Prosperity Challenge: Llama Spit Cove photos

[strangetomato]

I'm just uploading photos to my scrapbook to test it out (since Photobucket doesn't seem to want to ever restore my pics), so here's a couple of cute little pics from Llama Spit Cove.







It's a new game called Don't Wake Your Sister.

(James and Alice Fisher)




Here's the awesome cuteness that is Garou Lamb.




They did WHAT?!

(James Davenport)




Scott Cole: I love you, Martha. Be my girlfriend....




Scott: Ummm, it's not you, it's me...

Marsha: I know. You cheated on me with Sandra Fisher.




It's not easy being green, says Scott.




I'll probably switch to hosting all my photos here on livejournal, though it'll take some getting used to. One of these days, I can see doing more with this hood too. Maybe when I build up a bit of a history there.




 

Comments

[ownsimscorner.livejournal.com]

Where is Scott`s hair from? He`s extremely cute.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

It's from Maxis Dreams. He is very cute, but that doesn't surprise me, since his father is a clone of Ripp and his pollinator is pretty cute too (can you tell who it was?).

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Yeah, me too. James is a pretty great dorky guy. He's sweet.

Heheh. Never... (I have two James in that hood, but the names were all randomly generated for the first generation.)

Yeah, he stole Kermits line. ;)

[dothesmustle.livejournal.com]

Martha = Marsha Bruenig, right? :D

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Heheh. Yup. You'll notice that I typed it as Martha once and Marsha the second time. Ooops.

[tanathir.livejournal.com]

Very cute! I love and envy your picture-taking talent - it shows a lot of caring for the characters and an artistic training. Woe if Photobucket doesn't restore your Strangetown pictures because they are awesome and I was about to re-read several chapters. The eyecandy of Ripp and sad little face of Frances alone are reason to read the story over and over.

I remember reading in your storytelling interview that you've done all kinds of visual art, and it shows. I've done pencil drawing, watercolor and acrylic, pottery, and various other art media too, as well as taking classes for writing, and it's so nice to see someone on the internet with that same training who knows how to apply it to a computer game. You could say you've inspired me. I'm working on an alien Sims story of my own now. <3

One last thought: is it not the cutest thing evar when alien Sims have those green freckles?!? You just want to squish them and pinch their pixellated cheeks!

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I try my best to take nice shots. I've got to use that art education for something, right? :P

It's funny you say that now, because it's my obsession with getting the "right" shots that makes the prosperity hood so tedious to play, if I want to make a story out of it. There are six families so far, and if I have to document everything it takes forever. I can't just snap a couple of shots, I have to get in there and frame them up, and it drives me crazy when I just want to play (and that's what this hood is for, really). I'm thinking I'll focus on mostly playing until a story rises up out of it and demands to be told, and then I can go back and use InSIM to re-shoot things that already happened. It's easier that way.

You were going to reread some chapters? :) I take that as such a compliment. Thank you.

I love how easy sim photography is compared to traditional photography. I get all the fun of setting up the shots, but none of the darkroom work, and also no worries about exposure and focus. It's great. Oh, and I have full control of the models too... pretty great. It's fun to use a video game as the media for creating something artistic. Art can take so many forms these days.

Oooh, an sim alien story? That sounds cool. It's always interesting when someone with some knowledge of sci-fi (unlike me *snicker*) does something with the aliens. Will it be the Maxis green aliens, or some creation of your own?

I love those freckles. :D I forget which ones those are specifically, but they're pretty dark and all on the nose. So cute.

[tanathir.livejournal.com]

I'm beginning to realize how frustrating getting the right picture can be. For now I'm more inclined to have a looser plot idea, then take pictures and flesh out the story as I play. For example, seeing Buzz Grunt play in the water wiggler. That's such a spontaneous moment I couldn't have planned into the story ahead of time.

:) It was totally meant as a huge compliment.

Setting up shots is irritating me. I 1. pause the game, 2. zoom in, 3. adjust the angle and hit Tab if necessary, then finally I can take the shot. Controlling the models is a huge advantage, but my Sims still tend to do things I don't want them to. Tank rolled a want to apologize to Ripp, and Buzz rolled fears of being furious with all three of the boys. Um, kind of essential to the story that they NOT have this perfect little family unit. Lots of player facepalming ensued. I never got into traditional photography but my dad has and based on what I've seen from him...yeah. Setting up a shot is the least fun.

