma :P). Oh well ^^.

Their reactions are so in-character! I loved that part :).

I could almost swear they "read our minds" and do the stuff we expect them to do. I've had a couple things pop up during my legacy that just made so much sense! For example, when Helena graduated from College, during the party Calvin showed up (he was supposed to be "away" with the aliens) and left an expensive telescope as a present for her before sneaking away. It was too cute!

I'm looking forward to see more "paintings" like this one. They sure add to the story! :)

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

It's cool that Maxis included a progam like that for Sim 1. I wonder why they didn't do in for the sequel? It was pretty easy to make this in SimPE, so I'm sure you'd be able to get back into making artworks with it. You should give it a try. This is also probably the closest I will get to making custom content, but hey - it's still custom content for the game. Even if just your own game.

Thank you. I think that this is a nice way to make the homes seem more real, and to flesh out the backstories a little more too. I'm probably going to do a wedding portrait for Buzz and Lyla too, and maybe some baby pics for the boys, and then move on the Smiths, and some on. Now that I have a taste for it, I might go a bit crazy with it. :P

I find it funny how all sims are the same height, and since sim twins are always fraternal, Tank and Ripp really could be twins there. I was hoping that they might add height differences for Sim 3, but so far, it doesn't seem like they plan to. I can see how it would make programming interactions where the sims touch a lot more difficult, but the differences in size would affect that too. We'll have to wait and see, I guess.

I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with Ophelia in your legacy.

That story about Helena and Calvin and the telescope is so cute! It's like he gave her the telescope to keep an eye on him. They really do seem to know sometimes, don't they?