Upcoming Creator Anniversary!

Goodness, how time flies! May is nearly done and June upon us! Halfway through July is my Creator Anniversary, and I always release something interesting in celebration of that! Now, let's see. I have a month and a half, are any of these projects far enough along to be finished by then? .... <goes looking through blog posts and projects folder> Hmm. No. Not really. Well, drat.

Now what? What is something easy, but festive enough for the occasion? Something I can possible pull off in the month and a half I have left. Something to help commemorate the six years I've been creating and uploading to MTS. Something that shows how appreciative of everyone over the years. Hmm, what to do...

Yes, that's it! That's what I'll do!

The Millers Close the Chapter

The final family for jones' Veronaville Home Makeover for me was the Millers. I had been looking forward to them all contest. I was pretty close the being right with which houses I had guessed throughout the contest and this layout was the one I wanted for them. My intuition was correct. Though, with how jones set up the families, there really wasn't much of a better way to arrange the families per house. The twins from the last house wanted their own bathroom and aside from the double house (which was pretty obviously meant for the Winters) the only house with two upstairs bathrooms was the one most of us picked for it. The Williams went nicely with the first house because they wanted to downsize and it was one of the smaller houses jones gave us. Anyways, this house is awesome because I made the Miller's house a MILL. (clever right? :facepalm:)

I'm most pleased with myself about my movie reference and the way I wove a fairy tale into this family. I'm thinking I'm going to want to continue sneaking in fairy tales into this hood now. I recently read a fantastic little book called The Rumpelstiltskin Problem that probably had a bit to do with this is, and also the TV show Once Upon A Time. See the rest of the house in my post!

This concludes the contest. I'm not going to be anywhere even close to placing, but I'm ok with that. I only ever really lost points for changing the structure; I lost 9 points over the course of the contest for that. If those were not taken into consideration, I'd be in third right now instead of 9th. I don't regret it though. Neither this contest, nor her first cycle, was I actually playing to win. Quite the contrary, in the first cycle I was actively sabotaging myself. I already have the cute little blue ribbon icon, so I don't need another win (yet...)

I had a chance to create some fantastic houses, kickstart my medieval hood and download a ton of fantastic CC to add to my collection. I still have so much of it to sift through and clean and purge, but that's a never ending task. My one regret was that I wasn't able to play these families enough to get them aged up and married and having kids to the point where I could have put them in my pictures. I'll try to remember to make a post later with all of the families in front of their houses when I do get them that far.

Dynamic Skies

I was reading a book today and it mentioned an innovative installation art product called Personal Skies. I've been thinking about the lovely Sky Objects available for the game (lot version & recolor, hood version & recolor). I've played with a couple of them and while I love the added richness of the details, they tend to look weird at night. They also look a little weird when the clouds NEVER move or change. I've been long on a mission to have more things change by themselves in my game, having everything being static for generations is seriously strange.

Simply Gorgeous "Veronaville View" image by nimi4

This got me thinking about one of my recent projects, my calendar. It updates itself every day, and knows what season it is. We also have animated textures available to us. What if all of this were combined to create a dynamic sky? The sky object would know when sunrise and sunset are to happen and would provide a gorgeous sky show for it (that actually moves) and then during the day could have clouds slowly traversing the sky overhead. The object would also need to be programmed to recognize weather and adjust accordingly. Maybe it could even try into the weather forecast from the TV (something I've pretty much ignored entirely). If it's raining, I want to see a dark sky with rain clouds. I want to see grey skies in winter and detailed stars at night. This is going to be a seriously texture heavy project, but I think it will be worth it in the end.

Sims 4 Announced!

So, it's been announced today that Sims 4 is officially on and will be released in 2014. I don't have any insider information, but I didn't want today to be unmarked. I'm EXTREMELY hopeful that TS4 will be awesome and I'll be adding another Sims game to my collection. TS3 fell well below expectations so much so that I barely played it and never even bothered learning to mod and create for it. I'm hoping that this is not the case with the new game. Keep your fingers crossed everyone! Here's the official post.

Pirates!

For the third round of jones' Veronaville Home Makeover, I've chosen the Johnson family. While this is what everyone else is working with:

Stacie, Brian and the twins, Hannah and Teresa (aged 9) love the beach. They can't afford to move to the shore, so they'd like to bring the beach to their home. BONUS The twins don't mind sharing a room, BUT they would LOVE to have their own bathroom (their parents would love it too.

Because I'm doing this in my Medieval hood, things are a little different.

Stacia, Brian, and the twins, Bethany and Betryse (aged 9) love the ocean. Brian is a Captain of a "fishing" vessel. Their house is safely hidden from the coast so Brian doesn't have to worry that his family might be in danger from his high-seas "activities".

Yup, I made him a pirate. :) The best picture of their house is by far the little stream running through their property. They love pulling fish out of their little stream and are just as comfortable in the water as they are on it. Across the little bridge is a still pool that the family uses for relaxing in. The girls enjoy playing under the waterfall and love pretending to be mermaids. The statue near the falls likely had something to do with their choice of make believe worlds.

I can't choose just one more image to tease you with, there are a bunch that are really really good. Check out my whole post.