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katrisimsSo, as I'm done with the plotty interlude I've been planning on so long, it's time for some behind the scenes and "how did I do it". If you're interested, look under the cut, but beware if you haven't read Interlude 2 yet, as it's obviously spoilery.
So, I'll skip the building portion of the picspam, as I've already shared that on Tumblr. I'll just say that a big part of the work involved in this update was in building the various sets. But lets get to the actual shooting of the update.
Meet the Tellerman family. As you can see, Carita and William actually have two sons here, Child Komei and Teen Komei. It's the usual trick: if a child grows up in the story, replace them with an older actor. All age versions of Komei are Bodyshop-aged versions of the original sim, whereas Carita and William were made by me. Basically, I took Komei as the starting point and tweaked here and there. I'm not a skilled sim maker in any way, so I tried to keep the edits small. And if I made William's chin a little bigger, I tried to make Carita's a little smaller, and so on, so that it felt credible to me that they might have a son looking like Komei.
So, Komei's childhood. I wasn't sure at first how to show in pictures that Komei wanted to be a doctor. Then I came up with the idea of "treating" a teddy bear, while wearing something doctor-like. I couldn't find a doctor costume for kids, so I browsed the clothes that I already have and decided that this jacket will pass for a doctor's jacket for a playing child.
When I started posing for the picture though and told Child Komei to play with the teddy, the first thing he did was this. Well, it's hardly appropriate behavior for an esteemed doctor, but it did make me laugh.
Again, the text said that Komei's parents were happy with his career ambitions, and I wasn't sure how to put it into a picture. Then I decided that said parents looking at Komei while smiling widely would convey the message.
Wondering about the angle used in the previous picture? Well, here's the reason: Carita's dress looks kind of funny in the sitting down position, and I wanted to cover that up.
Another a little bit tricky thing to picture: how to show Komei's father's high expectations, while not having him yell at Komei or anything, as the text says he didn't? I browsed through a lot of poses, in the end decided that one of the "disgruntled" poses from the loading screen would suit the purpose. Komei is doing an embarassed animation.
Komei darling. I said "look worried", not "look possessed".
It turns out that one of the many poseboxes I have has a worried animation that's somewhat borked on kids.
I did find a working one, too. I was first going to have Komei sitting on the bed, but found that was too tricky for me. You see, if I first seated him in a chair and moved him straight onto the bed, he'd sink into it because beds are higher than chairs. But if I tried to move him to an OMSP first and then on a bed-height OMSP, his feet would be level with the bed and not his butt. So I came up with this instead. But how did I do it?
One word: angles. I sat little Komei down to worry in a chair, then placed him on an angled OMSP to have him laying on his side. I tried putting him on a bed-height OMSP, he'd sink partially into the bed. So I put him on an OMSP that was actually higher than the bed and shot the picture from above, so that it looks like he's laying on the bed rather than floating above it.
So, Komei's teen years and life at school. I'll start with a different angle of a picture that I used in the update. Here you can see that I made a sim that was supposed to act as a teacher in the school, but in the end he never showed up in the pictures I used.
I originally made the school a community lot, which I suppose makes sense if you want to have a building that acts or at least looks like a school in your 'hood, but not so much if you want to use it for shooting pictures. I found out that about half or so of my poseboxes weren't enabled for community lots (and not skilled enough with Simpe to try to make them so), and it wasn't possible to grab sims and position them with OMSPs, because build mode isn't available while visiting a community lot. Not to mention that I was constantly zapping unwanted sims who showed up to paint in the art class, jump on trapolines in the gym class and distract my actors. (That's a teen version of Claire Riley, by the way.)
In the end, I gave up and looked into how to turn the school into a residential lot. Turns out that in addition to the changelotzoning cheat, you need to get a buyable trashcan and a buyable mailbox and put them on the lot so that it functions properly.
This is one shot that I couldn't have done on a community lot. I had Komei relax on the bed in the nurse's office, then realized I can't grab him and place outside. So this is after the lot zoning was changed.
Again, the above shot is a trick with angles. It looks like Komei is laying on the ground, but he's actually floating above it, on the height that he was on the bed upstairs. I did wonder briefly if OMSPs with negative heights exist, but didn't bother looking as I came up with a workable solution anyway.
