Home again, and a storytelling question.

[strangetomato]

I'm back from my holidays. Did I miss anything exciting in the sims community? Any juicy gossip or amazing cc I should check out? I've already been catching up on the GoS Xmas in July posts—Wow! So much awesome. If there's anything you'd like me to check out from the past little while, please do tell.

I've been grappling with my next story update again. I loaded up a lot I've been working on, a scene in Faerie using that lot with the grain silo/tower in the field, but I got discouraged when half the plant cc I had placed was showing up as basegame replacement objects. I guess I'll need to relocate an older downloads folder with more plants in it until I finish that chapter. While I'm at it, does anyone have any other faery forest appropriate cc they'd like to recommend?

I'm finding I really don't have any patience for building sets anymore. The writing side of it seems to be coming back to me, but working with the game to make the scenes is harder. In my last short story, I avoided it altogether by going more abstract with them and taking the background entirely out, but I can't do that for the story proper. It's strange. I really want to work on the story, but the idea of setting up the images is just exhausting right now. Has anyone else gone through spells like that? Any tips?

Comments

[skellington7d.livejournal.com]

Welcome home! Not much gossip other than that the secrets have been really wanky lately.

As for CC, this is shameless self-promotion, but I made some Servo eye defaults that I'm very proud of: http://skellington7d.livejournal.com/29530.html

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I took a look at the secrets. Ehh... twas ever thus. The sims comm has always been pretty catty that way, and it doesn't surprise me at all that you've become targeted, being so popular.

(As a sidenote, I sort of hate the term "wank" for this sort of thing on the internet. Sometimes it's wanky, but sometimes there actually are intelligent discussions happening. I don't like seeing the discussion around gender being framed as wank upfront. It sets the tone for what comes out of it.)

Very cool! I'll probably try that out later. This is the first I've realised that Servos all have the same eye colour. I thought Sugar Tits took her dark blue eyes from Ripp, and all Servos received their initializer's eyes. That would have been cooler.

No tips on posing/decorating fatigue? I'm not surprised, because you seem to thrive on it. ^_^ I wish I could borrow some of your energy.

[skellington7d.livejournal.com]

Heh, I just ran into posing fatigue trying to shoot my last picture for my chapter. Servos do not fit in coffins very well! When I get bored of posing, I'll craft entire scenes using only the NL socials and the BV confused hula dancing. Those run through so many facial expressions that you can use them for anything.

As for decorating, I'll either be really really inspired and spend all day cluttering it up, or I'll be completely uninterested in the setting and throw up a blank wall, curtain, or hedge or something.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Haha! I'll have to check those out. I have a couple of favourite poses for certain situations, which I tend to fall back on when I'm lazy (the "scold pets" reaction comes to mind). Then again, I also tend to not pose at all a lot of the time. The more I can get away with natural in-game interactions, the better. I'm especially fond of just adding a facial expression with a posebox and then letting the sims interact through talking or whatever. It really changes the feel of those interactions.

I have a pretty challenging pose coming up, involving a hot air balloon. Maybe I'll even start there, since it'll be interesting. I think I'll need to build platforms to hoist the OMSPs up to the level of the floating balloon.

I hear ya. Too bad I haven't felt really inspired in quite some time. Looks like I'll be needing lots of walls, curtains, and hedges! :P

[skellington7d.livejournal.com]

Do you have decorgal's facial expressions checked as "immediately" in Sim Pe? That way you can change them in mid-animation, without having to stop whatever a Sim is doing.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Oh, really? That's convenient. I should figure out how to do that in SimPE. Is it very self-evident or should I find a tutorial somewhere?

If you snap reset the sim while doing this, do they still come out of the animation, too? I'm guessing yes, but it'd be awesome if they didn't.

[skellington7d.livejournal.com]

Snap reset doesn't work because that's basically just deleting a Sim and bringing them back, but you can enable all the "stop action" options.

It's the same method that allows you to enable the options for children. Open the box in Sim PE and go to "pie menu functions" on the resource tree. You'll get a list of all the menu options for the box and a bunch of checkmarks. Check "immediately" on all the options you want (and "children" if you want those) You can do this with any non-queued posebox, though the children will float in the full body poses for adults (the leg/arm/head/face posers work fine though) You can also enable Jaydee's animation boxes for kids, but the "immediately" thing doesn't work for queues.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Thank you for that! I'll see if I can work this out for myself in SimPE. These certainly sound like very useful options.

[skellington7d.livejournal.com]

I should also mention this way you can change their expressions when they're cuddling (which doesn't work if you try and set it before they go into cuddle mode.)

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Oooooh! That's exciting. My interest is something increases tenfold if it can be used in romantic or sexy scenes.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

That's a good idea. I've already decorated the lot that the Summerdreams live on, so maybe I could do my shooting there first. At this point, it seems like doing anything at all would help, just to get me started again. As it is, I feel like I need to relearn all the poseboxes and such.

