#so I used overlay instead

[mel-addams]

Single Out the Shadows

[Image ID: A tiny Yugi stands, backlit and barely visible, at the end of a long, dark hallway. Most of the lights and parts of the walls are broken, with loose wires hanging in loops from the ceiling. Nearest the camera, on the left side of the hall is a room labeled "Inhabited Child," and through its glass door a small, hunched-over girl in tattered clothes can be seen. The room across from it is labeled "Paranormal Fungus," in which a large, bizarre pod is visible.

Strewn across the floor of the hall is broken glass and debris, as well as a few facility members' corpses. One has a creepy doll sitting on its torso, and another is pinned up on the far wall by rebar. Stretching along the length of the floor, starting at Yugi's feet and ending in the light cast by the closest rooms, is the ominous shadow of Yami Yugi. His Eye of Anubis, used for judgement and Penalty Games, is glowing bright yellow within the shadow's head.

/End Image ID]

~

Bakura: Where's Your Heart That Beats for Me?

Yugi: Single Out the Shadows

Marik: Waiting Silently for Hours

The Nursery in Secret World Legends is a horrible nightmare facility, with plenty of places to put poor Yu-Gi-Oh! kids, via "possessed child" crossover shenanigans. So after I did the screenshot edit with Bakura, I figured I'd go ahead with doing Yugi and Marik, as well. After all, they each fit the "Inhabited Child" experiment.

There is actually a tiny child that stands in that doorway in-game, I just drew Yugi over her. She also doesn't have the dramatic magic shadow…just hovers ominously, and skitters off when you step into the hallway proper. If you were to turn and look over your shoulder here, you could see the last remaining bright section of this hallway, and the isolated room Marik is in.

For those unfamiliar, Sleepless Lullaby is the quoted song—and is the only thing that plays in the Nursery, on loop, as a way to (try to) condition and pacify the kids. (As you can see, it did not end well for the folks running the facility.)

[nhyhu]

jellie is the kind of cat that would scratch at the door when you're in the bathroom

sepia version

[wastelandhell]

new eyes+eyebrows for my babygirl

[paellegere]

i knew something was off about that one popular post about the op's training module for their job which featured dean winchester as the poster boy for emotional harm

someone matched it up to the 15.18 "i love you" scene but it's not... it's when dean is crying about lucifer possessing sam in 5.04 the end

[lwoorl]

I'll say it: "Oh all AI artists do is write a stupid description and immediately get an image with no effort, there's no art in that" is the new "Digital painting doesn't count as art because it takes no effort"

[vanillabat99]

I hate the new image viewing on mobile. Why can I scroll to completely different posts. I just want to get a closer look at the image. Who thought that was a good idea????

[rancidslime]

every youtube art tutorial is like SECRET COLORING TUTORIAL they DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW! LEVEL UP YOUR ART, YOU STUPID FUCK. YOU FUCK. YOU POOP. and then you look at it and it's them talking about blending modes like it's lost Atlantean technology they're benevolently telling you about

[mamahoggs]

noctis overlay incoming. you’ve been warned

[vonbaghager]

[professional artist on tumblr voice] excuse me, tumblr? excuse me. i’m trying to weed out anyone who’s not feverishly dedicated to me. I need a theme that’s either impossible to navigate, unnecessarily busy, completely eye-searing, or incredibly unintuitive. i would prefer if it could fit two or even three of those categories at once if at all possible. do you have a theme that does all four? you do??! i’ll take it!

[ameriko-steelie]

Elliesimple - 4t3 Two-Piece Pajamas (UPDATED)

I'm very happy how these turned out!! The textures are so... *chef's kiss*

This is a brand-new re-conversion of my first CC I released almost exactly 3 months ago, in late August (it was posted August 29th, and today just happens to be November 29th!). It wasn't even that long ago, but it feels like it, especially since I have a lot of experience now! Compare those screenshots to this new style I'm trying out!

I've added a new overlay, which are star constellations! There is now a maternity morph for both!