Now then, the bullies showed up. I'm sure I've said it before, but while I don't always like all characters, I pretty much always like sims. Like here, a bully is showing he's not actually a bully, but is minding his own business and basking in the sun.
Now to have Komei fighting back. I initially tried to use a buyable punching bag and just move Komei outside while using it. It turned out that I wasn't able to change him into his everyday clothes while using it, so in the end I looked for the corresponding pose in poseboxes, and found it.
My actors weren't at all the mortal enemies that they acted like in the update. In fact some of them were happy to chat while I was posing the rest. Which was nice, as it kept them from running off to the other side of the lot.
Here's the finished product, I'm actually pretty happy with it. Action shots are always fun to do. I edited the text slightly here to fit what was happening in the picture, at least somewhat.
Russ and Jessica are both doing animations from the punching bag. The bully on the left (supposedly distracted and about to be punched by Komei) is a confused customer - I use that pose A LOT. The one in the middle is failing at dancing alone to the stereo, and the one on the right has just plummeted with an elevator. I've never seen that animation in the game, I rarely have an elevator on lots because I have the fear that it might plummet with my precious sims in it. :) Anyway, the animation works pretty well here.
When starting to shoot Komei's evening activities, I realized I'd only built one bar. I decided that was going to do, as I'd use a different part of it later on. So yes, this is technically the same bar where Komei reunites with Russ in the end, although in the story, probably not.
Here you might also recall that I mention "drinking and smoking" in the story. That's noteworthy, as that's not really something you can do in the game, other than pose it of course. Later on in this same update Komei mentions "juice", which is more in line with the game. When it comes to plottiness, like in the Alphabetacy as well as the Apocalypse, I walk a thin line between game mechanics and real life so to speak. I do tend to mix in stuff that's not really possible in game and is more characteristic of people's than sims' lives, but my general guideline is that I'm telling a story about my sims, not using sims to tell a story about people, which would be the other option.
In this update in particular, the original drabble included some parts that portrayed the characters more like humans than sims, so I changed those parts. One example is that I switched mentions of "people" with "sims" in many spots, as that's more in line with the overall writing style of the story. The drinking and smoking stayed, as they fit young Russ and Jessica's image and Komei's rebellious phase.
The pickpocketing picture was fun to figure out.
I looked quite hard for animations that might look like Russ is dropping something. In the end, I found the one where the sim drops the football. That works pretty well here, although I'll admit that it feels slightly silly that he's dropping books here - would a tough guy like Russ be carrying books around on the sidewalk at night? Well, the explanation is that the books were the easy option. They are from the prop hack, so I found out that I can easily place them into Russ's hands even if he's not positioned in the pose associated with the books, and the result looks reasonable. Also, the books were a suitably sized object that could easily be seen and recognized even in night lighting.
As for Jessica, I was pleased to find a sneaking animation that was more subtle than the one most often seen in the game, as that could easily have looked simply silly. I quite like the result. As in the previous picture, Russ and Jessica are the active baddies, and Komei is watching from the sidelines.
Back to the Tellerman mansion. I used the email action when I needed to have Komei studying at his computer, and the game saw it fit to remind me that the poor boy doesn't have any friends to email, actually. (The actor, I mean. The Komei in the story has Russ and Jessica at least.) Well, at least he still sat down at the computer for long enough so I could take a picture.
While I was shooting with Teen Komei, the rest of the family enjoyed some yard activities autonomously.
The part where Komei locks himself outside is another spot where the confused customer animation comes in handy. I first considered something to do with the missing homework for the picture, but couldn't think of a reasonably easy way to capture it in picture form, let alone actually pose such a picture, so I went for the lost keys instead.
Another changed plan is pictured here. I was originally looking for a pose that looks like a headache, but couldn't find one at this stage, so I took a coughing picture instead, as the text mentions flu too. Later on, I realized that there's another headache I needed to picture, so I was glad I didn't use the same animation here.
Note the rich kid silky pajamas. They don't fit Komei's new tough image, but I imagine he didn't dress or act accordingly at home. I think William would disapprove of his school clothes at least a bit, but wouldn't start a conflict on it. As for Komei, I think the toughness is a deliberate act, so when he's at home and can't be seen by his peers, he'd wear what he's always worn, even stuff that Carita has picked for him.
