Day Five Behind the Scenes - The Homestretch!

[orikes]

Day Five is posted!

Actually, it was posted last night, but I was too tired to post a link here after getting it uploaded and getting the post made on Boolprop. I'd actually been hoping to get it up on Saturday, but there were still a couple of scenes to shoot and that took a little longer than I'd hoped.

Now that I'm in the homestretch, the writing is going much easier. It helps that there's more plotty scenes than otherwise, but still. The first couple of days were brutal to get through, but now I can see the finish line.

Now for the behind the scenes picspam!







The sand castle scene was actually staged. I had some great pictures of Cecil making a sand castle and I realized I wanted to use them, but thought it might be more interesting if Scott joined in. Once I got that idea in my head, I had to set the scene up and take it from that angle. It also gave me another chance to put the spotlight on Scott.



Even though the scores were really close, it honestly felt like the right thing to have Scott be the one to leave. He and Miranda get along fine, but there really wasn't a spark there between them. As Miranda said, he tends to stay in the shadows. Scott just always seemed to fade into the background and let the other bachelors take the spotlight.

This made it a little hard to figure out how to give him a little more facetime before saying goodbye. Then I realized, it really did make sense for the situation he grew up in. I mean, think about it. He's got his older brothers, Nelson and Columbus who have their friendly rivalry and all the girls they're dating. Then there's Jenny and Louisa who are both larger than life figures. His twin Adelina, the cheese sim starting a cheese cult. Then you bring in the 'twins' and their escapades. Other than his two baby sisters, Scott really is the most retiring one of the bunch. He's completely content letting others take the spotlight.

His relationship with his sisters helped him understand Miranda a little better than some of the other bachelors, but it didn't do anything for his romantic chances.



Speaking of our bachelorette, have I gushed about how much I love taking pictures of her lately? She makes the best faces.



This was an alternate shot for the end of the update where she gets the phone call from Scott. I almost used this one because of the background, but I decided the one I used had a bit better emotion in it.



Of course, she's not the only one that throws me awesome faces. I have much love for Dean.

This is one of the pictures that I wanted to use, but it just didn't work in well enough, so you get it in the Behind the Scenes.



"Why have I never noticed those before?"

Speaking of pictures I loved but really couldn't use in the update...



I was really looking forward to the goose. Miranda's relationship with all the bachelors was high enough I figured they'd all accept it, especially after they all accepted the romantic kiss the night before. Still, it was the most provocative of the flirts she could have done on them.



The reaction shots were hilarious, but it was quite a bit of fun trying to find the right shot for each bachelor. Even though they all go through the same animation, I needed a different feel for each one.



For example, Cecil smiling during the goose was just not going to cut it. Even if it is hilarious.



Okay, so the darts scene between Cecil and Dean. That was all autonomous and was fascinating for reasons completely different than the way I wrote it. Dean and Cecil became best friends that morning in the hot tub. I thought I had a picture of the smiley faces, but I couldn't find it.

While Miranda was having her date with Scott, these two started playing darts with one another. Everything was going fine until I suddenly saw all the minuses and broken friendship signs flying. WTF? Cecil was suddenly furious with Dean and I couldn't find a reason. Dean really isn't mean enough to cheat, so what the heck?

I watched them a little closer after that and lo and behold, it happened again. It was caused by a bullseye. From this picture, it looks like the first one was Cecil's bullseye, and then the next one was Dean's. No cheating was involved, but these two were taking the game WAY too seriously.

Luckily the furious cleared up pretty quickly and they were friends again fairly soon after that.



Cypress makes the BEST faces. This was an obviously staged scene, but I have a ton of pictures of him just making Cypress faces. He was a crapload of fun to write in this. It's fun having a character who has no internal editor and has an ego the size of Baltimore.



Speaking of large egos, I also enjoyed photographing Aria. She's an amazingly pretty sim and I don't think she could have been any other aspiration than Romance. She pulls these amazing bedroom eyes expressions that are just gorgeous.



Of course, that doesn't mean she is the smartest cookie in the box.



Since I installed AL, this has become Rhys' favorite activity. Any time I leave him alone for a second, he pulls out the jump rope and starts up.

The weirdest moment was when I was using the model pose hack. He was still visibly sitting on the floor where I'd posed him but as far as the game was concerned, he was jumping rope. It was very bizaare and one of the reasons I'm not that fond of the model poses hack.



