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, send me an email.

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.

So if you’ve been wondering what I’ve been up to, I’ve been working on a new hack with Adele called the Custom Prop Hack which is available on MTS2.  Please be aware that you must also download Adele’s half that she posted for the prop textures to show up since they are linked.  As you can see from the picture, the hack allows Sims to hold various props while you can command them to do anything else.  While I made the hack and did the accessory placement, Adele made all the meshes.  This is something that I’ve been wanting in my game for a very long time and I’m sure any machinima director or storyteller has had the same wish.  So with my new custom posing powers (and lack of meshing skills), I decided to approach Adele who is not only an amazing director but a fantastic mesher too and, I think, it was a great match.  We actually started talking about this project last fall/winter and we worked back and forth on it via email.  We are both glad to finally have it done although we may add more stuff to it in the future.  I also have another hack that’s partially finished that I’d like to work on but I’ve also had a music video idea in my head the past 2 months.  I’m not sure if I have the energy to work on either at this point or do I know which I want to do but I hope to be bringing you something else in the near (or possibly not so near) future. :P

Yep, you read right.  I don’t have Sims 3 yet so please stop emailing me questions.  If you’re wondering why I didn’t buy it yet or plan to anytime soon it’s simple.  I really don’t play the game anymore and use it to make machinima.  Yes the new camera and lighting tools are kick-ass awesome in Sims 3 but without hacks and cc,  I don’t see the point.  It took me 2 days to make that silly 1 minute featured movie on the Sims 3 site and that’s because I had to sit around for hours waiting to capture a specific animation.  It’s not worth it to me, especially when we have animation customization ability in Sims 2 now.   If you ask many other seasoned machinima directors, they’ll tell you the same.  It looks as though the community is working hard and fast at cracking the game though so as soon as we get the ability to hack, I’ll be buying the game.  Anyway, I don’t know how much of this information is out there but we did get a handout on how to use the camera tool so here is the most relevant info (this guide is for the experienced Sims 2 camera user):

The keys to move the camera around such as W, S, D, A, E, Q are the same as Sims 2.  The new tool is the dutch camera which allows you to tilt from left to right, letting you create those funky Twilight Zone style angles:
SHIFT- D: tilts camera to the right
SHIFT- E: tilts camera to the left

There’s also the ability to zoom using the keys:
Z:  zooms in
X:  zooms out

You can also rotate the camera around a fixed point 360 degrees by using the left and right arrow keys- a cool feature we didn’t have in the Sims 2 (the keys I’m not absolutely sure on since I didn’t take notes).

The keys used to saving camera positions are almost the same as in Sims 2 except 4 isn’t included.  The save camera keys are from 5-9.

Now on to the good stuff that’s probably not in the booklet included with the game that you’re too lazy to read.  Find the camera file.  I don’t know where it is, they didn’t have it in the game when we were at the camp and we had to add and link to it later.  At that time it was called videocamera.ini but it might be called something else now.  If you know where it is in Sims 2, I have no doubt you’ll easily find it in Sims 3.  I messed with a lot of the numbers a bit when I was at camp but didn’t take thorough notes.  The descriptions are pretty self explanatory so don’t be afraid to play around with the numbers to test the camera (make sure you keep a backup copy!).

Controlling camera speed can be easily varied by changing the Move numbers.  You can adjust these numbers from and to an infinite range.  But just to give you some guidelines, you’ll want to use .1 or higher for very slow moving close-up shots and 50 to higher to faster moving wide-angle shots.

Move = # – changes the camera speed for horizontal movement
MoveVertical = # – changes the camera speed for vertical movement

The most important and coolest feature though is the LerpDuration.  What this number will do is control the amount of time you go from one saved camera position to another.  For example:

LerpDuration = 10 – this means that it will take 10 seconds from the camera to move from one saved position to another.  How cool is that?

Other things you’ll notice is the camera moves from one save position to another very smoothly without as much lag (which, if I remember correctly, you can actually edit in that file).  Same as Sims 2, you’ll be able to save the camera file while the game is open and have it take effect without restarting.

Lastly, for those of you who have the game, we machinima directors asked for certain features that were missing in the game.  I don’t remember the whole list (it was like 10 things) but please let me know if they included the following:
-some sort of set hour cheat
-fluidity of animations like if you string 2 animations together, they don’t go into default stand mode for a split second between animations. Same with when you make them change direction while walking.
-ability to grab Sims when you are in the neighborhood with the move objects cheat
-ability to get rid of sleeping zzz’s, musical notes/halo effects on instruments, progress bar
-some sort of way to extract and queue animations (yes, it was a stretch but I asked them for that but have little hope)