Portvale

I've never been one for RP stuff. I did a little when I played World of Warcraft on a role playing server, but thats about it, and usually it was weird RP like stuff with ogre lioncloths and getting married on the corpses of bosses.
However I decided to signup to Portvale, which is a Sims 3 RP site created by Jillie and Miss Harlequin.
They put a lot of effort into the back story of the town and just the whole set up of the forum. There's already 9 female characters and 6 male characters accepted.

I have one character awaiting acceptance, (I have to do her pictures first), and one character already up and running. If you're interested in RP I suggest you check it out, and while you are there, check out my simmys! hehe

Rivet Harkness Kinda loosely based on Captain Jack Harkness from Dr Who/Torchwood
Sweetpea Frost Very loosely based on Abby from NCIS

Hard drive Failure

Well it hasn't failed yet, but last night I had a scare. Moved my laptop downstairs (I've been sitting upstairs working on it since my brother in law took over my living room downstairs because he's sick and needs mummy and daddy to look after him *Insert eye-roll here*) it crashed and when I tried to restart it it couldn't see the C drive.

While thats not a ''your hard drive has shat the bed'' definitive annoucement, it can be a sign that it is failing, and since my machine is also making a lot of unessesary noise when accessing the C drive I'd say it's safe to say it's on it's way out.

So I've spent all last night and all day today so far, copying all my important files to an external hard drive...Sims saved stuff, pictures, photographs, music all that jazz. Running repairs, deleting any unused folders, uninstalling old games anything that might extend the life of my laptop.

Lucky it's my birthday next week I might need to get a new computer faster than I was planning to.

DEMONS results in!

 My favorite siggy of my collection I think! Was a close finale. If anyone is interested in some fantasy modeling with a demon (can be any interpretation of the creature, as you can see mine was with a Sci Fi twist) then check out Unbound for the possible cycle 2 of DEMONS, Simanims is a great host.

This win puts me up to 14 first place spots now, I've pretty much done everything, high fashion, lifestyle, teen models, male models, non editing, advertisements, fantasy. I know for definite that I'm joining the next cycle of Static hosted by Early (WOO SciFi), other than that I'm keeping my eyes open for anything that really sparks my interest.

Anti Smoking Advertisment

Really enjoying this competition. I really love being able to breaking up the regular modeling competition pictures with some advertisements, and ''Work It'' has some great assignments. This time all the contestants got the same assignment rather than all of us having different object or services to market, a anti smoking campaign.

DEMONS finale

Here's my entry for the finale of DEMONS, was a short lived compeition due to a tonne of drop outs, but I loved being able to do sci fi themed pictures once again.
I like my demon so much I'm going to make her over and sign her up to the next cycle of Static when it starts. I have the most fun creating Sci Fi pictures, so I think I'm going to be always on the look out for them.

SEDUCTION

REVOLUTION 

The full story behind the pictures can be found on the thread on Unbound for anyone who is interested.

Working on my Anti Smoking Advertisement today for Work It, so I will have that up tomorrow!

Dominion

Here's my Hot or Not entry as promised yesterday

Dominion the new map for League of Legends has been released, gave it a go this morning with the husband before he left for work. It's interesting, probably a bit too Arathi Basin from World of Warcraft for me though. However I probably would have enjoyed my first experience more if we didn't have a total dickhead on our team.

I'm all for people trying to actually be good at an online game, since their personal abilities do effect the enjoyment of the game for others, but there's just no need to be total assholes about it. Verbally abusing someone because they die a couple of times doesn't help them and doesn't make you look like a decent human being either, there's just no need for it, it's a fucking computer game after all.

Felt sorry for the player that this guy just totally ragged on the entire match...he also had a jab at me, right after he died to a three vs two fight, (somehow it was my fault that we lost a battle we were outnumbered in when they popped all their ultimates) so I reported him, as did the other three people on my team. Hope the little cunt gets a suspension from the tribunal.

