Discussion: Plastic surgery for premades

[strangetomato]

I know that this tends to be a somewhat controversial topic for fans of premade sims, and I don't normally make adjustments to their faces (unless I had a good story reason for doing so, such as a character getting actual plastic surgery), but I'm considering making a couple of exceptions. Dora Ottomas is one of them.

I aged Dora back to adult for a project I'm working on and since I had her in Bodyshop, I thought I'd examine her wonky facial structure in more detail. I have no problem with Dora's "ugly" as such, but I do have a problem with the way her face is way shorter than the dimensions of the rest of the templates and thus does not line up properly, she has a super long neck, etc. My one rule for sim creation is never to shift the face or the eyes up or down (the mouth and nose can move a little, within reason), as this results in a sim with features that will not play nice in any genetic combination with other faces. The Ottomas family is a perfect example of this, as are some of the other latter day EP sims.

(From left to right: unaltered Dora as an adult, altered adult Dora, and Face Two)

The middle Dora is the one I've been working on, with her original face on the left and Face Two on the right for comparison.  I've shifted the features up and down until they line up roughly with Face Two (and thus all of the templates, with maybe the exception of shorter Face One). I also made some minor changes to the shape of her features, including minor adjustments to the eye depth (in an attempt to fix that deep shadow and the way the brow crashes through her eyes), and a slight softening of her jawline. I think her face makes more sense like this, but she still looks like Dora. What do you think? I was hoping to make it so she could correctly wear eye makeup without it getting all distorted, but somehow that still doesn't work. I'm not sure what they did to her eyes to prevent that, but they did a pretty thorough job of it.

I've considered a similar shift for an adult Faith Goodie, moving her face down a couple of notches to match Face One. She's another premade sim with a shorter than normal face. You can barely notice the change, but she doesn't have the swan neck or the lack of forehead.

What are your thoughts on sim surgery? Do you consider these sorts of adjustments acceptable? Feel free to share your thoughts below, but please keep your discussion with each other respectful. I know many simmers can get pretty passionate about this issue, so let's be mindful of that.

Comments

[needlecream.livejournal.com]

I think adjustments like yours are fine. They are not for making the sim look different, they are for making the sim more functional.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

In this case, I think it's more to do with aesthetics than function, because I won't actually be breeding her. It's more about the principle of the thing and how those faces don't really make functional sense in the game.

I'm sort of torn about doing it, so maybe I won't, but I do wish the game designers had considered this when they designed those sims.