For the exam, I originally planned to show another student next to Komei also working on it, but found out that several of the homework animations were borked and would just cause the sim to jump. Occasionally even Komei, whom I'd already posed, would snap out of his position. I didn't want the students to have identical poses, so in the end I just went with a close-up on Komei.
The college admittances were a bit of a head-scratcher for me. I wondered if I should pose Komei at the mailbox getting the letter or what. I tried that, but as Komei the actor still doesn't have any friends, he couldn't send money to anyone with the money order, and I didn't want to wait for the family to actually get mail. The money order gave me another idea though, and I think it ended up much better. I simply put the money order on the table, posed Komei in a simple stand still pose and put some face overlays on him that portray at least surprise and fear. Then I moved the camera close to the money order and let his turn his head to look at it, so that it looks like he's looking at the letters on the table.
Alright, let's skip ahead to the adult portion, as the college years only had a couple of pretty simple pictures. Here's my usual array of poseboxes and other tools stuffed in the dentist's office, as I figured I wouldn't need to shoot pictures in there.
Komei, this is not the time to play computer games! You're in the middle of a makeover, get back to it!
I made some actors to play doctors and patients. They happily enjoyed life outside while I was working with Komei.
Some poseboxes don't place an action into the sim's queue, and unless frozen, the sim can sort of attempt to do something else at the same time. Apparently if that something else is splashing in a puddle, the water will still show up.
Komei, stop that! That's not at all doctorly! And stop grinning like an idiot!
Komei: "But this is fun, hee hee!"
Some parts were shot in Komei's bachelor pad. Oh, and I think it's pretty fitting that when I first opened that lot, Komei would have a want to get a job in the Medical career. His LTW in this photoshoot 'hood was something else, but still. (The Komei in Alphabetia has the LTW to become Chief of Staff, that's part of what originally inspired the drabble in 2011.)
Here I needed a picture of Komei's social life. It ended up looking simply friendly, but actually Komei and his guest are doing animations labeled "ask out". It hasn't come up in the story so far, especially as Komei has been a minor character, but the Komei in Alphabetia is gay. I don't know if Komei's love life will ever be relevant for the story, but anyway.
Oh, and that guy in the picture? I originally made him to be one of the doctors at the hospital, but he might not actually be on any of the shots there. But he got a small role to play anyway.
Remember Arrogant Legacy Guy, who rolled his eyes at Komei? Well, if you didn't like him, maybe you'll be happy to know that he played two other roles: he was the poor soul who got pickpocketed by Russ and Jessica, and he got to suffer on the surgery table when Komei made his big mistake.
The poor lady whose boyfriend mistreated her was another double role: she's the doctor who rushes toward the patient in the surgery hall later on.
Oh, and the part where I had to be careful when shooting in Komei's living room was to set the angle so that the poseboxes on the back yard wouldn't show through the window.
I didn't have elder versions of Komei's parents as separate sims, as I only needed them as elders for a single picture. Instead, I just aged them up with the Sim Blender and gave them makeovers.
Shooting the "William is dead" scene could have been a bit sad, but in the end, it was pretty funny. I have a posebox for dead characters, and this was the first time I used it. This is the "corpse" pose, which I tried first. I decided it looked a little stiff for a dead character, so the final one I used was "coffined", which was just what I was expecting.
It also turned out that the "dead" William would still move a little and turn to look at other sims or the camera, which led to pretty funny situations. I also had to close his eyes with a face overlay.
William: "Carita darling, please don't congratulate me now, you know I'm supposed to be getting into character for being dead."
William: "How am I supposed to play dead with all this traffic?"
Sorry about that, I'll get rid of my foundress here. Although it's kind of your own fault, you did spy on her with the telescope while I was giving your wife a makeover.
Fortunately the poses made William lay on the ground, so that he was easy to place on the bed with an OMSP. The exact placement was a little finicky, as the pose had his head a little bit off the ground, as if on a pillow. So I needed to place it carefully on a pillow, as I was going to shoot the picture from the side and didn't want it to look like his head is up in the air with no support. Once placed properly, though, the pose looked very good.
Here's the part that I mentioned before: another picture where Komei needed to look sick. It took some pose browsing, but I finally found that one of the embarassed animations has a part where the sim holds their head. That looked like it could be interpreted as "ow, my head", so that one it was.
