Strangetown, Here We Come.

Since my last drabble post, which mentioned Buck's nude paintings of Jill (an idea I've been working with for a while, behind the scenes), beyondheroism__  has been busy drawing me some really great pictures to use with the custom painting feature on the easel. One of them was in a landscape orientation instead of portrait, and I really loved it, so I went hunting for a way to make it work. There's the drafting table, but that adds a filter effect (I'm not a fan of this feature, since it really LOOKS like a filter, and they could have just included drawings that look like blueprints instead - it seems really lazy to me). Another option was recolouring a painting from the buy mode catalogue, but most of those have frames, and frameless is much better for a student art show. So, my hunt continued...

What I found was really great: the Maxis More Functional - Painting Easels Superset by AnnoeskaB at TSR. This set gives you options for different easel sizes, including a table-top easel and a kid-sized easel, and also three new formats - a landscape rectangle, a square, and an oval. All of these work with the custom painting feature that has been included since Pets, and frames can be added if you have FT or AL. It also includes a "continious painting and selling" feature if you want to start up an art-type sweatshop, and there are new paintings included for the default paint mode (even a few grilled cheese). I can't vouch for the quality of these new paintings, because I haven't tested them, and I'm leaning towards skeptical until I see them, because I'm super picky about art. 

AnnoeskaB is a featured artist, so you know what that means, and where you should go to get these. I'd most likely donate to her if she hade her own site and freely offered these, because they're awesome, but I'd never subscribe to TSR.

( Now, you knew I'd show some pics of this, right? )

I don't think I've ever shown you the theatre section of the fine arts building at LFT.

( Well, here it is... )

Thanks to everyone who voted in my poll for chapter 28. The results have given me a clear plan for how to approach it, and the order should work out perfectly, now that I've thought about it (with maybe one exception, but that should be okay too). Our dear little Frances won by a landslide. I guess when you end up in simsecrets and such, you're a big friggin' deal.

( Let's check in with him for a moment and see what he thinks of his popularity... )

( Boy, did I ever LOL at this... )

( Oh, I almost forgot this one, and it was my favourite shot. )

On another note, I'm setting Thursday as my personal deadline to post chapter 27, part 1 (of 2). You can expect it somewhere between 5:00 pm and 11:59 pm, Newfoundland Standard Time (look it up - it's 1/2 hour ahead of the Atlantic time zone, which means I'm just that much ahead of the rest of North America).

Ahh, there's nothing like relaxing on the hammock with a good book on a sunny day, but Ripp seems to be DOING IT WRONG, as they say...

Just when you think you have them all figured out, those sims manage to surprise you, don't they?

I have another drawing to share. My significant other completed his second, "new and improved" attempt at a drawing of Johnny, Ripp, and Ophelia, so here it is. I'm definitely going to make this into a painting recolour for the game at some point.

I dropped in to check on Jill and Buck today, and was very amused by what I found.

So finally, someone at EAxis decided to think of the aliens when they designed a game feature. The tanning that sims can get with BV (which I think is pretty cool) actually works on the alien skintone. I almost jumped for joy when I saw it. After seeing them mess up so badly with the heatstroke in Seasons, I was expecting the worst, but instead, I got a tanned Johnny Smith.