I mean, it gets the job done and it's nice to have some alternative poses in some things. Like, I love the 'lean forward on my knees' pose. The problem is more things like Uranium's pose here. Her knee is completely deformed if you look at it from the right angle. It even looks a little odd here, but it works.

The other thing with this picture is that their feet are not touching the ground. I had to angle the camera just the right way to make it look like they weren't dangling their feet.



This pose right here was also one of the hardest I had setting up. It looks pretty natural, but it was a right pain in the ass. I had to put a couch in the room to get him to lounge just right, then I had to find an OMSP that was the right height to make it look like he was on the bed. Unfortunately the bed OMSP wouldn't work since he was floating on the invisible tray. Finally I discovered that the lowest rung on the stairs OMSP is the right height. But it was a bitch to place.

But doesn't Devon look good?



I have no idea when Farnsworth met Ophelia. Or why he's day dreaming about her. But that's an awfully happy smile on his face.



Lipschitz is so cute. I hope Kiwi thinks I'm doing okay with him. I feel like I've been writing him a bit more over the top than she did, but there's always been a touch of silliness where he was involved. And he's cute.

I'll give a little more information on the stuff with Hello and him, but I will say that it's been completely autonomous.



Rhys makes the best faces. I loved using him for the exposition on what they were attempting since he was amazingly expressive. I couldn't even use half the pictures I took for that scene. I actually had to go back and get another picture of Lancelot because I didn't have enough of the other folks there.



Now, for an interlude I like to call 'Poor Malcolm'.

"Great. Just great. I'm vampire food in Stacie's legacy, a babydaddy in Doc's, and a villain in Michelle's, and now I get abuse in yours too? I didn't even think you had Bluewater installed in your hood."

I don't. But I've got it installed in Maxistonia and I needed a teeny bit of playtime this weekend, so I popped open the Ramirez house. Since it was the first time I'd opened that house, they got their noon Welcome Wagon. Malcolm was part of it.



So was Olive Nigmos. They did not get along. At all.

In Mal's defense, I will note that Olive started it. She shows up in almost every Welcome Wagon and does this with someone almost every time. This time it just happened to be Mal.



"Haven't I been through enough!? I thought Stacie had made me a sympathetic character and people would be rooting for me to have a little bit of happiness now."



Sorry Mal. Olive's just one tough old bird. Don't mess with the Black Widow, dude.



Day Six will hopefully be out within a week or so, but I have a lot of scenes to shoot and some of them are going to be pretty complicated. There's one scene that will probably have about upwards of eighteen characters being controlled. I think I may turn off Free Will for that one.

As a side note, I'm sorry about the broken picture links in older posts. Mux.net is having a bit of an issue and it doesn't look like it's been set up completely yet. Hopefully it gets fixed soon so my normal links work.

Comments

[smjoshsims.livejournal.com]

Cypress really does make amazing faces doesn't he? I love that shot you used in the update of him yelling at Hello.

I installed AL yesterday and I'm already tired of every single Sim jumping rope. -_-

Malcolm throws amazing faces as well! I have such a soft spot for him since Vetinari and Strangetown, Here We Come. He's such an interesting Sim, in my opinion, all I ever think when I see him is "Poor Little Rich Boy."

[docnerd.livejournal.com]

Dean's faces are just so much fun. Part of it's the perma-grin, and part of it's his inherent Dean-ness.

Oh, the Darts Game of Fury. That'd make sense for why Archie was mad at Helen, except his feelings had to have predated the game! I'm surprised Dean got mad, though. I had SJ shoving him for a while in Whedonari, and he'd just wander off like, "What is your deal, man?" No crying, no retaliation, just walking away.

I like those eyes in Cy's face. And he does throw really great expressions when you need him to. Plus, he always enjoys the Argue. And he is LOADS of fun to write, because you don't need him to be sympathetic AT ALL. Aria does have the Bedroom Eyes thing working, that's for sure.

I've gotten into the habit of turning off Free Will when I use the Model Pose Hack for that reason. Of course, generally when I'm using it, it's for a big photoshoot and I've got Free Will off anyway. I've always wondered why they still do other things while they're posing.

Can't believe Malcolm got his butt kicked by Olive. Funny and sad all at the same time. And the man's got quite the case of multiple personality disorder across the multiverse, after all, can't he catch a break?