Oh, and if you're wondering about the different times of the day in the pictures: All pictures were actually shot in the morning with the freezer clock time freezing on. When I needed it to be dark, I turned on the lights and went into the build mode, where you can change to night lighting. The design change tool gets rid of the grid. (I take day pictures in the "save or quit" mode, as that gets rid of action queues and has no grid.)
So Komei's big mistake in the surgery hall. Here's a spot where I needed to edit the text a bit. The original drabble talked about the mistake happening "halfway through" the surgery, but I realized that if it was that way, there'd need to be blood and whatnot, and the patient would have to be, well, cut open in some way. Not only would that be difficult to shoot, but also it would look unpleasant. So I took out that part, so now we can imagine it happened right away, before any surgery was actually performed.
The patient's pose is actually kind of interesting: it's two poses at once. While shooting the scene above where William is supposed to be dead, I accidentally left the "corpse" pose on when making him "coffined", and this weird arm position was what I got. I realized what was wrong and removed to corpse pose to get him in the right position, but realized that this mixture could look like someone who's twitching in pain. So that's what I used here, with turning the head with camera positioning and placing some facial overlays to hopefully look like he's in pain.
The other parts were simpler: the lady doctor is just running, the male doctor tending to the patient already is tucking in kids, and Komei is doing the "I can't look" pose. I think the game uses that one when there's a burglar fight going on.
Finally, the bar scene at the end. Meet the Bear-Ebadi family, who lives on a residential version of the bar. For the kids to have parents, I had Russ and Jessica raise mini-versions of themselves.
Now it turns out that the one type of scene that's actually easier to shoot on a community lot than a residential one, is bar conversations.
I did try to shoot at the residential lot first, but came to realize that you can't make a sim sit and drink at the bar at home. I tried to have someone make trays of drinks in advance and then make someone grab those readymade drinks.
Well they did grab those drinks, but went to drink them standing up wherever they pleased.
By the way, this is one scene where I use my legacy's extended family as extras. The couple chatting in the background in one of the pictures, here on the foreground, is Bill and Sandy Fairchild. (In the picture where Komei walks in the hospital corridor, the patient in the waiting room chair in regular clothes is Andrew Phillips.)
So, what about posing with the drinks, then? Well, it turns out that the poses I had didn't actually include the glass, so that Komei would just sip from the thin air in his hand. I could place one of the readymade drinks into his hand, but... well, this was the result. So I placed a community lot version on the bar and shot the conversations by simply having Komei and Russ actually order drinks from the bar. Problem solved.
It did mean that the lot would attract a flock of other sims to play pool or darts. I decided to just ignore them until I was ready to actually shoot a picture where they would show, and then zap them all at once. Much less work than trying to keep them at bay constantly.
What was kind of hard too was positioning: I had to direct Russ to walk into the exact right spot where I wanted him, before posing him. Because community lot. Anyway, if you're wondering, the pose he's doing is looking out a window. I thought it worked nicely as leaning in and going "wait, is that someone I know".
Oh, and that guy sitting at the table? Well, he's technically Komei's high school teacher, the one I made but never used in the school pictures. :P
And here, with Komei going through his life story, you can see the pool corner in the background. That's actually the same one where Komei once played pool with drinking Jessica and smoking Russ. But shh! I wasn't supposed to tell you that! ;)
Alright, I think that just about covers the "behind the scenes" of this update. It's been a long time since I last posed for plot, so I felt a bit rusty, especially at first. But, once again it was also a lot of fun. Plot just seems to be how I roll for this legacy. I hope you enjoyed the peek behind the scenes!
And here's another cut for a brief weekly simming for two weeks:
I could pretty much point at the above and say "that's my weekly simming". I skipped last week's, as I was working hard on the update itself but wasn't quite there yet. Then this week I was just able to post the update in time to make my SimNano goal. So I won, and got two medals for it too, so hooray! After that, I haven't really had time for sim stuff, except for today, when I decided to type up this BTS.
I'm not entirely sure what I'll do next sims-wise. I think I need to start by taking a backup on the simming machine again, and I should also catch up on some stories, as I've been neglecting that during SimNano (and actually longer than that). But for my own simming, I'm not sure if I'll feel like the Bookacies or Lakewood next. We'll see!
So, I'll skip the building portion of the picspam, as I've already shared that on Tumblr. I'll just say that a big part of the work involved in this update was in building the various sets. But lets get to the actual shooting of the update.
