Calendar Contest

As some of you may have noticed, I have recently retired from staff at MTS. This is particularly bittersweet timing because usually I am involved in the creation of the yearly calendar content in game calendar. As I am no longer staff, I don't know what they are planning, but before I left I said I'd be happy to continue putting together the calendar after they've chosen the winners. It's been a very busy month and I wanted to enter two months as I usually do, but I only had the time to create this one image an hour before they were due. I was two minutes late by my post timestamp, so I hope that won't disqualify me. I also wanted to create something for the month of March. October is my favorite month because of Halloween, and March, being my birthday month, is a close second. I didn't even have a plan for what to do with it though, so no real loss. I love doing images with dramatic lighting. Here is my Mistress October. :)

Happy Halloween!!

Here's another project done and off my list for good. I finally wrapped up the costumes for Echo and my Costume Trunk from two years ago. A lot of fantasy costumes were included, and I finally created what I think are the cutest little baby dragons ever. So much of EA clothing is aged up from what it should be. A bunch of kid clothing would look better on toddlers, and teen clothing should be for kids, and even adult clothing that is teen stuff. It's dumb, but that's what conversion content is for! :)

Done with Moving

After learning of Mootilda's passing, finishing our joint project became a priority for me. I guess I felt guilty or ashamed that I took it for granted that we'd have more time? As it turned out, she had mostly finished off her part, so I made a few tweaks and added in the interactions she had requested and uploaded it. Because I am fairly certain I won't be doing anything more with the moving boxes, I tossed them up too, and now I can officially mark this project as done.

We had wanted to make it so that the user could pick between keeping the fixtures and keeping everything, but I had trouble with getting that to work, so it's all still there, but hidden in debug mode if someone wants to help me finish it off the way she wanted it.

Tribute to Mootilda

I'm sure you've heard by now that our community has suffered a great loss. Mootilda passed away on the 2nd. She will be dearly missed by everyone. She and I had been working on a project over a year and a half ago, and with the way real life always jumps in, we never got around to finishing it. I pm'ed her husband, Quatchi, and he was able to send me her files. Looking at it, we were very close to being done. It is my intent to finish our project and upload it in tribute to her.

Finally Fixed My Sunken Pets Bug!

Pets has never been my favorite thing to play, mostly because it has never worked right for me. The vast majority of the time my pets are half sunken into the ground, and when they aren't I've never been able to get a single one of them to go to their job. Last night I finally took the time to track down what was causing my sunken pets issue, mostly because 2 of my 3 testing lots both happen to have pets on them, and it was starting to get annoying. After 2 hours of the half and half method with an initial false positive, I believe the issue was Atavera's Animated Windows Fix. Strange huh? I thought so until I opened it up and found a few pie menus that were directly specifically at big dogs and cats. I unticked them, and removed a few of the pie menu stuff that doesn't have anything to do with anything (unless it's dogs sleeping in the bay window, which I've never seen, but I'll forgo to have open-able windows). While I was there I also took the Wash Window off only neat freaks, and made it available for everyone, because it's a fun thing to see. So far my pets are still above ground and I hope that really was the issue. The interactions they have are so cute! Maybe some day I'll figure out what's keeping them from going to their jobs. (Though, pet jobs as a concept is still pretty weird to me, so maybe I won't bother.)

Kickstarter Launch!

Hey guys! This is exciting! I launched a Kickstarter earlier today and I'm already 60% funded! I need your help to get the rest of the way there. Because I know dollhouses and miniatures in real life might not be your thing, I have rewards specifically geared toward you all! I'm offering to skype with you to create a sim object! Whatever you want, let's do it! To the Kickstarter!

Smallhouse Models - A New Dollhouse Furniture Business

So, it's been a while since I've visited my poor little simmies, but I have a half decent reason for it. I'm working on starting up a new business designing and creating contemporary dollhouse furniture! Current dollhouse furniture is by and small, Victorian, colonial, and the occasional 50s-70s pieces. I can't be alone in having no interest in these styles. I'd much rather have doll furniture similar to the real furniture that is popular now, you know, IKEA, mid-century modern, stuff from Target?

Right now I need your help simply to spread the word about this. I need more Likes on my Facebook Page for Smallhouse Models. You can follow along with my progress there.

I plan on running a Kickstarter in June and I really *really* need help getting the word out about it. I'm going to need about 250 backers or it's just not going to work. I realize doll furniture is a bit of a niche market, so I'm going to include rewards other than just the doll furniture I'm designing. I want to do photoshoots of my pieces and set them up as little 'I, Spy' rooms. These images will be made into postcards, greeting cards, and a calendar. I'll also be offering opportunities to design your own pieces.