I've also tried a new technique, something I've thought of, to reduce button morph mishaps, which is using a second group in TSRW to put the buttons in separately from the pajamas, then making the morphs by hand. Therefore, it will not replace the original, and it has custom thumbnails!

Last difference is that it now has 4 channels instead of 3 - the buttons are separate from the lines! Other basic info should be the same. See below the cut for comparisons!

For: TF, AF

Categories: Sleepwear

Polycount: 8k

1 Recolorable Preset - 3 Non-Recolorable Patterned Overlays

4 Channels - Top, Bottom, Lines, Buttons

The links are the same as the original post, but updated, so that if someone sees the old post, they won't get a deleted link error!

Download - SFS

or

Download - Simblr.CC

---

@xto3conversionsfinds @pis3update @sssvitlanz @wanderingsimsfinds @gifappels-stuff

Left is original, right is updated:

[needyhungrybunny]

my nails are pink and sparkly but im not happy with the shaping..i can't wait until im better with acrylic

[spicebiter]

Maybe it's rude but sometimes I think about signing on to do typesetting for small scanlation groups so I can fix the poor quality that some have. Hell, I'd learn to redraw things just to make it neat

[chisatowo]

Oh fuck yeah my like favorite wxs cover has a full version hashtag winning

[bettsfic]

writing cheats

i know i’ve probably written about these all individually but i’m putting them together in one post. these are writing tricks that are extremely cheap and dirty; when you use them it feels like cheating and honestly by posting them i’m probably exposing all the easy moves in my own work, but more than a writer i am a teacher, so here you go, some writing cheats that have never steered me wrong.

quick character creation

what’s really annoying is when you have two characters sitting at a restaurant or something and the server has to come by. to what degree do you describe the server so that it’s clear they’re just a background character but that they’re not just a faceless form, so that the world has texture without taking up too much space on the page? rule of three, babeyyy: two normal things and a weird one.

she had pale skin and blue eyes but her hair was dyed black like a 2010 emo kid.

he was tall and broad, and he wore a sweatshirt with an embroidered teddy bear on it.

the woman stood there comparing the prices of toilet paper. she had a short angled bob and carried a keychain the length of a trout.

why does it work? it gives the reader something to hang onto, a brief observation that shows the world exists around your narrator. it also works when introducing main characters, but there’s so much action going on that you can’t take time to write a rich long paragraph about them. all you need is a little hook.

quick setting creation

i used to TOIL over descriptive paragraphs. for years i was like, description is my weakness, i must become better at developing imagery. i believed this because a famous writer once projected a paragraph i had written onto a screen and asked my cohort, “count how many images are crafted in this paragraph.” there were none. none! my friends were sitting there like, “we are TRYING” but they couldn’t find any.

i would say that after years of studying imagery development at the sentence level, i am, perhaps, competent at it, but what was more helpful was for me to shrug and tell myself, “i’m just not a writer who does that.”

anyway. my cheat is thus: 

there’s not much you can assume about your audience. the audience is not a homogenous whole. but your ideal audience is something you can guess at, and that means you can play around with their existing knowledge and expectations. 

if you say your characters are in a tacky shit-on-the-walls restaurant, if your ideal reader is an american who went to restaurants during the maximalist era of franchise design, they will conjure their nearest memory of one of those places. and for those readers who aren’t familiar with it, they’ll use other context clues to conjure that space. the point is, you don’t have to list every single stupid license plate nailed to the wall. you can leave it as one detail of one sentence and let your reader extrapolate from there.

if i say the dentist’s office looked like a gutted 90s taco bell, maybe no ideal audience would have ever seen a place like that, but a lot of people can mentally conjure a dentist’s office and a 90s taco bell and overlay them together to create a weird and fun image.

you can go even simpler than that: a bathroom the size of an airplane lavatory. a tiny studio apartment with a hotplate instead of a stove. a mansion with a winding stairwell. the point is that you want to define the size of the space and its general vibes.

