POLICY
I'm a pretty flexible person when it comes to "fair use" of things put on the internet. Seeing as most of what I do is merely slapping a dash of brightly colored paint on things others have made or grunging them up and down, all I ask is that you don't claim anything you download here as your own. Paysites are bad and the Exchange has cooties. Wipe your nose. Take a sweater. Don't run with scissors. Your face is going to stick like that. If you've made something from something I've made, I'd like to see it!

INFORMATION
Add me, I'll add you back. Most entries will be public though, so if you feel like lurkin', go right ahead. General ramblings, rants, and musings will be friends only. I have all SPs and all EPs. WCIFs and the like are always always okay with me, don't be shy. I also always appreciate comments, even a brief "thanks" means a ton. If you need to contact me privately for whatever reason, leave a comment here. All comments are screened and automatically e-mailed to me. Anonymous comments are allowed. I'm about as scary and tough and mean as an angry asthmatic kitten. I don't take requests, but I do take suggestions.
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I canceled the automatic payments on my LJ account because LJ is full of fecal matter. I'll probably have to change my layout (again) and all my icons once it expires because visual OCD is terrible. Does anyone actually use the tags? Just asking as I've been having a time trying to find sidebar-friendly CSS that I actually like. I do have a wordpress blog which I originally meant to be a little more sparse and more visually oriented as opposed to here where I have the tendency to ramble unnecessarily. The only deal is that Wordpress isn't very social. But then again, I'm not very social!

Below are previews of some of the Sarhra recolors I've done so far; twenty in total with at least two new defaults for brown (including a warmer dark brown based on "Tereza And Thomas"), green (including a darker deeper green based on "Arienette"), grey, light blue, and dark blue, new vampire-red eyes, and five alienish fantasy eyes because people asked for them and I thought they might be interesting.

I might do a few more, I'm not sure. The inherent nature of Sarhra's eyes makes them hard to fiddle with without making them a) into something that is completely different and unlike Sarhra's eyes at all and b) muddy. They're also not high-res which is limiting. Excuses, excuses. Sorry, I stayed up till five this morning in some sort of mad fit recoloring eyes because sleep is an unkind mistress and now I'm a Grumpy Gus.


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Work, work, work, wok. Wakka wakka. Everyone still got a buzz from last night despite California utterly cocking up the collective good mood of our otherwise despairingly cynical nation? Good! I've been tackling a few more retextures and stockpiling a somewhat disconcerting list of things to neonize. I realize not everyone actually uses neon hair all the bloody time, but frankly I do, plus rainbow legacies are good fun. So eventually that will happen in a big fat post which will break the minds of those of you on dial-up because I refuse to use any image format besides .png and won't apologize for it.


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So I actually worked on the story today and finished that silly computer punch card recolor. I guess I just wanted to avoid having to make all the little holes, I don't know. It looks pretty good to me, so I might actually start taking pictures tonight. Also, in case anyone was curious, I'm not using my Maxis match CC for the story. I can see the look of utter surprise on all your faces. Gasp! It just doesn't make any sense for me to do so, since this story isn't the Sims 2. Plus, I need an excuse to use all that wonderful Nouked hair sixtylilies constantly taunts me with. So I had a bit of a genetics test shoot today to see what I'm going to use in the end. Below are pictures of dear Lucille with non-Maxisish CC! As both a man AND as a girl! She makes a pretty fine looking gentleman, I must say, if a bit soft. Oh yeah, and that damn punchcard. I've been meaning to make a brief tutorial outlining how I edit screenshots as I really don't do much. At least not in my mind. If there are outtake type shots I suppose I'll do it with those as examples.


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I'm working on stuff! I am, I swear I am. Including some more recolors of Sarhra's eyes, so I repeat: if there are any colors you'd like to see or changes you want made to colors I've already done, please please let me know! I plan on doing a middling dark brown-black, a warmer dark brown, a less saturated True Blue, a few more dark blues, and maybe some more double colors. Also, for those of you who didn't like the shaded sclera on Sarhra's eyes (and I can't blame you) without_pith has made some pretty sweet edits of Easy/Lucky/Free with the sclera from Anva's Legacy Eyes so now they're more animation friendly!

I'm also working on stuff for gaslampherald, including some steampunk-y recolors of a few Maxis meshes and objects. I finally opened SimPE after months and months and am trying to recolor aikea_guinea's paper mesh in order to have some grungy looking computer punch cards.