Assignment 3

Assignment 3 for Girls Just Wanna Have Fun is up and the example shot is another one done by me. Need to get around to doing the other three example shots soon actually.
The month is June, and I used the fact that June is the month that features the most weddings.

Finished and submitted my entry for Hot or Not, once those are posted up on the Wix site I'll post my entry here. Never did finish off the pose I was making for it, so I resorted to an existing one and used the liquify tool in photoshop to change the expression...handy trick that.

Finished one shot for DEMONS, hoping to get the other one done tonight. Once those are complete and submitted I'll be only in two comps again.

It's the Way she Goes

Got first place with the picture I didn't really like, and not even top three with the one I did. >.<

Assignment 2 of Girls Just Wanna Have Fun is up, and it features an example shot created by me for the month of September. I chose a nice and simple holiday for Canada, Labor Day and did a picnic shot. Tough competition in this cycle, scores are going to be super close every single round I think.

Going to hopefully try my hand at making poses soon. Couldn't work out why Blender wasn't working....and the active pose makers I know of use Milkshape instead, so I might as well work with the same program so if I have any issues or problems I can get hold of someone quickly.

Ziggy's Laundromat

It's not great, theres some obvious errors, but I did experiement with some new tools so all is good, I'm learning new things. Working with a Laundromat as my business was really difficult, I had cool ideas for all the other contestants businesses, but I kinda like the overall theme.

Pose combined the face because the fashion expression on that pose just didn't work for the eccentric fun loving feel I was going for. It didn't quite work, I should have gone back into game and taken another screen shot to get an angle that was more suited to the original, but I was short on time. I did play around with the Liquify tool for the first time, which is pretty cool.

I'm still trying to find a way to effectively mesh media from a real life photograph into a sims picture, will have to keep testing out different effects and such to see what I can come up with.

You Suck At Photoshop

Was given a link to a series of Photoshop tutorials on YouTube called ''You Suck at Photoshop''. They aren't super detailed, but they are hilarious. It runs kinda like a story of a guy who ends up getting a divorce from his wife who cheats on him, he also has a horrible job, a Facebook girlfriend who is quite a few years older than him and a weird World of Warcraft friend who skypes him all the time.

Through watching some of these today I've starting experimenting with some new tools. I'm very proud how this Hot or Not entry turned out. So much so I'm going to post the before and after pictures to show the differences. The pose I chose warped the dress really badly so I had to fix that, and I had to remove the weird lump it gave her foot. It's not perfect but I really like it.

The assignment was to have our model in a completely white/grey set wearing a bright contrasting color. I went a bit cliche with choosing red, but once again Sundra looks great in whatever color I put her in hehe.

BEFORE (completely unedited)

EDITED

Fixed the dress in three places
Re smoothed fabric
Fixed broken foot
Smoothed skin and hair
Removed cutting issue with hair
Recolored nails
Added Eyeliner and Eyelashes
Brightened eyes and earrings
Cropped image

Been a While

Sometimes there just isn't enough time in the day to do everything.

Trying to be an active member of 4 different forums, judge 6 Sims modeling competitions, plus be a judge and co-host for another one. Compete in three compeitions. Play League of Legends with the husband and our other online friends. Keep up with the chores (I feel like I mow the lawn more than anything else these days, thank god for snow coming soon...but then I guess it will go from lawn mowing to driveway/walkway shoveling instead). Trying to find time to read some sim stories I've been wanting to get into, watch more Torchwood and Haven and start watching some Photoshop tutorials on youtube.

Not to mention all those other little things that pop up, like the fact we have like 100 tomatoes from the garden sitting in the kitchen right now, we had to pick them all because of an incoming frost that did end up killing the plants. Now I have to think of something to make with them, my mother in law has a nice homemade pasta sauce recipe somewhere so that might be the best option.