in some ways detailed description can be overrated, because your reader conjures images even in absence of them on the page. and for those readers who can’t mentally conjure images, it doesn’t matter anyway; they take you at your word. the trick is to figure out what details are unexpected, relevant to understanding the story and its characters, and those are the things that you add in.

one other note: after working with hundreds of writers on drafting, for *most* of us it’s difficult to develop images and establish setting in a first draft. it’s nearly always something to be saved for a second or later draft. i think it’s because while we’re writing we tend to put character and action first.

nail the landing

there’s a joke i heard once from a writer i really admire: “you know it’s literary fiction if the story ends with a character looking at a body of water.”

and god it’s so painfully sad and true how easy it is to nail the landing of a given story by ending on a totally irrelevant piece of imagery. the final beat of a story followed by your character looking up at the sky and seeing a flock of birds in the shape of a V flying past. or maybe they’re sitting in their car and they count the rings of a nearby church bell. or maybe they watch an elderly couple walk down the sidewalk hand-in-hand. i don’t know!! when in doubt shove an observation, an image, whatever, something neutral at the end and it’ll sound profound. 

(this cheat is the only one that can really bite you in the ass because if the image is too irrelevant you risk tonal incongruity. for use only in the most desperate of times.)

sentence fragments

when writers ask me how to punch up their writing or start developing their own style, my go-to advice is to give up the idea of a complete sentence. fuck noun-verb-object. if you have a series of character actions, knock off the sentence subjects like in script action. if the clause at the end of your sentence is particularly meaningful, don’t separate it with a comma but a period and make it its own thing. if your character is going through something particularly stressful or heinous, that bitch is not thinking in complete thoughts so you don’t have to convey them that way. make punctuation bend to your will!!

rhetorical moves

this one opened a lot of doors for me stylistically. remember that famous writer who called me out on my lack of imagery? i always thought his prose was beautiful, that he’s one of the best living prose writers, etc. once i learned more about rhetoric though, i realized he just employed it a lot. 

usually when we talk about beautiful sentences it means a sentence that uses rhetorical devices. the greeks were like, you know what, when we give speeches there are certain ways to phrase things that make the audience go nuts. let’s identify what those things are and give them names so we can use them intentionally and convince people of our opinions.

i love shakespeare, i really do, but one of the big reasons he’s still a household name today and his plays are still performed is because every sentence of every goddamn play utilizes a rhetorical device. the audience is hard-wired to vibrate at the sound and cadence of his writing, like finding the spot on a dog that makes their foot thump. for five hundred years, william shakespeare has been scritching that spot for us.

i have no idea why, cognitively, rhetorical devices are so effective. i’m no rhetorician. all i know is that well-deployed anaphora makes a reader want to throw their panties on stage. my intro to rhetorical devices was the wonderful book the elements of eloquence by mark forsyth, a surprisingly fun read! hopefully that will open some doors for you the way it did for me. 

the downside to this is that once you know rhetorical devices, it’s like learning how the sausage is made. on one hand, as a writer, you’ll have a lot stronger grasp of style, but as a reader good prose loses some of its magic.  

pacing it out

many writers, myself included, rely on the tried and true “he bit the inside of his cheek” or other some such random action to help pace out dialogue. one time my thesis advisor sat me down and said “you’ve got to take all of those out.”

“all of them?” i said.

“all of them,” she said.

i thought, but that will weaken the text! it didn’t. once i cut what i came to call cheek-biter sentences i never went back. and now when i edit for other people i’m like, look i know where you’re coming from but just cut all these out and see how the scene stands. if it doesn’t feel right you can put some back in. a lot of times when you’re drafting you put those in the way some people say “um.” they’re just sentences you jot while you’re thinking of what the other character says, so from a writing perspective it seems like you’re pacing, but readers don’t read it that way. they just want to get to the next line of dialogue.

but sometimes you really do need to pace out a scene and i think there are other ways to do that that don’t rely on banal physical movements, such as:

interiority: a sentence or paragraph of relevant cognition, bonus points if you weave in background context. good interiority defines the voice of your writing.