[docnerd.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I had Sims reject the Caress but allow the Goose immediately after. Goose might come off as being a higher-level flirt, but it seems to be more easily-accepted than Caress when the relationships are on that bubble. I don't know why.

[ndainye.livejournal.com]

The model pose does extremely weird things. I think it's primarily an overlay so it doesn't cancel any other actions. I tend to turn Free Will off if I'm going to be using it for more than a few moments. In that picture I showed off of Puck and Dorme I had to yank the Rubic's cube out of Dorme's hands before I snapped it.

Dwight I see you chatting up 'Ranie there. I can't remember for sure but I think with AL romance benefits they had three bolts in my old hood. She wasn't top of his list but they ended up in the hot tub and the photo booth pretty much any time they were on a lot together.

[orikes13.livejournal.com]

ALL the romancers have three bolts with each other at the old fort. Well, at least along gender preference lines. Uranium tends to stick to stalking Rhys, but Dwight stalks her quite a bit. Lancelot does too, but he's just as happy to give up and start chatting with some of the other guys.

I always forget to turn off Free Will when I do these things, so I'll probably have to start doing it soon.

The one big problem I ran into with the model poses hack is that sometimes the facial expressions overlay wouldn't work like it's supposed to. LIke, I got Rhys and Uranium into position on the bed and then tried the overlay. But it wouldn't work until I took them OFF the bed and tried it. Then I put them back. It was a bit of a pain in the arse. On top of that, Uranium's leg looks really weird. Ah well. They're nice for variety.

[swhedonberry.livejournal.com]

Malcolm acts like such a bastard in most people's games. He's always been pretty friendly in mine sans a couple of "grr" expressions. Poor, sweet boy. He has issues.

Sweet lord, that picture of Cypress is freaky.

And did I see Dean hamming it up for the camera? Nah, couldn't be.

[profbutters.livejournal.com]

I always love the outtakes almost as much as I love the actual chapters. These explained a couple of things I was curious about.

What is an OMSP? I'm finding that I'm getting really, really, really cautious about hacks and even CC. There have been so many hiccups in my game recently that I'm really nervous about adding anything, but I'd like to know anyway.

Yeah, Cecil's obsessed with sandcastle building, but I was wondering if Scott joining in was free will. I liked the way you wrote Scott in this chapter. I actually thought he acted as a kind of glue for the three who are left, and they will need to work together, even though clearly there is no real love lost between Cecil and Dean.

I'm amused that they actually do seem to be competitive, even though they are (offscreen) best friends. That picture really looks as though Cecil is saying, "Mr. Whedonberry, you have been pwned, if you will forgive the colloquialism."

AUGH goose, need brain bleach.

Now I want to know what Rhys looks like jumping rope while sitting down.

PB

[orikes13.livejournal.com]

OMSP is 'One More Space'. They're objects with an invisible recolor that are created at the same height as various other objects in game. The idea is that you can put something on an OMSP, turn it invisible, then use moveobjects and snapobjectstogrid false to place multiple objects on a single surface. It's how I got Devon to lie on his bed like he was lounging on a couch. They're handy to have but there's alternatives out there.

[fireflowersims.livejournal.com]

The weirdest moment was when I was using the model pose hack. He was still visibly sitting on the floor where I'd posed him but as far as the game was concerned, he was jumping rope. It was very bizaare and one of the reasons I'm not that fond of the model poses hack.
*nodnod* That drives me crazy about the hack, especially when they get weird little motions in. (However, Rhys jumping rope? PRICELESS.)

I was really looking forward to the goose.
One of my favorite parts of the chapter, hands-down. I wasn't sure if I was hoping she'd goose Cecil or not, but omg, I can't believe she actually went for it. She's the ballsiest sim ever, I swear.

But doesn't Devon look good?
All that for your one and only Devon shot? :P

I loved day five, and I'll post a review for it (and day four) soon. I don't have the energy to review and post some more Sevenwaters and/or simself stuff, though. And I'm so excited about day six! I really don't know how I want it to turn out. She and Dean are so perfect for each other, but I really like her relationship with Cecil, too. So I don't know.

[profbutters.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes. Too bad you couldn't include the picture of Miranda's goosey hand, because it's hilarious.

