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!

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.

Gasp!  Another post so soon?  As if you guys like hearing from me that much. :P   Anywho, I’m writing because I did an interview with the Sims team a few weeks ago and it looks like it was finally published on the Sims 2 site.  They launched a new (or redesigned) page called “The Sims 2 Machinima Page” and I was lucky enough to be the first director chosen for an interview.  I love how they set up the page with all my movie posters, which I didn’t know they would do.   Doing this interview gives me a lot of kudos so I really appreciate the Sims team thinking of me for this.  The interview is pretty long though so hopefully I don’t put you all to sleep and you can find something interesting in it.

Just letting you know that I’ve got the recap video and description up on the Adventures in Dating site.  I haven’t had the energy to write up production notes for episode 15 but hopefully I can do that before the next episode.  We’ll see.  I also have two new all four sneak peek pictures of the finale up on AinD Backstage if you’d like to take a gander.  Keep checking back once a week and you shall see more sneak peak pictures.  I thought about putting up a bit of audio too but decided against it for now since it won’t be too long until I release the finale (I hope).  I’m not totally sure and won’t be until the episode is finished but the finale looks like it may run about 20 minutes, give or take a few minutes. I originally had the series planned for 15 episodes when I started but had to reorganize it.  Could you imagine if I only had 15?  The finale would’ve been even longer and then I’d be bald from all the frustration of pulling my hair out working on it.

On a side note, for those of you who watched the Christmas video I coordinated with several other directors last year- I wanted to make another one this year too.  But, I just don’t have the time with working on the AinD finale.  I hope there are others who make good holiday videos.  They’re so much fun to watch.  Anyway, if I don’t ‘talk’ to you guys again before the holidays, happy holidays!

EDIT:  Oops, I also forgot to add that I finally got around to redoing the trailer for AinD.  As you might’ve guessed the original trailer didn’t include scenes from the actual series.  It had the characters and sets but obviously nothing had been filmed yet.  So, I finally got around to replacing all the ‘original’ scenes.  You may watch that on the AinD site’s Episodes page or on my youtube which I rarely use or check so I figured I’d better put something up there.