observations: i know i just said description is overrated but idk sometimes you just need a character to note the back and forth clacking of one of those desk ball toy things.

character texture: maybe your character notes something about the person they’re talking to. a wilted pocket square. a mole that looks like it needs looked at by a dermatologist. a scar on their forehead. some detail that deepens or complicates our understanding of a character.

narratorial consciousness and access

this one is less a cheat and more a problematic opinion i have that doesn’t win me any popularity in writing circles.

i believe that if you’re writing in first person or close third or any narration which is dedicated to the mind of one character, you are only ever obligated to convey the experience of that character’s consciousness. and nothing else.

by that i mean, if your point of view character is unobservant? then they’re not going to even notice the flight attendant is missing one of their canine teeth. if your pov character is focused and obsessive, they’re going to think lavish, detailed paragraphs about that which they’re obsessed with and have no acknowledgement of the rest of the world. if your pov character has no understanding of time, does your story even need to be linear?

defining the scope of a narrator’s cognition early on can give you parameters in which to work. even if you don’t consciously do this, you still do it. if you write in third person limited present tense without really thinking about it, that’s your scope. i’m just pointing out you can choose to do it differently. you get to define your narrator. 

whenever we talk about narration we also talk about information access and the order of information being revealed/conveyed. writing must always be in order; even if you’re writing multiple concurring things, it still has to be rendered on the page in order one after the next, because the human mind can’t read two sentences over top of one another. 

if we’re restricted to the mind of a character, that means we’re also restricted by their knowledge and experiences, and this can be used to your benefit. i don’t want to take too much space for this but i do talk more about the relationship between narration and reality here.

in short, you the writer get to choose 

what the reader knows,

in what order they know it, and

its relationship to the presumed real events of the story, which develops the (un)reliability of your narrator

okay going to cut this off now before i go on more rants about narrative scope. i hope you found this helpful and go on to put some of these nasty lifehacks in your own writing!!

[joojconverts]

4T3 Conversion of TwentiethCenturySims' Catalogue

A 4t3 conversion of (most of) twentiethcenturysims' catalogue for all your sims! I truly hope you like it! Enjoy! <3

In this compilation are included sets, mini-sets and standalone pieces that the original creator made! Recolors, posepacks, fantasy items, repeated pieces (things very similar to what I've already converted in the past), and pieces categorized as "timeless" are not included!

This is what I've been working on haha! My last statement for some time... thank you all so much, once again! 💖

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Known Problems:

The trim on the "Wilma Casual Dress" (purple dress with bow) gets a bit wonky at the end of the skirt! I tried to fix it in many different ways, but this is what I got!

The pleads on the "French Hen Dress" also get a bit wonky, same as above!

LIGHTING GLITCHES ONLY APPEAR ON CAS!

* Note that teens and elders have neck gaps. This is sadly the price for having them available! For teens, try using this and this slider by gruesim!

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ALL OG CREDITS GO T​O @twentiethcenturysims! IT’S NOT MY MESHES, AND IT’S NOT MY TEXTURES, I JUST CONVERTED THEM TO THE SIMS 3!

————— —————  

NOTES:

Because TwentiethCenturySims is a great creator, his whole catalogue is quite low-poly and gameplay friendly, so don't worry about that!

All 3 hats are hat-slider compatible and unissex, as always!

The Ida, Annie and Elsie dresses (gingham and flowers pattern) all have 11 presets. First 10 are overlays, having multiple floral options, but with collars, buttons and bows being recolorable. Last one is completely recolorable!

The "baby sweater" (green sweater with black tie) has 4 presets, first two having christmas-like patterns, third one having a knitted pattern, and last one being completely CAStable!

The "baby dress" (red dress with white collar) has 12 presets. 6 first presets have a velvety texture which is recolorable, with 5 flower options to the collar, and one without the flowers. Same applies to the other 6, but they don't have the velvet texture to the dress!

The "baby hat" also comes with 2 presets, one having a velvety texture, and the other one not!