So for organization, you create folders before you begin? Am I following that correctly? I've never created folders of my own before, but this sounds like it might be a good idea. Though I'm not sure I see how it would save any time. Wouldn't browsing the catalogue beforehand be the same as doing it while decorating? Or does this just make things easier to find once you're in the thick of it?

Thanks for the input! :)

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Ah, I see. Very interesting, and thank you for explaining that. I think it'd be a great idea to create folders of items for particular characters, even. Items that one would expect to find if they were present in a location, for example. That would work well for my Faerie decoration woes, I think. I could also make one for witch-related stuff, or stuff for various age groups. *ideas percolating* Thanks for the tips!

Oh, man. It's not just you. There are certain items that I hardly ever use because I just have way too much trouble tracking them down that way. It's one of the reasons I do use the Maxis folder categories a lot. It's easier to find something if I know which EP it came with, for example.

[meetme2theriver.livejournal.com]

I actually recategorize various clutter so it's not all in the deco section, because it drives me insane. Ingame stuff and CC alike. So all kitchen related clutter goes in Appliances/Misc, all bathroom stuff in Plumbing/Misc, all hobby stuff in the various hobby categories, like books in 'Knowledge' and sports stuff in the Exercise tab and whatnot. And every single "hacky" object/tool goes in misc/misc. Nothing that I could plausibly put in a living room, museum or hallway gets to stay in 'sculpture', and nothing that's not an actual poster, painting or decorative wall-hanging type thing goes in 'paintings'. The deco/misc section gets all the weird stuff, like rocks or cars or table cloths and so on.

*is totally not on a CC-organizing spree yet again, or anything*

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Is there any chance I can hire you to organize my cc for me? I'm always so envious of how detailed you are with it.

Then again, if I were to move all the items to different categories, I'd probably take forever to re-learn the system, so I'm not sure it would make things any easier. :P

[meetme2theriver.livejournal.com]

Haha, depends on how much you pay. It's a total pain in the ass to do. (But worth it!)

It takes a little while to get used to, but now I can't do it any other way. In fact, I have a bunch of stuff I haven't organized yet, and I end up only using the stuff I've already organized, 'cause I don't think to look in sculptures for a cereal box anymore.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Well, if it's worth it, maybe I should go break my piggybank for your services. :P

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah those are good ones. I think I used them back when I did the Round Robin legacy, but don't have them in the game anymore. Thanks for reminding me about them!

That sounds like a fun way to generate ideas. :) For my uberhood, I'm trying to be especially careful about adding sims (in an attempt to keep it stable with all the sim breeding), so it's probably not going to work for me. Cool idea, though. I always enjoy hearing about other people's processes.

[xel-squirgle-ox.livejournal.com]

As skellington said, just a lot of wank has been happening in simsecrets... More than I've seen in quite some time.

Hm, Faerie you say? If you ever need any more elves (err, faeries) I might be able to help you with that. :P

Anyway, It's great to see that you've finally gotten your inspiration back! :D

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

You think? I thought it was about the same. Maybe there's just been a lull for a while, with the lower secret counts, and now it's up again. I remember there being some crazy drama in the past (remember all the medleymisty stuff, for example?), so I don't think it's anything new. :P

Ah, thanks for pointing those out to me! :D I'm really trying not to add too many sims to the uberhood, but these will be great for my legacy hood. And I could always use them in the version of Veronaville that I'm using as a set. I love all the new ear shapes! Did you base those off fantasyrogue's template?

Or half back, anyway. ^_^ I feel like I really WANT to get back into it, but another side of me just drags. It's hard to explain. I think about the story all the time lately, but when I sit down to work at the game I just feel like my head is full of bees, if that makes any sense at all. :P

Thanks for the support. It's nice to hear from you.

[xel-squirgle-ox.livejournal.com]

I think the last time I've seen this much wank within the community was I don't know... About a year or 2 ago? In any case, while I don't like the unnecessary drama I'm glad that the sims community still seems alive and well. I consider simsecret a barometer of some sort- calculating how lively the sims community has been during the week. For a while, it seemed kind of dead with less secrets and comments. I was afraid that the community as a whole would become a ghost town.

You're welcome! ^_^
And yeah, they're based off of 2 pointy-eared sims by Fantasyroge.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

That's very true. Lots of jealousy and bickering = a thriving sims community. XD It's sad, but very true.

You've done a great job on them. ^_^

[morkmork.livejournal.com]

This was pretty cool and easy to miss, if you don't read your flist back far enough.
http://sentate.livejournal.com/4050.html

And, sorry, no help with the posing. I'm just realizing how much a noob I am at it. I need to look up some good tutorials.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Oh, wow! Thank you for that. She's a real gem, isn't she? I haven't played Making Magic (yet), but I love this character, especially the way she'll try to get the Grim Reaper's autograph if he shows up on a lot.

I find the thing with posing is just how much time it takes to get anything that looks remotely like what you want. It's easier now with the ability to freeze sims and place them anywhere with OMSPs, but still a bit frustrating. It's why I'm not a very pose-heavy storyteller. I prefer to use straight up animations from the game in different contexts, but even that does take work and dedication. I feel so out of practice. :P