Because of all this jazz the blog has been taking a bit of a backseat, once I have my entries for Hot or Not and Work it done I will post those but other than that posts might be a little few and far between, but we will see what happens.

Pontiac Solstice Advertisment

My entry for Hot or Not sucks, so I won't be posting that....however I had fun making my advertisment for ''Work It''.

We were assigned Cars to download, I got the Pontiac Solstice by Fresh Prince Creations....very nice vehicle, like all his CC. I decided to keep it yellow, seems to be a pattern I got a yellow painting last round, and this round a default yellow vehicle hehe.

Did some research and worked out that the particular design would more than likely be based off a Pontiac Solstice GXP, so that's what stats I went with.

I was going to do some hair drawing with this entry, but I just didn't have time....Really hope I can sort my life out so I can start planning my time a bit better, I'm sure it's getting old me always being the last to submit and my entries always looking a bit rushed.
Anyways, here is my Advertisment! Check out the thread on the officals, all the entries for this round are amazing.

Looking for a Judge

Cycle THREE of Girls Just Wanna Have Fun is now open! Sign-ups are in full swing.
For those that don't know it is a non elimination competition, with NO EDITING just pure Sim pictures
Suitable for modelers just starting out, but some stiff competition has already signed up for those that want a challenge too (Early, Mark, Phebes, Simpixie etc etc)

I'm co-hosting this cycle along with Felicia, and we are looking for an experienced judge to score along with me and our other less experienced judge whom Fel is mentoring.

Someone with judging experience is preferred, who can show some skill in simatography themselves
Reliable and has the time to do scores and write comments for 20+ simmers for 12 weeks
Comments must be detailed and specific, no two sentence feedback or ''there's something missing but I don't know what''

You can contact me on Unbound or Symlish
Felicia on Simpure Thoughts
Or you can access the thread on the officials if you are interested in applying for the spot....or if you want to join as a contestant!

Photoshop Progress

Yes long time no update. After a party my father in law broke his main walker so I've been trying to help out around the house more...plus the usual procrastination.

Have had some time to fool around with Photoshop, unfortunatly it was on compeition pictures, probably not the best place to be making shit up as I go along. My first attempt at hairdrawing was a diaster. The brush I was using didn't seem to be fine enough for my taste, and I think I might have to do some adustment with my pen pressure on my tablet or something since making strands wasn't as easy as I first thought it would be.

Hot or Not Black and White Assignment

Then I was kinda forced to edit heavily for Beech Modeling. I very much doubt I'll be lasting beyond third place, but I'm ok with that....this is the first heavily edited entry that I've done for anything that I can say I actually really enjoyed doing.

Beech Modeling Wild Animal (in swimsuit of course)

Learned some new tricks, and how to do certain stuff (like rotating and moving layers, desaturating single layers etc) in PS that I was so used to doing easily in GIMP. It's nowhere near perfect, however it's almost 7:30am and I would like to finally get some sleep lol.

Just Noticed

The title for my last blog post
HERPER DERP DERP...........
It of course should read ''Not Enough Time'', goes to show how frazzled I am right now, I'm fucking up my own blog posts

No Enough Time

So after a tonne of crashing while trying to just do the in game part of my entry for Beech Modeling last night, I never got the chance to get into photoshop. Was too tired by the time it hit 1am that I knew it was pointless trying to teach myself a new program, so I just opted for some quick GIMP touchups and submitted.
Maybe it will get me through to the semi finals, maybe it won't......we shall see....either way it will be my own fault, I need to plan things properly like I used to. I seem to suck more with fewer compeitions, moreso than I did when I was balancing 10 or more lol.

Here's the entry which is meant to be a romantic, erotic swimsuit shot something that wouldn't look out of place on the front of a romantic novel.

So my OFFICIAL OFFICIAL first photoshop picture will be for Hot or Not.....which I'm going to start on today

YARRR!

