Hi there! I’m just checking in since it’s been since February since I last said hi. It was encouraging to see that some of you still come around to my blog- yippee! I have and still am super busy in real life. I’m doing tons of remodeling…still and it feels like there’s no end in sight.  I think that’s pretty common when it comes to remodeling though.  I’m taking a break from staining and polyurethaning the stairs to the master bedroom (I think I just made up a word) to post. Guess what color I stained it?  If you’ve downloaded my custom content, you should know that it was a dark coffee color!  Heehee.  The stain is actually called coffee brown and I had all the wood floors in the house stained that color. Lovely…

I’ve actually been sort of wanting to work on my next machinima project which I’ve had on my mind for a looong while.  I might have mentioned it before so forgive me if I do so again but I want to do a Sims 2 video for “Passenger Seat” by Death Cab for Cutie. Yeah, yeah, another Death Cab song but as I’ve always said I don’t pick the songs, the songs pick me.  Their music just really speaks to me on an emotional level and that’s how I listen to and respond to music.  I’ve always had such strong imagery to this song and have 2/3rds of the song conceptualized which is enough to work on it.  But, alas I have absolutely no time and I’m worried I won’t be able at all to work on it.  Oh well, wish me luck on that.  Here are some of the lyrics that make me think about the journey of life we take with our loved one:

I roll the window down
And then begin to breathe in
The darkest country road
And the strong scent of evergreen
From the passenger seat as you are driving me home…

With my feet on the dash
The world doesn’t matter.
When you feel embarrassed then I’ll be your pride
When you need directions then I’ll be the guide
For all time…

It’s a pretty simple song but incredibly meaningful (Ben Gibbard is an amazing lyricist) and I see the movie in very cool, intimate blue tones.

I’ve wanted to share some music with you but I’ve hardly been keeping up on the new music out there so for now I just have one song I absolutely love.  It’s from one of my favorite bands, The National, who just released their latest album.  Nothing close to Alligator or The Boxer which I highly recommend but High Violet is very good.  The song is called “Conversation 16″ and no one does  middle class, middle aged angst better these days than these guys (to me anyway).  Err…does this mean I’m middle aged now?  Crap, I guess so.

The National – Conversation 16 (to save, right click and save as)

I’d love to do a video for a song by The National but I have a hard time with imagery with their music.  I respond to them emotionally but their lyrics are oftentimes cryptic, very metaphorical and dare I say sometimes ugly so I have a hard time seeing clean, film-able images.

I don’t think many of you are making Sims movies anymore.  I’d love it if you remarked in your reply what you’ve been doing- i.e. still making movies, still watching movies, using different medium, engaged in a different hobby, etc.  I’d love to know since many of you quit your blogs!

Note the cavernous echo in my all but abandoned blog. I can’t blame you folks for not coming around anymore so I apologize for the long absence. Did I disappear into Sims nothingness? Nope, I’m still here. Real life has taken precedence though and I haven’t had time to do anything else. I recently moved and am doing and having extensive renovations done so I’m super busy at the moment. My computer isn’t even unpacked. It’s safely tucked away in a closet where it won’t collect the icky construction dust that is on everything else. Achoo!

I haven’t really been keeping up with the Sims stuff so don’t know what’s going on with that world. I don’t have Sims 3 and probably won’t buy it but did spent a few minutes looking at my favorite Sims 2 download sites and saw some cool goodies that I want. There’s nothing like a download spree to get me going on my projects. It’ll probably be another 2 months before I can get to the point of setting up my computer which does suck (I’m posting from my hubby’s laptop). I still do want to work on more movies but really, who knows at this point? In the meantime, I hope you are all doing well. I miss interacting with many of you but I’m surely not the only one who has been absent in the Sims world. As an aside, living without a kitchen really really sucks.

I’ve been getting several emails asking me if I’ll be doing another series or more movies. Since I don’t reply to emails asking about current or future projects (that’s what the blog’s for), I decided to talk about it here. So here are my responses:

Will you be making another series?
The answer is no and it’s not for a lack ideas because I’ve had two other series ideas which I’ve blogged about in the past. Yeah, you vaguely remember them, don’t you? It took me over three years to finish Adventures in Dating and it took an incredible amount of commitment and effort on my part to complete the series, not to mention most of my incredible actors who stuck with me even as they discontinued their involvement with Sims. If you’ve followed other directors’ series over the years, you’ve probably noticed that a great majority of them don’t finish. That’s because working on one is very exhausting and it’s easy to get distracted. In order to stick to mine, I’ve had to really stay focused on AinD while avoiding working on other projects. I like to finish what I start and there is just no way I can commit to a long term project right now and know that I will finish. Honestly, I don’t see myself still interested in Sims a few years from now, do you?