Meet the Tellerman family. As you can see, Carita and William actually have two sons here, Child Komei and Teen Komei. It's the usual trick: if a child grows up in the story, replace them with an older actor. All age versions of Komei are Bodyshop-aged versions of the original sim, whereas Carita and William were made by me. Basically, I took Komei as the starting point and tweaked here and there. I'm not a skilled sim maker in any way, so I tried to keep the edits small. And if I made William's chin a little bigger, I tried to make Carita's a little smaller, and so on, so that it felt credible to me that they might have a son looking like Komei.
So, Komei's childhood. I wasn't sure at first how to show in pictures that Komei wanted to be a doctor. Then I came up with the idea of "treating" a teddy bear, while wearing something doctor-like. I couldn't find a doctor costume for kids, so I browsed the clothes that I already have and decided that this jacket will pass for a doctor's jacket for a playing child.
When I started posing for the picture though and told Child Komei to play with the teddy, the first thing he did was this. Well, it's hardly appropriate behavior for an esteemed doctor, but it did make me laugh.
Again, the text said that Komei's parents were happy with his career ambitions, and I wasn't sure how to put it into a picture. Then I decided that said parents looking at Komei while smiling widely would convey the message.
Wondering about the angle used in the previous picture? Well, here's the reason: Carita's dress looks kind of funny in the sitting down position, and I wanted to cover that up.
Another a little bit tricky thing to picture: how to show Komei's father's high expectations, while not having him yell at Komei or anything, as the text says he didn't? I browsed through a lot of poses, in the end decided that one of the "disgruntled" poses from the loading screen would suit the purpose. Komei is doing an embarassed animation.
Komei darling. I said "look worried", not "look possessed".
It turns out that one of the many poseboxes I have has a worried animation that's somewhat borked on kids.
I did find a working one, too. I was first going to have Komei sitting on the bed, but found that was too tricky for me. You see, if I first seated him in a chair and moved him straight onto the bed, he'd sink into it because beds are higher than chairs. But if I tried to move him to an OMSP first and then on a bed-height OMSP, his feet would be level with the bed and not his butt. So I came up with this instead. But how did I do it?
One word: angles. I sat little Komei down to worry in a chair, then placed him on an angled OMSP to have him laying on his side. I tried putting him on a bed-height OMSP, he'd sink partially into the bed. So I put him on an OMSP that was actually higher than the bed and shot the picture from above, so that it looks like he's laying on the bed rather than floating above it.
So, Komei's teen years and life at school. I'll start with a different angle of a picture that I used in the update. Here you can see that I made a sim that was supposed to act as a teacher in the school, but in the end he never showed up in the pictures I used.
I originally made the school a community lot, which I suppose makes sense if you want to have a building that acts or at least looks like a school in your 'hood, but not so much if you want to use it for shooting pictures. I found out that about half or so of my poseboxes weren't enabled for community lots (and not skilled enough with Simpe to try to make them so), and it wasn't possible to grab sims and position them with OMSPs, because build mode isn't available while visiting a community lot. Not to mention that I was constantly zapping unwanted sims who showed up to paint in the art class, jump on trapolines in the gym class and distract my actors. (That's a teen version of Claire Riley, by the way.)
In the end, I gave up and looked into how to turn the school into a residential lot. Turns out that in addition to the changelotzoning cheat, you need to get a buyable trashcan and a buyable mailbox and put them on the lot so that it functions properly.
This is one shot that I couldn't have done on a community lot. I had Komei relax on the bed in the nurse's office, then realized I can't grab him and place outside. So this is after the lot zoning was changed.
Again, the above shot is a trick with angles. It looks like Komei is laying on the ground, but he's actually floating above it, on the height that he was on the bed upstairs. I did wonder briefly if OMSPs with negative heights exist, but didn't bother looking as I came up with a workable solution anyway.
Now then, the bullies showed up. I'm sure I've said it before, but while I don't always like all characters, I pretty much always like sims. Like here, a bully is showing he's not actually a bully, but is minding his own business and basking in the sun.
Now to have Komei fighting back. I initially tried to use a buyable punching bag and just move Komei outside while using it. It turned out that I wasn't able to change him into his everyday clothes while using it, so in the end I looked for the corresponding pose in poseboxes, and found it.
