JLS Sims

This is a post to let you know that my Sims journal is no longer on WordPress. Instead, it’s on LiveJournal — to be precise, this LiveJournal community. The move isn’t because I dislike WordPress — I actually think WordPress is awesome! — but because most of the members of the Sims 2 community that I know are on LiveJournal, and it’s just sort of easier to have everything there. Oh, and LiveJournal tags are specific to each journal. I hate the way that on WordPress, what I tag “Rebecca Stone” is lumped together with everyone else’s “Rebecca Stone” entries, even though there’s no way we’re talking about the same Rebecca Stone. It’s really stupid.

Anyway, in summary:

TO THE NEW JOURNAL

So, I finally got to test my creations out in-game.

I THINK I’M IN LOVE. These eyes came out so much better than I expected! (I did redo the blues, but still…!) Here you can see the light blue eyes. Click the “read more” link for more pictures!

Continue reading New eyes, part two…

I wasted SO MANY HOURS doing this, but I am immensely satisfied with the result. These eyes will remain WHITE when my Sim looks in an “unconventional” direction, not turn black like almost every type of eye. In addition to this, they are also NOT AS CARTOONY as Lyran’s. I used Lyran’s eyes for a long time, and loved them, but I wanted some more “realistic” eyes… without that bizarre blackness on the edge. I didn’t look very hard for an eye that fit the bill, but these sure will (or at least, I think they will? I know Bodyshop makes them look very cartoony, and it still remains to be seen how they’ll look in-game). And I learned something!

I used this tutorial, cross-referencing with this thread, to make the eyes themselves. When it was time to deposit them on a texture and get them into Photoshop, I used CatOfEvilGenius’s sclera blush as a base for my eyes (and put the coloured bit on top). CatOfEvilGenius’s redistribution policy seemed to permit me to do this so long as I linked to her, so I hope I’ve complied with that requirement (even if I haven’t uploaded the eyes!).

So. After many hours of fiddling, I finally had my “beautiful” new eyes. Having made these new eyes, I wanted defaults of them. I don’t do the whole “geneticising eyes” thing unless the eyes I geneticise match my defaults, so if I wanted to use my eyes I needed them as defaults, dammit! I tried guessing how do to it, but this resulted in all my Sims’ faces turning black. Uhh. Oops. It was then I realised that II needed assistance, so I Googled and found this tutorial on MATY. Since the “Build DXT…” option was greyed out for me no matter what, I made some educated guesses (as opposed to the blind ones of before) and got some beautiful default eyes which did not turn my Sims’ faces black! And there we are. Wasn’t that a wonderful story?

Hi there! Bear with me while I get my act together and post all the old entries (and new entries) I want here, okay?

EDIT (June 12): Well, I’m all caught up on the updates I had prepared, anyway! I backdated all of the entries to when I originally finished them, so you should be able to browse them in chronological order and get an idea of what’s been happening, at least.

The Stone Legacy:
[1.1] [1.2] [2.1] [2.2] [2.3] [2.4] [2.5] [3.1] [3.2] [3.3]

The Camerons:
[Thomas & Pamela] [Beth]

Estelle and Laura Stone (and kids):
[part 1] [part 2] [part 3]