The "Havana jacket" (orange jacket with white shirt) has 31 presets. First one is completely recolorable, and the other 30 are a variety of overlay patterns to the white shirt. The jacket stays recolorable in all of them!

The "Eleanor 1930's Dress" (green dress with bow) has 6 presets. First 4 have overlay patterned presets to the dress, but the bow, collar and trim stay recolorable. The last 2 are completely CAStable!

The "Piper Dress" (kids' dress with blue bow) has 4 presets. The first 4 have overlay patterned presets on the dress, but the rest remains recolorable! The last one is completely recolorable!

The "Goose Suit" (kids' gray suit) has 3 presets. First two have different patterns checkered patterns, and the last one is plain. In all of them the collar is an overlay texture.

The "Ruffles the Clown Costume" has 2 presets, having two different stripe options.

The "Billy Sailor Suit" (Toddler's sailor-inspired outfit) has 2 presets, with two different mask options. The second one has three little recolorable circles on the belt.

The "Darlene Sailor Dress" is the same as the above, but reversed haha!

The "Swan Suit" (houndstooth patterned suit) is totally recolorable, though it may not seem like it lol! I added the houndstooth pattern from CAS, which you can remove and put anything you want instead!

The "Bonnie Two-Piece Dress" (checkered dress with buttons) has two versions: the AF-EF version, as usual, and a teen-age conversion, just because I feel like it'd be useful to you!

The "Viola 1930's Dress" (yellow stripes and brooch dress) has 5 presets. The first, second and last presets are totally recolorable, having different mask options! Third and fourth presets have floral patterned overlays on the dress, but the collar, belt, etc. remains recolorable! The brooch looks a bit off without the accessory overlay, which is the next note!

There is an overlay/color mix accessory for the brooch on the "Viola Dress, which can be found in the socks category. It gives a multiplier (details) to the brooch, as well as making it fully recolorable! If you're going to use the dress, I highly recommend only using it with the accessory activated! It has a separate thumbnail, as seen in the previews!

As you saw on the previews, there are two buy mode objects: a highchair and a potty, both for your babies! They're found where these objects are usually found (Kids -> Baby Furniture). The potty costs §30, and the highchair costs §100!

You probably noticed the 4 skirt thumbnails (with its half options) at the bottom. Because I don't want this post to be gigantic, I'll link to the original post where twentiethcenturysims explains how to use them and their purposes: HERE! Yes, they're found under "accessories"!

I think that's all haha! Now to the download! <3

SimFileShare |  Dropbox

☕  buy me a coffee or become a patron!

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Credits:

@twentiethcenturysims for all the meshes and textures; you can find everything here!

💖 @katsujiiccfinds​​​ @emilyccfinds​​​ @kpccfinds​​​  @xto3conversionsfinds

[sinlizards]

im not sure if youve answered this before, but im really curious about how you decide which contrasting colors to add where! i know about adding a reflected color of something next to it (idk how to explain that sorry) but i always find when i try to add little splashes of color while shading a piece, they look out of place!!

heres a rough general explanation feat. Beato + some extra stuff!

What I focus on with making a color feel cohesive is seeing where exactly i can use that color again through out the piece that way it balances everything out. To choose the colors themselves i normally just take the base color and saturate it in my preferred direction (i.e. parts of her blonde hair becoming green, her headpiece becoming hot pink)

for something with a Lot of added/different pops of color I tend to unify the whole thing by throwing a layer of overlayed color jitter on like 10% or less which helps those colors not feel so out of place (also this piece you can see more of where im adding color at overlaps or areas of interest instead of just the shadows)

something that can also help if you are going a more painterly route is having a base layer of a bright color and then laying down your flats lightly over top allowing the under layer to peak through which is what i showed in this breakdown (which you can also see me adding a complimentary color to areas of visual interest)

And lastly a lot of this is just kinda trial and error! as I said before i tend to work on one layer but for these final embellishment type things (added pops of color, halftone, patterns, etc.) i mostly save that for last and keep them on a layer above the piece because a part of the process is just messing around with a bunch of stuff and seeing what looks good