My actors weren't at all the mortal enemies that they acted like in the update. In fact some of them were happy to chat while I was posing the rest. Which was nice, as it kept them from running off to the other side of the lot.
Here's the finished product, I'm actually pretty happy with it. Action shots are always fun to do. I edited the text slightly here to fit what was happening in the picture, at least somewhat.
Russ and Jessica are both doing animations from the punching bag. The bully on the left (supposedly distracted and about to be punched by Komei) is a confused customer - I use that pose A LOT. The one in the middle is failing at dancing alone to the stereo, and the one on the right has just plummeted with an elevator. I've never seen that animation in the game, I rarely have an elevator on lots because I have the fear that it might plummet with my precious sims in it. :) Anyway, the animation works pretty well here.
When starting to shoot Komei's evening activities, I realized I'd only built one bar. I decided that was going to do, as I'd use a different part of it later on. So yes, this is technically the same bar where Komei reunites with Russ in the end, although in the story, probably not.
Here you might also recall that I mention "drinking and smoking" in the story. That's noteworthy, as that's not really something you can do in the game, other than pose it of course. Later on in this same update Komei mentions "juice", which is more in line with the game. When it comes to plottiness, like in the Alphabetacy as well as the Apocalypse, I walk a thin line between game mechanics and real life so to speak. I do tend to mix in stuff that's not really possible in game and is more characteristic of people's than sims' lives, but my general guideline is that I'm telling a story about my sims, not using sims to tell a story about people, which would be the other option.
In this update in particular, the original drabble included some parts that portrayed the characters more like humans than sims, so I changed those parts. One example is that I switched mentions of "people" with "sims" in many spots, as that's more in line with the overall writing style of the story. The drinking and smoking stayed, as they fit young Russ and Jessica's image and Komei's rebellious phase.
The pickpocketing picture was fun to figure out.
I looked quite hard for animations that might look like Russ is dropping something. In the end, I found the one where the sim drops the football. That works pretty well here, although I'll admit that it feels slightly silly that he's dropping books here - would a tough guy like Russ be carrying books around on the sidewalk at night? Well, the explanation is that the books were the easy option. They are from the prop hack, so I found out that I can easily place them into Russ's hands even if he's not positioned in the pose associated with the books, and the result looks reasonable. Also, the books were a suitably sized object that could easily be seen and recognized even in night lighting.
As for Jessica, I was pleased to find a sneaking animation that was more subtle than the one most often seen in the game, as that could easily have looked simply silly. I quite like the result. As in the previous picture, Russ and Jessica are the active baddies, and Komei is watching from the sidelines.
Back to the Tellerman mansion. I used the email action when I needed to have Komei studying at his computer, and the game saw it fit to remind me that the poor boy doesn't have any friends to email, actually. (The actor, I mean. The Komei in the story has Russ and Jessica at least.) Well, at least he still sat down at the computer for long enough so I could take a picture.
While I was shooting with Teen Komei, the rest of the family enjoyed some yard activities autonomously.
The part where Komei locks himself outside is another spot where the confused customer animation comes in handy. I first considered something to do with the missing homework for the picture, but couldn't think of a reasonably easy way to capture it in picture form, let alone actually pose such a picture, so I went for the lost keys instead.
Another changed plan is pictured here. I was originally looking for a pose that looks like a headache, but couldn't find one at this stage, so I took a coughing picture instead, as the text mentions flu too. Later on, I realized that there's another headache I needed to picture, so I was glad I didn't use the same animation here.
Note the rich kid silky pajamas. They don't fit Komei's new tough image, but I imagine he didn't dress or act accordingly at home. I think William would disapprove of his school clothes at least a bit, but wouldn't start a conflict on it. As for Komei, I think the toughness is a deliberate act, so when he's at home and can't be seen by his peers, he'd wear what he's always worn, even stuff that Carita has picked for him.
For the exam, I originally planned to show another student next to Komei also working on it, but found out that several of the homework animations were borked and would just cause the sim to jump. Occasionally even Komei, whom I'd already posed, would snap out of his position. I didn't want the students to have identical poses, so in the end I just went with a close-up on Komei.