Yeps, an alien Sims story! :D It started with this cute alien bus driver from another neighborhood, I mixed it with wanting to learn how to clone Sims in SimPE, and a story developed from that. It will be mostly Maxis-green aliens. I'm a huge sci-fi fan - Star Trek, Star Wars, etc., so this should be a labor of love. I really enjoy the supernatural aspects of the Sims game.

Once in a while a Sim is born in my game that demands to have freckles. I searched high and low for green freckles because it just wasn't fair that aliens don't get the cuteness too. I love my custom green freckles!

[muslemura.livejournal.com]

"Ripp" has the cutest kids <3 And Garou, he's "Ophelia"'s son, isn't he? Hmm...does he look a lot like his father, or am I wrong? :D

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

I know. :) That's why I'm loving this hood, so I can take out my Ripp-breeding desires without ruining my story. (Though old man Dick recently passed on... so sad.)



Garou is "Ophelia's", yes. Her name is Catherine Lamb. Garou seem to have gotten her eye shape and a little of her jaw width, but he looks a lot like Dick. I aged him up to see.

[muslemura.livejournal.com]

*resists urge to 'awwwwww'*

Well, almost: Awww... He's a cutie :)

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

I love him more than is reasonable too. I'm very enamoured of a lot of my prosperity kids, since they're all blends of my favourite Maxis sims.

Garou has a very even personality, and he transitioned into that hair and a pink outfit at every transition, so I let him run with his soft, pink ways. I'd love to see him roll family, but I'll have to wait and see.

[pleonasm]

LJ's Scrapbook has pretty limited space for photo storage as I understand. You might want to look into space on someone's domain, really.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Oh, really? I didn't know that. How limited is it? I wonder if it would be more worth my time to upgrade my Photobucket account instead, since it's already there and somewhat organized.

If I look at putting them somewhere else, do you have any recommendations?

[pleonasm]

According to the LJ FAQ:
# Plus: 1024 MB (1 GB) (or upgrade to a Paid Account)
# Paid: 2048 MB (2 GB) (or upgrade to 10 GB)
# Permanent: 10240 MB (10 GB)

I almost wonder if someone isn't hotlinking you, which is a common reason why someone would exceed their bandwidth.

As for recs, I have none, unfortunately, since my Photobucket account is pretty much the pinnacle of my online picture handling, but maybe someone else has an idea for you. I have heard good things about Photobucket Pro, but I've never used it myself.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, 2 GB isn't much when it comes to sim photos in a story like this. They can really add up.

I'm not sure who would hotlink me, or for what purpose, but that's a possibility. I know others have had similar problems, so maybe we just underestimate how many people read sim stuff.

I used to have one that host pics for fibre-related blogs (actually, I still have it, I think), but like I said it's themed specifically for knitting/fibre blogs. I'm very used to Photobucket now, and it makes things easy by giving you the html codes and all that, so maybe it's worth upgrading it to Pro.

[pleonasm]

The most common reason for Sims hotlinking is WCIF, I think. Though it would have to be pretty high traffic to murder your bandwidth so much.

Though I see you've gotten it taken care of. Good luck in the future.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Heheh. Well, I doubt that's my problem. I don't exactly have enough desirable (or unique) cc in my story to warrant WCIF posts.

What do you mean? Can you see my images now? I still can't.

[pleonasm]

Yeah, I can see your header and your sidebar, and it was "bandwidth exceeded" earlier. Maybe clear your cache?

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... I tried that, but I'm getting nothing. Could it be because you're in a timezone that's ahead of me? If you're across the pond, that might explain it. Otherwise, I have no idea.

[pleonasm]

Nope, good old US of A for me. Maybe it will come up for you soon, then.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

I wonder if everyone else in the US can see them? Maybe it's just because I'm up here in the boonies. :P I'll have to wait it out, I guess.

[ikichi.livejournal.com]

Man, that sucks. I hope you won't have to change all your photo links. D:

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Oh, I assume they'll come back eventually... (though the end of the month was supposed to be when the bandwidth thing started over, if I'm not mistaken). I could always upgrade it to Pro. *grumbles about paying to write sim stories*

If it came down to it, I'm not completely sure I would repost all those photos. The idea of it is painful to me. I'm unorganized, and I don't even know what goes where anymore. I'd probably try to fix the chapters, but things like outtakes would just have to become a thing of memory.

[madame-ugly.livejournal.com]

Cute pics (I love freckles on aliens--simgaroop turned me on to that).

But I'm more interested in this photobucket issue you're having. So you don't know if the links are broken or if Pbucket is just lazy in getting around to turning your service back on (so to speak)?