Lastly, more natural hair recolors. I've been trying to slap chokelate's textures on Nouk's meshes but it's somewhat hard unless I actually just hand-paint some textures myself. I did manage something decent out of Nouk's Rockabilly hair. That in addition to a couple Raon hairs will complete my "Maxisize All My Hair CC" project as far as naturals are concerned.


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Now read the title to yourself in the voice of the guy that says, "WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF TOMORROW!" Did you do it? Okay. So I have no self control. I have a lot of ideas, tons, just tons of ideas, but no self control. I have this steampunk story that is so close to being birthed, like it's ready to just unravel out of my creative womb and spill feverish and steaming onto the cold floor, but I'm too intimidated to try and recolor Aikea's paper mesh thing so that I can have some faded, semi-grungy looking computer punch cards for the opening scene. That's the roadblock. I'm idling. So instead I've resurrected Tromaville which, for your information, was my zombie apocalypse with a real zombie apocalypse. CAS-made intelligent zombies and survivors trying to go about their sordid lives without getting brain-eated by regular in-game townie zombies. This Tromaville is less apocalypse-y and more Eerie, Indiana. A desert town in the middle of nowhere set in the alternate 50s and 60s which happens to be victim to every horror movie and pulp novel cliché I could possibly pull off. Wolf men (and women), mummies, zombies, aliens, plant people, robots, frankenberries, the works.

Admittedly it's a novelty which I will probably not see through but right now I'm enthused and need something to distract me from my inability to get off my duff. I've already got all sorts of dramatic things in mind for various sim families. I've mapped things out. I'm even building a lot of the lots myself. What madness! Sometimes I miss WoW or any other MMO which offers this immersive world I only have to fit myself into. Roll a character--the alien librarian priest, the zealous and self-righteous paladin, the spaced out dream-walking druid, the gypsy gnome illusionist-thief--and just sink. Floating is for scatter-brained suckers who never finish anything they start.

First of all: Say Anything is so good. The movie and the band! Second: I got distracted from all other things by the idea of recoloring Sarhra's eyes which every Maxis-match loving simmer and their mother seems to use or want to use or beg for defaults for on the S2C forums. And whatever, I like Maxis-match stuff. And really long sentences. I even really like Maxis-ish skintones, I just can't deal with not having genetic variety and/or the weird lips. I'm experiencing a lot of frustration however, as I'm doing all these colors by hand, one by one, with no hue/saturation slider madness and heavy abuse of overlay layers so they're all slightly different. It's the only way I know how to recolor really (basically), so I'm trying not to succumb to the inevitable disgust with something I've made, causing me to chuck it in the bin and pretend I never contrived to be so ambitious. I'll still finish them however--because I want them for myself--but an actual release of these is looking kinda sketchy.

If you wanna see the originals in action go stalk every picture thread here, seriously or peruse through Keely and BP's sims. Here's some spam of the colors I've done so far along with some sims I keep in my bin who usually never see daylight because I never play! None of the screenshots are edited really, just brightened.

PS - Someone edit Louis' facemasks so the darker versions aren't so damn shiny around the forehead and cheeks. I will give you cookies. Really. I will mail you a dozen vegan cookies of your choice. Poor Gabe down there is looking extra oily.


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Because I cba to shuffle downloads to and fro while trying to test recolors, I've been trying to play with a severe minimum of CC. This means some custom floors and walls, stuff I've done, and otherwise all Maxis stuff. Challenging, but fun. I have a house in Strangetown which I use to set up all my backgrounds for preview shots and what-have-you which is now currently occupied by the Puzzle family, guinea pigs for my horrible clothing experiments and my less horrible hair recolor experiments. They don't seem to mind though.


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Man, I love colors. And I missed just how much color there was to play with in the Sims. Burnt oranges, sickly bright aquas, saturated purples. Everything is one big, wonderful color/texture fuck. Thanks to a lot of wonderful CC from pooklet yesterday, my head is brimming with tiddles on things to do. Probably starting with simple things like posters and walls and moving on back to recoloring objects. I have an entire backlog of images I've saved merely for putting on poster and framed meshes. I have yet to try hair or clothing, mainly because hair intimidates me and I can't feign an interest in sim fashion aside from the occasional ironic t-shirt, brightly colored hi-top, and stylish pair of glasses.


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