The college admittances were a bit of a head-scratcher for me. I wondered if I should pose Komei at the mailbox getting the letter or what. I tried that, but as Komei the actor still doesn't have any friends, he couldn't send money to anyone with the money order, and I didn't want to wait for the family to actually get mail. The money order gave me another idea though, and I think it ended up much better. I simply put the money order on the table, posed Komei in a simple stand still pose and put some face overlays on him that portray at least surprise and fear. Then I moved the camera close to the money order and let his turn his head to look at it, so that it looks like he's looking at the letters on the table.
Alright, let's skip ahead to the adult portion, as the college years only had a couple of pretty simple pictures. Here's my usual array of poseboxes and other tools stuffed in the dentist's office, as I figured I wouldn't need to shoot pictures in there.
Komei, this is not the time to play computer games! You're in the middle of a makeover, get back to it!
I made some actors to play doctors and patients. They happily enjoyed life outside while I was working with Komei.
Some poseboxes don't place an action into the sim's queue, and unless frozen, the sim can sort of attempt to do something else at the same time. Apparently if that something else is splashing in a puddle, the water will still show up.
Komei, stop that! That's not at all doctorly! And stop grinning like an idiot!
Komei: "But this is fun, hee hee!"
Some parts were shot in Komei's bachelor pad. Oh, and I think it's pretty fitting that when I first opened that lot, Komei would have a want to get a job in the Medical career. His LTW in this photoshoot 'hood was something else, but still. (The Komei in Alphabetia has the LTW to become Chief of Staff, that's part of what originally inspired the drabble in 2011.)
Here I needed a picture of Komei's social life. It ended up looking simply friendly, but actually Komei and his guest are doing animations labeled "ask out". It hasn't come up in the story so far, especially as Komei has been a minor character, but the Komei in Alphabetia is gay. I don't know if Komei's love life will ever be relevant for the story, but anyway.
Oh, and that guy in the picture? I originally made him to be one of the doctors at the hospital, but he might not actually be on any of the shots there. But he got a small role to play anyway.
Remember Arrogant Legacy Guy, who rolled his eyes at Komei? Well, if you didn't like him, maybe you'll be happy to know that he played two other roles: he was the poor soul who got pickpocketed by Russ and Jessica, and he got to suffer on the surgery table when Komei made his big mistake.
The poor lady whose boyfriend mistreated her was another double role: she's the doctor who rushes toward the patient in the surgery hall later on.
Oh, and the part where I had to be careful when shooting in Komei's living room was to set the angle so that the poseboxes on the back yard wouldn't show through the window.
I didn't have elder versions of Komei's parents as separate sims, as I only needed them as elders for a single picture. Instead, I just aged them up with the Sim Blender and gave them makeovers.
Shooting the "William is dead" scene could have been a bit sad, but in the end, it was pretty funny. I have a posebox for dead characters, and this was the first time I used it. This is the "corpse" pose, which I tried first. I decided it looked a little stiff for a dead character, so the final one I used was "coffined", which was just what I was expecting.
It also turned out that the "dead" William would still move a little and turn to look at other sims or the camera, which led to pretty funny situations. I also had to close his eyes with a face overlay.
William: "Carita darling, please don't congratulate me now, you know I'm supposed to be getting into character for being dead."
William: "How am I supposed to play dead with all this traffic?"
Sorry about that, I'll get rid of my foundress here. Although it's kind of your own fault, you did spy on her with the telescope while I was giving your wife a makeover.
Fortunately the poses made William lay on the ground, so that he was easy to place on the bed with an OMSP. The exact placement was a little finicky, as the pose had his head a little bit off the ground, as if on a pillow. So I needed to place it carefully on a pillow, as I was going to shoot the picture from the side and didn't want it to look like his head is up in the air with no support. Once placed properly, though, the pose looked very good.
Here's the part that I mentioned before: another picture where Komei needed to look sick. It took some pose browsing, but I finally found that one of the embarassed animations has a part where the sim holds their head. That looked like it could be interpreted as "ow, my head", so that one it was.
Oh, and if you're wondering about the different times of the day in the pictures: All pictures were actually shot in the morning with the freezer clock time freezing on. When I needed it to be dark, I turned on the lights and went into the build mode, where you can change to night lighting. The design change tool gets rid of the grid. (I take day pictures in the "save or quit" mode, as that gets rid of action queues and has no grid.)
