Maxis Taste Weekly Dare 002: Freestyle make-over

[strangetomato]

If you haven't already checked it out, I recommend the maxis_taste community to anyone who shares the love of Maxis-made sims (I'm assuming that includes many of the people reading this journal). It's all about the Maxis-made sims and content that matches the Maxis style, which is right up my alley.

I decided to participate in the latest challenge (or "dare" as they are referred to in this community), which asks the participants to do a freestyle makeover of a pre-made sim (up to three), using any cc available to them. I chose Johnny and Jill Smith, since I've been wanting to make them over anyway. I did a little photo shoot, and here they are...

Here they are, enjoying the sun and sand (nice abs, Johnny!), but wait... there's something different about them.
 



I decided to make them over to be more genetically realistic. I'm not sure if this really fits the purpose of the challenge, but it didn't say we couldn't mess around with genetics. Either way, I've wanted to try this out for a while, so I did.

Jill hair is a little on the shiny side to be a Maxis match, I know, but that doesn't always bother me so much with hair. I really like this long flowing mesh to go with the beach look. (It would be cool to retexture it to be more Maxis-match... that could be another possible project.)




Here they are, fully clothed. They're fairly different from my other take on them in Strangetown, HWC, but I could still see them wearing something like this.

 Don't you love the scenery on Twikki Island? It's so beautiful.




This photo would be another nice addition to the wall in the Smith family den, don't you think?
 


Custom content used:

- Jack's alien eyes by pixel_and_bean
- lipstick and eyeliner by HystericalParoxysm
- eyeshadow by Lyran
- Johnny's hair by Maxis Dreams
- Jill's hair by Nouk
- Johnny's outfit is from the EA Store
- Jill's dress is a recolour of an H&M dress by me
- Jill's bikini is by HystericalParoxysm

Comments

[ikichi.livejournal.com]

Verreh verreh nice! I could live with Johnny having green eyes if Jill had black, but it did bug me that neither got the red hair. (But then again, out of the 4 kids PdC PT and Jenny had together, they're ALL pretty WTF and random looking. XD)

I would love to see Alien!Jill next to Jenny, since I've *just* noticed how alike they look as teens.

...Now I want to toss red hair on Jill to see how she looks with it.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that would make more sense. It would still be genetically impossible for Johnny to get the green eyes, but he just wouldn't be the same with the alien eyes for me. I love when alien-skinned sims get normal eyes, as well as the opposite.

PdC is a custom neighbourhood of your's, right? Is it based on Strangetown? (Yeah, I missed the whole memo on that, so I have no idea what it's all about.) Did you breed Jenny and PT? Those kids don't match up with Jill and Johnny very well, in my experience. Well, maybe Jill, but the odds are low. PT's genes seem to dominate. If I had my time back, I would have tinkered with the dominant traits in SimPE to favour Jenny. It would make things more consistent.

Yeah, Jill and Jenny are basically clones, I think. I haven't analyzed them in CAS, but it seems to be the case.

I'll bet she looks lovely with red hair too.

[ikichi.livejournal.com]

Yea, it's Strangetown based (mine got corrupted early on, so I moved the whole Curious clan (with kids) and some others in). You seriously haven't missed much. :D Their youngest daughter is that lovely "WTF?!" genetic issue that I think got fixed with a later ep. (She's pretty much a girl version of Pixel's Agent Smith, and I copied her to get her "twin brother"- just gave him k2 and a little bit more nose). Skin aside, they totally favor PT.

Is it really impossible for Johnny to get the green eyes? Don't some abduction kids end up with human eyes? (I changed all the half-aliens so they'd have the "right" recessives and Lola's kid has the green eyes, too. I haven't breed any of the others yet. I'm so tempted to give Johnny another kid just so to see if it'll be green).

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Okay, I see. I knew you were using Strangetown sims, but I had no idea about the backstory. Where are they located now?

You have one of those children with the pre-Nightlife Strangetown genes? It's so funny to see Jenny and PT have a child with the darkest skintone. That makes no sense at all.

Here's the genetic deal with eyes in the game (I'm such a nerd about this stuff)...

The dark blue and brown are dominant, and they're the only eye colours that can go head to head with the alien eyes (also dominant, but not any more dominant than those two). If the human sim has brown or dark blue eyes, and no recessives, then the half-alien children have a 50/50 chance of getting the dark blue or brown eyes. If they have recessives, the alien eyes have more of a 3/4 chance of winning out.

Light blue, grey and green eyes are all recessive, so they will never show over the alien eyes. The only chance for green skin and one of these colours would be if the sim with alien eyes had a recessive eye in one of those colours too (and thus it would never happen from a PT). A half alien could have a child with green skin and any eye colour, if they have recessive genes, though.

I hope that made sense.

[ikichi.livejournal.com]

Ah, ok. See, I would totally be a geek about this too if I had regular access to SimPE (someone needs to *finish* a Mac version. :(). In all honestly I'm super nervous about the changes I made because if I really screwed something up I'd have no way to fix it. Again.

In the story they hadn't moved, I just dropped them in a new town called Padres del Cielo. Still working in sims from other hoods, but the only one who's had any screen time so far is Brandi Broke.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

I actually picked that up without any help from SimPE - it was pieced together from things I've read and just experimenting with breeding. SimPE does make it easy to see what recessives and such you're dealing with, though. It sucks that they don't have it for Mac.

Okay, so it's like a sort of alternate reality version, like Peculiar? That's interesting. Where does the name Padres del Cielo come from?

[ikichi.livejournal.com]

Pretty much. The name came from Babelfish. #^__^# This is a town with historically high alien interest, so I wanted the name to reflect that. (It's supposed to mean "Sky Fathers" and I haven't been corrected yet. ::crosses fingers::) I had a few names picked out and grabbed the least awful translation.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

"Sky Fathers" is very cool. It think it's a great name.