Now, here's the exciting part for you simmers. I'm going to be making Sim 2 versions of all of my pieces and hope to release them during my Kickstarter on MTS as part of awareness and advertising. For anyone who backs a Design It Yourself reward, I'll be just as willing to make you a sim version instead of a real dollhouse furniture piece (or both).

Please Like my Facebook Page, Smallhouse Models. Please share it with anyone you know who is interested in dollhouses, enjoys backing Kickstarters, or would like a personal, custom Phae creation.

Keep on keeping on.

So I've been having some trouble keeping up with the deadlines for karen's contest, but I don't want to put aside on my uni hood just yet. I'm hopeful that I'll be done with this hood in time for my Creator Anniversary, but if you've been paying attention the last couple of years, that project almost always switches ideas at least 6 times before I finally post something. We shall see. I like the idea of doing a college for my 7 year anniversary, because it took me 7 years to graduate college. I'm also pretty busy doing designs for dollhouse furniture. I plan on having a Kickstarter for that in June, again, assuming I can keep up with it all. Lotta work goes into designing an entire house worth of furniture, regardless of scale. :P

Anyways, one of karen's venue options (I do love these, it got me thinking about all the flavor that is at a university) was a fountain. My hometown Purdue has some fantastic fountains that I've played in at least half the summers of my life. I wanted to see if I could create the Engineering Fountain, and I think I did a half decent job of it!

And here's a view of the state of my hood now. You can see the newly added UOA frat house from the application round, YamYad Bar from round 1, and the Fitness Park from the second round. Additionally, I've created Burnet Woods and I'm in the process of constructing Slayter Hill Amphitheater. My Uni is a complete mash up between Purdue and U.Cinci. How could I not? They were *my* universities! Make what you know! :)

Join the Campus Contest?

karen lorraine is hosting a new contest! The premise is building a college campus. This fits in quite nicely with one of my own projects, so I am highly considering entering. I've got some reservations about it though. The first round is building a dorm, it's pretty basic and a great place to start. The biggest problem with it though, is how small it is! It's only 2 floors and a tiny footprint at that, my other two dorms are MUCH larger. I've managed to stuff 8 sims into this tiny dorm, but my Dabney dorm could technically house 32, and Calhoun (shown below) would be able to hold 48 if I furnished all the floors. The other big issues is she is requiring that your university be themed either arts, science, or sports. The university I'm working on constructing has a very nice blend of all of those! Based on the buildings she is going to have us make, I've ruled out the sciences. From there though, it looks like we will have choices for the remaining 5 rounds:

• Library (sciency)
  
• One-Stop Shop
• Coffee Shop
• Park* this would be awesome!
• House (dull)
  
• Performing Venue (artsy) ooh this!
  
• Art Gallery (artsy)
  
• Fitness Center* ✓
• Bar* ✓
• Games Room*

I have some pretty big visions for my hood. The idea behind my university is actually having the college classroom buildings, so I'll have a large art college, a music college, a teaching hospital, and *very* big sports complexes. I don't really have some of these tinier spaces included, but I really ought to, as they add character. If the shells for the lots aren't big enough, I won't be able to do the Music Hall or Art College the way I want to.

I'm leaning more toward the sporty and generic stuff right now because I know that's my real weakness in the first place, and I can probably get away with doing those on these smaller lots. Maybe that should be my plan. Purposely pick the weakest link and use this to make it stronger.

Hacks You'd Like to See Thread

I've been following the Hacks You'd Like to See thread, and its chock full of great little mods. Many are doable, but some are more blue sky. I went through and collected all the ones that interested me, even if they weren't immediately achievable, and put them into a working document. I sorted it by categories and saw some common themes emerging. While a large number of them are things that I will never get around to even trying, some of them are short and simple enough that I could bust them out if I had a few spare minutes and remembered about them.

Here's my larger document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aS6xgbsCY8Q33YPxh_WkERtH7pWf4PNKN-Fc9-BPCoQ/edit?usp=sharing

And the shorter list for projects I might want to tackle are:

Taking off Work (without having to fake being sick, and also maybe for longer to raise kids)
Baby Showers (pregger ladies can't go anywhere anyways, bring her friends to her)
Beach Activities Season Restrictions (thank you MSD!)
Cintique for doing art on comp
Different height foundations and stages to make split staircases (1/2 and 3/4)
Non-romantic classic dance (for weddings and such)
Supernatural Wants and Fears (lauratje86 was working on it with me, but I think she hit a snag)
Mental Illness & Disease (look for another post on that subject later)
More and Random Deaths (look for another post on that subject later)

If you read the whole thing you will see some other topics I've already expressed an interest in working on, like smaller driveways and a better sky. I copied the info down because its always helpful to have more than one perspective.