Will you be making more movies?
I can’t give a definitive answer for this one but I’d like to think the answer is yes. I have half a dozen movie ideas swirling in my head, many of them have even been swirling for years. The ‘problem,’ if you can call it that, is the lack of motivation. Anyone who’s worked on a machinima piece knows how much preparation it takes even before filming begins and there’s even more for me because I can’t imagine making a movie now without custom animations- why give up the ability to truly translate what I have in my mind to the movie, beyond the game limitations? Then there’s the filming and editing (although I can’t complain about the editing because I think it’s the easiest and most gratifying part). I’ve always said machinima was a hobby and it still is. A hobby is something you do for fun or other gratification. Like with any hobby, interest will wane over the years and it has done just that for me- like to many of you and my fellow machinima directors who’ve stopped producing or just stopped with Sims all together. It doesn’t help that I haven’t moved on to Sims 3 because as I’ve mentioned before, I’d never give up my hacks or ability to custom animate and at this point, I’m not interested in Sims anymore simply for gameplay (that went away a long time ago when I delved into machinima).

Does this mean I won’t be making another movie? Not necessarily and it’s great that people even care enough to ask.  I’ve been on the verge of working on a couple of different things but haven’t quite gotten around to it.   It also doesn’t help you guys that I try not to blog when I start working on a new project since that has a tendency to jinx things and I end up not carrying through.  So, if I am working on something, I’ll blog about it well into the project and if you’re on my mailing list will get notification.  Besides, I haven’t even had the chance to use my accesory hack yet!  Whatever happens, thanks so much for sticking by me for so many years.  I really appreciate it.

I’ve had people requesting certain characters from AinD since I started the series and although it’s been a while since it’s been over, here are four of the most requested characters.  All the characters are in base game underwear and in the hairstyles you see featured in the picture above with the exception of Emma who comes with that hairstyle but base game texture.  I am way too lazy to list all the custom content used on them which is why I’m posting them here rather than my Designs site.  Both Emma and Ellen have one of Oepu’s old skins but I had to erase the eyelid creases because they were all wonky.  I didn’t upload all of the main characters since Ryan, Elijah, Cecily and Randy were made by other people and they haven’t been requested by anyone.  Anyway, get them while you can.  I may take them down at a later time so I don’t have cc creators yelling at me for not listing their content.

You may download Emma, Eugene, Nate, and Ellen.  They are all in zip format.  My policy for using them is that you may do whatever you want with them.  Just don’t use them in your movies or stories as their AinD characters (e.g. make your own AinD versions with them- that’d be creepy and lame).  And if you want Emma’s hair used later in the series, it can be found at Raonsims but the I used SimScribbling’s texture for it.

EDIT:  The sims are no longer available for download.  If you really want them though, contact me and I’d be happy to send them.

So that my blog doesn’t look like a desolate warehouse, I’ve got some music for you.  You may preview them and if you like and download them by clicking on the song names (zip format).  As usual, I’ll take these songs down after a little while so I don’t have strangers leeching my bandwidth so get them while you can!

Wrapped Up – Picture Atlantic
1901 – Phoenix
Lovers Who Uncover – The Little Ones
Midnight Fires – Pilot Speed
Sant Feliu De Guixols – Jeremy Enigk

If any of the songs has piqued your interest enough into buying the album, my recommendations are as follows:

-Picture Atlantic, Kleos:  A good solid album worth getting if you can find it since it had limited distribution.  They are sort of like Coldplay so if you like them, you’ll definitely enjoy this album.

-Phoenix, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix: I would say that the entire album is enjoyable and rather perky but hasn’t completely grown on me yet.  The song I posted and “Lisztomania” are the stand-outs to me.  I probably have to listen to it some more before making a final judgment but for now, I would say it’s an ok album but a must-have for you Phoenix fans.

-The Little Ones, Sing Song: Well, I don’t have the album and just this one song.  I only know a handful of songs from this band so at this point, I can’t give a recommendation.

-Pilot Speed, Wooden Bones: Pilot Speed is definitely one of my favorite bands.  If any of you remember at the end of AinD ep. 7, I used the song “Travel Song” by them (under the band name Pilate) and also created the music video “Alright” using the song by the same name.  Both songs were off their first album Caught By the Window which is hard to find now since it was an import;  I had to pay extra to get it but it’s an extraordinary album worth every penny.  If you can’t get that, they repackaged some of their songs from that album along with some new ones to an album called Into the West for distribution in the U.S. and abroad which is also excellent.  Wooden Bones is their newest release and, although not as amazing as their previous albums, is a very good solid album I’d definitely recommend.

-Jeremy Enigk, Ok Bear:  Of Sunny Day Real Estate fame, Jeremy Enigk is an extrememly talented song writer.  I’ve used his music before- the music video “One and One is One” is based on his song by the same name as well as “River to Sea” in AinD ep. 14.  Like all of his previous work, this latest album is very solid and I’d recommend it.