So Komei's big mistake in the surgery hall. Here's a spot where I needed to edit the text a bit. The original drabble talked about the mistake happening "halfway through" the surgery, but I realized that if it was that way, there'd need to be blood and whatnot, and the patient would have to be, well, cut open in some way. Not only would that be difficult to shoot, but also it would look unpleasant. So I took out that part, so now we can imagine it happened right away, before any surgery was actually performed.
The patient's pose is actually kind of interesting: it's two poses at once. While shooting the scene above where William is supposed to be dead, I accidentally left the "corpse" pose on when making him "coffined", and this weird arm position was what I got. I realized what was wrong and removed to corpse pose to get him in the right position, but realized that this mixture could look like someone who's twitching in pain. So that's what I used here, with turning the head with camera positioning and placing some facial overlays to hopefully look like he's in pain.
The other parts were simpler: the lady doctor is just running, the male doctor tending to the patient already is tucking in kids, and Komei is doing the "I can't look" pose. I think the game uses that one when there's a burglar fight going on.
Finally, the bar scene at the end. Meet the Bear-Ebadi family, who lives on a residential version of the bar. For the kids to have parents, I had Russ and Jessica raise mini-versions of themselves.
Now it turns out that the one type of scene that's actually easier to shoot on a community lot than a residential one, is bar conversations.
I did try to shoot at the residential lot first, but came to realize that you can't make a sim sit and drink at the bar at home. I tried to have someone make trays of drinks in advance and then make someone grab those readymade drinks.
Well they did grab those drinks, but went to drink them standing up wherever they pleased.
By the way, this is one scene where I use my legacy's extended family as extras. The couple chatting in the background in one of the pictures, here on the foreground, is Bill and Sandy Fairchild. (In the picture where Komei walks in the hospital corridor, the patient in the waiting room chair in regular clothes is Andrew Phillips.)
So, what about posing with the drinks, then? Well, it turns out that the poses I had didn't actually include the glass, so that Komei would just sip from the thin air in his hand. I could place one of the readymade drinks into his hand, but... well, this was the result. So I placed a community lot version on the bar and shot the conversations by simply having Komei and Russ actually order drinks from the bar. Problem solved.
It did mean that the lot would attract a flock of other sims to play pool or darts. I decided to just ignore them until I was ready to actually shoot a picture where they would show, and then zap them all at once. Much less work than trying to keep them at bay constantly.
What was kind of hard too was positioning: I had to direct Russ to walk into the exact right spot where I wanted him, before posing him. Because community lot. Anyway, if you're wondering, the pose he's doing is looking out a window. I thought it worked nicely as leaning in and going "wait, is that someone I know".
Oh, and that guy sitting at the table? Well, he's technically Komei's high school teacher, the one I made but never used in the school pictures. :P
And here, with Komei going through his life story, you can see the pool corner in the background. That's actually the same one where Komei once played pool with drinking Jessica and smoking Russ. But shh! I wasn't supposed to tell you that! ;)
Alright, I think that just about covers the "behind the scenes" of this update. It's been a long time since I last posed for plot, so I felt a bit rusty, especially at first. But, once again it was also a lot of fun. Plot just seems to be how I roll for this legacy. I hope you enjoyed the peek behind the scenes!
And here's another cut for a brief weekly simming for two weeks:
I could pretty much point at the above and say "that's my weekly simming". I skipped last week's, as I was working hard on the update itself but wasn't quite there yet. Then this week I was just able to post the update in time to make my SimNano goal. So I won, and got two medals for it too, so hooray! After that, I haven't really had time for sim stuff, except for today, when I decided to type up this BTS.
I'm not entirely sure what I'll do next sims-wise. I think I need to start by taking a backup on the simming machine again, and I should also catch up on some stories, as I've been neglecting that during SimNano (and actually longer than that). But for my own simming, I'm not sure if I'll feel like the Bookacies or Lakewood next. We'll see!
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Date: Aug. 5th, 2019 01:43 am (UTC)I rarely use community lots for the same reason - annoying visitors. I just finished a chapter shot at a cafe that I sold to a sim who sat in a chair behind the building the whole time. I did the same thing for a funeral (no actual dead sims present). I run into the same problem with the bar and drinks and have never found a satisfactory solution to the 'holding a drink' problem. Holding a wine glass yes, but wine is frequently not what I want to use.
Thank you for taking the time and effort to do this.
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