As far as Goose/Caress goes. . . I've also sometimes seen Goose accepted and Caress rejected. I don't know what the game logic of it is, but the emotional logic of it makes perfect sense to me. A grab on the butt is one thing. You either like it or you don't. But a touch on the face is intimate.

I also decided that in honor of Miranda's BC, Cyd was coming out of the Sim Bin and getting moved into a house. I don't know if he'll actually get played: it was a big deal to go ahead and buy him a toilet, which made him happy. But he does get to be a placeholder now. And I'm thinking about giving him a BC-style makeover, too, if you don't mind. :)

[orikes13.livejournal.com]

Oh please! Definitely give Cyd a Devon-ish makeover. I think he rocks the ponytail quite seriously. Even if it is a dye job. ;)

With ACR, I haven't had too much of a reason to gain an understanding of the rankings of flirts and whatnot. I rarely see goose in my game, which is unfortunate. It's a funny interaction. :) I almost wish there was another variation which was a pinch from behind rather than a grope from the front.

[orikes13.livejournal.com]

I haven't played AL all that much, but Rhys is the only one I've seen autonomously jump rope. I think you'll probably ony see it with the high active ones.

[orikes13.livejournal.com]

Dean does make the best faces. His mouth is a little odd, but the smile makes up for it. Just having him in my game shows how charming he is.

If I remember right, it wasn't Dean that was mad. Cecil was the one with the bullseye, but he was the one who got furious. Dean was just upset for losing a best friend. It was really weird. I still don't quite understand what happened with that. Dean never got upset or angry with Cecil. He just took the aspiration hit and kept on trucking.

I'm pretty happy with my eyes. Occasionally I get some weirdness with the shadows when sims do a really weird animation with their eyes, but it's usually not too bad. I've thought of doing an edit to the eyes where I combine the background of Lyran eyes with the iris and pupil of my standard eyes. I think that would fix some of the problem. I just need to find and take the time to do it. Maybe after Day Six is up.

[orikes13.livejournal.com]

Prof had a good point about that. Ultimately, goose maybe obnoxious, but a caress is intimate.

[orikes13.livejournal.com]

Your boy is a big old ham, Staci. I still wish I could have found a reason to use that picture. Such a great shot of him.

I keep wanting to chat with you about the whole multiverse thing. :)

[orikes13.livejournal.com]

The first time I ever saw that oddness with the hack was when I was taking the end of college group shot of the gen four kids. Ian and Nathaniel were both posed with the hack and I realized after a moment that their icons both said they were playing red hands. I was like "WTF?"

I try and use the other hacks first, but sometimes it's nice to have the option to use one of the poses.

Heh. Yeah, it's kind of funny that I went through so much to pose Devon and then never really had a good shot of him in that pose. Oh well. :}

And that's fine on the delayed review. It'll give me something to look forward if you do find time to do it. :)

[orikes13.livejournal.com]

OH! And on Rhys and the sitting down while jumping rope, the only thing that showed up was Rhys sitting there and an empty rope jumping itself. :)

[dicreasy.livejournal.com]

Wow, I've never seen sims fall out over a game of darts before.

There are some great pictures here Orikes, I always love seeing out takes, and hearing what other authors have to say about the behind the camera stuff.

I've found I've had, not exactly trouble, but small difficulties when using the model hack, in particular the face overlays. Sometimes they work, other times they don't, even with free will turned off. If you can get it set up right, and get the right angle, it's great and gets the job done, but I think I prefer to try to work other things out.

[orikes13.livejournal.com]

I had Venus and Aeric fall out over a game of darts back in Uni before they got together. It didn't hurt their relationship for too long, but it took me a little while to figure out why she was furious at him.

I love the out takes too. I love hearing about the planned vs. unplanned stuff as well as seeing how an author makes use of what the sims give him/her. Of course, it's also cool seeing how other people do things.

[penguingirl03.livejournal.com]

I'm way late on leaving a comment on the outtakes because I didn't want to read them until I had read the chapter but I just want to say that your explanation of Scott's tendency to fade into the background is perfect. He and Adelina were what I called "the forgotten middle children" since they didn't get much face time or attention since I was micro-managing two vampires and a bunch of toddlers. Adelina at least pulled herself out of it with the cheese thing but when you have 10 kids in a generation a few of them are going to get ignored. It doesn't help that he's also shy.

I love the rest of the outtakes with all of the fun expressions. You have quite the mix of sims going on at the moment. :-)