Strangetown, Here We Come.

For those of you who've made wall hanging recolours from an artist or designers work (either in a simlish version or as-is), do you generally ask permission to use their artwork? Or do most people use the images without contacting the original creator of the image? I have a little something I'd like to make based on someone else's work, so I'd like to know what others do in this situation. I feel like asking would be best, but then I'm sort of afraid they'll just say no.

I'm new to hair retexturing and using colour actions on them, so I need to ask a probably very obvious question about using those actions. I have some of Neena's textures to work from (someone uploaded them on a thread at GoS), and Simgaroop's colour actions, but I have no idea how to apply them. Is there an order I need to work in? I tried applying the black colour action to the Neena blond hair texture (sort of pale yellow) I used to retexture, and the end result was more like dark brown. I figure I'm definitely doing something wrong. Should I be using a different hair texture to start from? Am I missing a step? Please help!

Thank you in advance to anyone who can help this hopeless beginner.

Bonus question: Are there any meshes out there that haven't already been Neena'd that you'd like to recommend for recolour? I'm trying to find a couple of good options for my secret santa and it seems like most hair meshes already have been given the Maxis-match treatment. Any oldies but goodies or otherwise overlooked meshes out there that you love?

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?

Quite some time ago (has it really been years, already?), simgaroop and I were planning to do a collaborative story. We decided to focus on the Tricou mystery, since we both like to play with the Maxis storylines and this was one of the game's better mysteries to unravel. We were both new to it, since neither of us had ever written about them, played them, what have you.

It never got off the ground, unfortunately. I think we both have a tendency to explode things, make them overly complicated, and the combined effect of both of us doing this caused the project to crumple under the weight of our excess of enthusiastic ideas. We eventually lost interest, which is too bad. (Maybe one day we'll work on another project, eh Simgaroop?) Our episodic fantasy/supernatural/superhero/teen drama, featuring those downtownie teens as the main characters (working title: Fallen Trees) never saw the light of day.

I did write a couple of little snippets, though, and I recently dusted one off, thinking it might make an interesting little short to get myself back into writing. The recent surge of Tricou-related posts on my flist has also gotten me thinking again about the mythology that Simgaroop and I were working on. Some of it has already worked its way into my S,HWC universe, as previously seen here (that drabble was written while it was all still a secret project). It'll probably never get told in any amount of detail, but I plan to sneak in some snippets of it ( the Cordials have a connection to it, as does Titania). It'd be a shame to waste story ideas.

I know I'm getting getting my flow back again when I start making cc for a story project. It seems this is actually working! :) I've been playing around with this on and off all day. I'm sure the sim below needs little introduction for anyone who's played with her. Her looks are quite distinct.


( Have you spotted the cc I'm working on? Details behind the cut... )

Does anybody know if a replacement exists for those holiday pajamas that came with the Happy Holidays SP? Since there's only a handful of toddler pjs, my sim toddlers end up transitioning into seasonal garb far too often. If one doesn't already exist, I may consider making it myself.

I'm down to 2.59 GB! W00t!

Bodyshop only takes a minute or so to load. I don't need to have a book nearby to read while waiting for lots to load. It doesn't take 87645329 hours to load the first time I send a sim to "change appearance" each time I load the game. I don't need to scroll through pages of cc I will probably never use. I'm liking this!

It's not just a cc diet, it's a total cc lifestyle change. I've made some tough decisions, like severely limiting the amount of new meshes allowed in my game. I even have it down to just a couple of essential Holy Simoly items, rather than my previous completionist approach to HS. I'm trying to limit my cc hair to those I'll actually use on in-game sims, with an emphasis on characters (the others can be more generic). I'm even considering removing all my pretty geneticized Phobia eyes, going back to the basic Maxis set (defaulted, of course), plus a handful of contacts for character purposes. I figure I can always put them back in if I miss the variety.

Maybe I'll finally getting around to posting a resource page now. You know it'll truly be my "best of the best" choices.

Why yes I am up before dawn and organizing my downloads folder with a fiery passion. Why do you ask? :P Early morning insomnia is the worst, but I do appreciate the extra "me time" (and at least I went to bed pretty early last night).

I'm really getting somewhere with my cc organizing lately. I've decided to take a long, hard, honest look at what I actually use in-game. I'm limiting my Simgaroop hair recolours to one hue of each hair colour (making an exception for redheaded aliens, who look better with bright red, and I'm a little torn on the browns), deleting all the pretty-but-unnatural eyecolours (so no more townies with bright purple eyes), Maxis-match eyebrows (when I only ever use the three default shapes), and eye/nose/mouth shaders/corners, face wrinkles, nail polishes, bazillion glasses recolours, and maybe even some of the freckles (maybe). And that's just BodyShop!

I finally downloaded Homecrafter as a way of weeding out the last few walls and floors in colours I don't use, but I'm a little stuck on the object recolours. I did some hunting around, and the only method of identifying individual object recolours seems to be SimPE, and then deleting them from the downloads folder. Am I missing something? I'd love to be able to view and delete them all in one go.

Whelp... back to work! XD