So excited! Got given a link to a safe download of Photoshop recently from a lovely simmer on Symlish. I install it today...took me forever. I also tried to install 900 brushes that I  also nabbed through a torrent, but CS5 has a limit on brushes so I'm going to have to actually go through them all and delete all the ones I don't like or won't use since they didn't all successfully install. Luckily thats really easy to do since I can delete and load brushes WHILE photoshop is open and running.

Normally I would give myself a chance to get used to the program before jumping right in....but screw it. I'm about to finish of the in game base of my entry for Beech Modeling....and then I'm going to slide it on into photoshop and get busy. I think I'm even going to attempt some hairdrawing.

I have until midnight tonight to get my entry in, and even if I end up getting eliminated due to trowing caution to the wind and working with a brand new program right in the assignment that will decide the top three...then at least I would have gotten some practice.

Life, Death and a bit of Lolita

So yeah, I totally forgot to post my stuff....bad PK

DEMONS entry, Assignment was two pictures representing how our Demon sees life and Death.

LIFE

After recovering from the shock of watching her own body being created Static got a chance to explore her surroundings. She found herself in a strange synthetic world, full of all kinds of information.

She began to familiarize herself with her summoner even before being introduced to her, by viewing photographs and home videos she had stored on her computer. Static watched hours of television shows, flicked through hundreds of pictures and listened to many different audio recordings, most of which were musical.

She learned all about her jailer, her family and friends....as well as the eccentricities of this new species called human, via all the media both personal and commercial her summoner had stored on her hard drive, from baby pictures to animations. Some of the discoveries were wondrous, others shocking and some confused Static and had her mind racing.

''Zara'', she said her name allowed, it felt foreign and strange, but Static knew it was a name she would remember.

DEATH

Zara turned out to be an interesting creature. Sometimes Static quite liked her, she spoke to her like a friend, asked her opinion on things and even entertained her. But she was also very cruel, sometimes treating Static like a toy, a slave....almost like she saw Static as something she had created rather than someone whom she had summoned from another plain of existence.

Something Static found both enjoyable and horrifying were computer games, Zara had a large variety of them on her computer, her favorites though were the ones that involved killing things. She included Static in these adventures, sometimes as an ally, and others as her enemy.

Static had not quite got her head around certain concepts of human existence from Zara's media library and one such thing was death. However during her time in these games she experienced this over and over. At first it was a little rattling, the sudden darkness and feeling of weightlessness, but eventually became expected, mundane. Static would put herself in riskier and riskier positions, having no fear of watching zombies tear her body apart, or bullets rip through her flesh......as she would just re-spawn to try it all over again, she was immortal.

Not exactaly the most stunning entries in terms of smooth editing, but I had fun making them, and they are decent considering I procrastinated for so long and was late getting them in (won't be doing that again)

And then there's my entry for Hot or Not. Beech has opted for that pesky ''PM me your assignment'' angle, so I feel weird about posting my entry before they have been revealed. I will however try to be better at remembering to post it than I was with Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.

First assignment was Lolita style, plain background, contrasting colors, sex appeal
Scores are already in for this one and I came first, I'm glad I scored so high even though my background was a bit TOO simple and I should have upped the Lolita look by adding stockings (Sundra has lovely legs though!)

100 Followers! Mwhahaha

Thank you to all those that visit. <3

Will have some more piccy's up tonight sometime, my DEMONS entry came out ok for a pretty quick job, and I have to do my entry for Hot or Not today too, so I might as well post them all together if I can.
Breakfast/lunch and scores for FLUX come first though.

I Get Distracted Easily

I'm currently desperately trying to finish scores for Inspiration and my pictures for DEMONS...I've been so slack lately. In between forums, and chatboxes, sleeping and spending time with the hubby I've done jack all in the sim modeling department, I'm behind in judging and my DEMONS entry is super late.
Soon as I have it finished I promise to post it, and I'm trying to get myself in order less time wasting, more making sure I'm up to date with all my other commitments.