I hear you on the "don't want to fix broken links". That's too much work (and a daunting task).

If you think someone hotlinked the pic from the simsecret site, couldn't you just remove that one pic? Yeah, it would be a bit of work to hunt it down, but would that stop the hemmorage of bandwidth?

I hear you on the paying thing, too. $40 is a lot (even for a year). I didn't bat an eyelash when it was $20 (I piss away $20 in three days of buying lunch and vending machine pop). Hmm, maybe you could justify it by asking your spouse to give it to you as a gift? (yeah, I'm one of those who does that, can justify it if it's a gift but not buying it for no good reason)

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Yeah, simgaroop got me into freckles too. I'm a big fan, but just never bothered to look for much custom makeup before.

I think it's just slow in restoring them. I have no reason to believe the links are broken (and I'll be pissed if they are).

I'm pretty sure I wouldn't remember which pics went with what what text. I don't know the story that well (and who would?).

No, I'm pretty sure simsecret isn't to blame. People host on tinypic, so the secrets stay secret. Even if it were possible to hotlink the secret, it couldn't have been a direct link, since the image was altered to have text on it.

I don't think I'll have an issue paying for it, if it's necessary (we'll see how October goes), but $40 is a bit much for something like that. It's a lot higher than the paid livejournal account. I can't remember, but that was only $20 or something, right? Anyway, I'll just wait and see if it happens again and then decide from there.

[madame-ugly.livejournal.com]

Could your banner be hogging the bandwidth? Maybe you could switch it (and the other pics on your journal--like the info page and stuff) and see if that helps.

Maybe move the journal banner etc to flickr?

Or could you host the journal pics from your livejournal scrapbook?

(can you tell today is my boring data entry day at work--I just can't stop thinking about this pbucket thing)

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

That's an excellent idea. Hosting the banner and other journal images on the livejournal scrapbook should help because the main page is most frequently viewed. The older chapters shouldn't be too much of an issue, since only and handful of people would be going back to them, and there'd only be one current post at a time.

Has this ever happened to you? You have a Photobucket Pro account, right? Why did you upgrade?

[madame-ugly.livejournal.com]

And if your new chapters get the "no room at the inn" treatment, then you can consider shelling out the money for Pbucket pro.

I've never had issues with Pbucket. But I've never hosted a major image (like your banner) from mine (and you never had this problem before you did that, right?).

I upgraded because I saw I was really using it a lot (I think when my pics hit their first multiple thousand mark) and $20 a year seemed like a fair price. The way I figure it, $20 for the LJ and $20 for the Pbucket (each per year) was a cheap hobby (cheaper than the monthy cost of cable t.v.). I'm also lucky that money's not tight in my household (I'm not rich, but to just decide on a whim to sign up for even a $2O Pbucket was no biggie--I would have to run $40 by the wife, so I'm not spending that at the end of the month, when we're waiting for both our paychecks to arrive--once a month paychecks can be annoying).

[xel-squirgle-ox.livejournal.com]

Please excuse this incoherent comment, but it's all I can say about this post...

OMG THEY ARE SO FLIPPING ADORABLE! ESPECIALLY SCOTT I JUST WANT TO HUGGLE HIM! (By any chance is his "pollinator" another maxis made sim, if you catch my drift?)

I also would love to see the outcome of Tank/James Davenport's alien child. This little guy in my icon mauling moonshine is his (not born yet in the IB, yet too cute not to show off) son.

I always wondered what happened to Llama Spit Cove- it's great to see that you're still playing with them and just having fun. I too would have liked to do that with NowhereVille, but I lost them when I transfered my sims files to my laptop. There were some sims there that I really liked such as the Phillips and the Copeland families that I would love to re-create some day.

[indigoleo.livejournal.com]

I'd almost forgot about Llama Spit Cove. :)
I'm having a lot of fun playing my prosperity neighborhood. Lately I've spent more time there then in Strangetown. *gasp!*

Scott is a cutie. I've got such a soft spot for little green men. :D
I can't help but notice that in the background of the picture of Garou Lamb the trash can has been tipped over. Somebody not happy in Llama Spit?

[smjoshsims.livejournal.com]

Scott is too cute, especially the little freckles on his nose- LOVE.

You know, you actually inspired me in a way- I'm going to be adding some new Sims into the Thornn Legacy, and they're (mostly) going to be descended from Maxis Sims- it should be cool to see different mixes and matches. :)

[80sfiend.livejournal.com]

Aww Scott is so cute! :D