#jade babbles
Just a lil head’s up that today’s posts of OST are gonna be rough. Posts will be tagged appropriately, but fair warning regardless.
@streetlightaurora thank you SagiSister!
@simwithsparkles thank you Ramona! I am so glad you’re back ♥
@littlefrenchsims much appreciated dearest!
@sani-sims4 my sweet sani q.q thank you so much! Enjoy your rest ♥
@foxglovemoon@hula-zombie@galajunkiez@peonysimmer@holospite@mada-didi@dresdendarlin@simminglove@tabbyrhsims4simblr@skittlessims
Thank you all so, so, so much for all the love! It really made my day to read all of your sweet messages ^_^ You’re all wonderful people q.q
@pottery-sims MEL ahhhhh thank you! I MISS YOUR POSTS SO MUCH. Thanks for stopping in and sending me birthday wishes q.q
@brazencoquet thank you s a r a h!
@astralani ♥♥ much appreciated!
@cross-architecture thank you lovely :3
@rethdis-love thank you so much ♥
@momoception you are so sweet, thank you! ♥
I have, once again, spent way too long making a silly character quiz for my story. This time with CotS! I thought it would be fun to see who everyone gets, and if the cast members actually get their own sims lmao. Link for the quiz is below, comment and let me know who you get!
a visual guide | requested by @izayoichan
Iza asked me for some tips to get started with fantasy setup and scenery, and I’ve been asked before in the past, so I figured I’d just write up a post to better explain my personal process. This is by no means a tutorial and if you like your builds to be playable and seamless this is not the post for you. But if you’re interested in how I go about things or just have a morbid interest in long rambling posts, enjoy!
decide what you want to see in your pictures
I approach all my pics the same way, because I generally have a specific look I want to achieve, the same way I have a type when I make sims, I like all my pictures to have a consistent aesthetic throughout. I think it’s common that a lot of simblrs have a signature, even if they don’t think they do. I’m just aware of mine and actively work towards it. But I haven’t always had “my thing” and honestly the only way to find what is yours, is to try different things and find what stands out to you as being visually pleasing.
When I make photos I incorporate the same few elements; namely transparent curtains or “flowy draped things”, leaves and florals which I use to frame my pictures to give some semblance of foreground and depth to my photos. Plus a lot of hazy soft white light… and sometimes sparkles.
One way I can recommend to find what your style is without taking heaps of pics, is to go through your favorite kinds of artwork and see what elements pop up repeatedly. What sort of things do you like about those pictures and how can you try to mimic or incorporate them in yours?
building with the final product in mind
A lot of people have asked for my builds over the years not realizing that while some of my sets are expansive, they are only made for the explicit purpose of taking pics, and that I intentionally angle photos to give the impression that there’s more to it than there is. Most of my sets are very small and don’t make much sense in practice:
Think of the sort of picture you want to make, and consider your formatting. For edits I do “pinterest/lock screen” style vertical format, which means I will have a very narrow, very tall lens, so I only need to decorate in a condensed space. For story shots I have to build more extensively because they are wide shots. Building for a specific picture or set of photos can reduce the amount of work you put into setup.
planning your set
Depending on the sort of theme you’re going for, find some pieces of cc that illicit that vibe of the aesthetic you want. Here are a few of my go-to’s when I do anything elven:
Take lot space into account. I almost always build on 64x64 lots unless I am doing a single room. When I build small sets I usually focus on details up front, then get less detailed for the background because I know they will be blurred. This applies to lived in spaces like homes or community lots where you would clutter surfaces, or in wooded areas, use more of your flower and stone clutter in places you know will end up in the photos.
Larger sets are much trickier, because you have to have a sense of scale to make things seem realistic, but since ts4 gives us limited space to work on, it can be very challenging. For my castle and other large scale builds I usually only build one particular area on a lot, then other pieces of it on separate lots. [For example, in this CotS scene, the bridge entrance into the banquet hall was on one lot, while the interiorwas on another]. This is one way I make things seem larger than what they really are. But this is not recommended for someone who wants full builds with all locations seamlessly together.
When I start building, I generally begin at the middle and expand outwards. I’m not one of those smart people that pre-plans where everything will go on a lot, I just go in swinging and hope things fall into place lmao. Please reference this askfor more evidence of my failure and disorganization amazing city-building skills.
Use flowers, rocks and bushes to hide sharp edges or corners, especially to cover the bottom of walls or foundation. A little terrain painting underneath to add naturalness, and some fallen leave clutter to give the appearance of the passage of time.
Scale is really important in high fantasy. As scenery elements in fantasy concept art, movies or video games are often depicted as massive, and impose themselves on the surrounding setting. Here’s a great video that explains scale in art. How can we achieve this in sims? Easy! We have the power of resize button ;) Add some interesting angles and voila!
Make the lot seem bigger, more “mystical” with the use of fog and light objects for exteriors, or mirrors when doing interior/corridors.
Downloads: [fog rugs] [light + darkness objects]
As a purely alpha simmer, I also use heavy foliage, cliff rocks, backdrops and fog to obscure the maxis match game world.
UseTOOLmod and OMSPs like your life depends on it.
If you want more technical and visual guides on how to build in ts4, or do big city builds, I know kateEmeraldandSatiSims both have time lapse and how-to videos on their youtube channels.
When building fantasy sets I don’t usuallyhave reference photos. The fun part is creating my own personal world, so I don’t want to mimic something inch by inch. Instead I try to recreate a feeling for myself. I’ve always loved fantasy, LOTR in my favorite movie, and WoW was my first major MMO. Their settings make me incredibly nostalgic, not only for the feel of the parallel history they represent, but for the time and place in my life in which I discovered them. When I’m building, I am specifically trying to recapture that feeling. Which is why I settle on a handful of sets and use them again and again, because they represent some portion of that memory.
It’s hard to explain it in writing, but I recommend digging through your own personal experiences with your favorite fantasy game series, novel or maybe a place you visited that gave you a feeling of “magic” and try to weave that into your build. One such place for me is Yehl/Vaia’s bedroom, which reminds me a lot of the room in Rivendell where Frodo wakes up after Arwen’s ride, or the inn from AoA which makes me nostalgic for the renaissance festival in my home state. Focusing on the feeling can be sometimes better than trying to recreate something, because often when using a fantasy concept ref you are going to run into some game limitation, especially if you can’t make your own cc, and that will discourage you from continuing. It may also be better than using other people’s game photos as reference, because then you will likely end up too similar and that style wont feel like your own. But if you’re just starting out, I really recommend using pinterest to collect some images of things you like, photographs or artwork, anything. It’ll give you a starting point if you’re completely lost.
After sitting down and trying to write this up, I realized it’s much more difficult to explain via text how I make any of my sets LMAO. I know you primarily asked for my thought process and such, but I’ll be happy to try and answer any specific questions you might still have. All in all, the only way to improve is to practice. And try not to get discouraged and give up, because that only hinders progress. Find some part of it that you can love, cuz otherwise you’ll never be able to make yourself do it xD Anyways, this was just a long drawn out way of saying “throw things at the wall and hope they stick”, GL!
bridge of khazad doom
I needed a rope bridge ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
