#sort of a build

[izayoichan]

The Christmas Tree Farm & Market

🎶

As I don’t make poses, and I don’t make cc, my christmas gift this year is simply a build that I hope someone can use to send their sims Christmas tree hunting, as well as visiting the local market for some well deserved treats.  Outside you can check on the horses, there are reindeer, a place for some smores for old and young even a skating rink. And of course Christmas trees for everyone that wants one.  Innside there is a marketplace, a small cafe and for those with little ones there is an activety area so they will be entertained as well. People will notice that there are presents under all the trees, these are gifts left by people who pick a tag of a tree and buy a present for someone that would perhaps otherwise not get anything (like orphans on an orphanage and such) In the very inner part, there is a musical area, where small intimate Christmas concerts can be held.  I hope you like it, and if you (by some random christmas miracle) decide to use this build for anything, tag me so I can see it. I know my own sims will be heading here soon, so you will see this build in later screenshots.

You can get this build here (warning, its a big big file (7+gb), with tons of alpha and mm cc) If any of the cc makers I have used want me to remove their stuff from it, please tell me and I will do my best, its just so much and not all is availible anymore so this is the better/easier way. And a huge thank you to all the cc creators, because something like this would not be possible wihtout your wonderful work!

[ciderjacks]

despite Laios low self esteem making him think that if he’d been eaten, Chilchuck and Marcille wouldn’t have helped Falin,

theres a small part of me that thinks the reason Chilchuck stayed with the party and went back in the dungeon in the first place was because he didn’t want to leave Laios alone. That Laios was moreso the reason he stayed.

[pygmypouter]

This place is a message... and part of a system of messages... pay attention to it!

[that-ineffable-devil]

I've praised George Rextrew a lot for the emotion he put behind various actions, and I stand by that.

But I also want to take a moment to appreciate Jayden Revri's ability to handle Charles' more explosive emotions.

In the Devlin house, you watch his anguish and anger build in equal measure. Unlike the characters, we get to see the build-up to the outburst that leads to him getting stuck in the loop. The first time he sees that man murder his family he wants to look away, he tries to look away. You can see how much it hurts him, but he turns back and watches anyway--and the horror turns to rage.

When the Night Nurse comes, he fights her off--very aggressively yes, but they didn't see what he did when she took him into his memories--and everyone looks at him like...like he's a bomb that may go off again? Like they've never seen him before?

The boy's just been through some of his most traumatic memories and committed an act of violence that probably only made that experience worse, and he sees his friends looking at him the way he'd always feared they would--like he's a bad guy. And Jayden portrays that grief and pain so beautifully.

And when he gives that little "no" while he's crying and jerks away from Edwin's outstretched hand?

My heart feels like it's been squashed and wrung out.

[the-meme-monarch]

prompt failed he thought it was pretty sick actually

(👍if you ship scc go away)

[noodles-and-tea]

I doth declare that I miss the Losers Club! Mayest I have some art of them from thee? :3

(I adore the Losers, can you please draw them if you have any time? No pressure!)

I know it’s only 2/7 but I hope it’ll do for now!!

[sculkapologist]

I finally finished a NEW CUSTOM MAP ART!!! "Visitor," a portrait of an enderman, is extra exciting because it's my first full-palette map painting, meaning I used block height to access all the highlight and shadow colours available!! More on the full process under the cut, but the short version of what this means is:

ITS A VERY COMPLICATED CONSTRUCTION. I created the art, then planned and built this manually, without any mods or schematics for construction. Huge props again to everyone else in the server for helping me gather all the materials to make this absurd thing possible!!!

This was the original art I made for it! I'm a huge fan of the "compressed" look of the vanilla paintings, so I've been starting with a large image and shrinking it down, though there were a lot of pixel tweaks to get it to read well. After shrinking it to 16x32 (for an art made of two maps), I convert it to a limited palette that I've set up to match the colours minecraft actually has available:

The map palette is actually tremendously limited, so figuring out a painting that will still look good with that constraint is a challenge in and of itself!

Anyway, the way minecraft maps work, a block that is Taller than the block to the north of it shows up with a slightly lighter colour, and a block that is Lower than the block north of it shows up on the map with a slightly darker colour. So when making a key for this one, I marked all the squares with a little arrow if it's the lighter or darker version:

Each "pixel" here is a full stack of blocks on the mapped area: 64 blocks, 8 rows of 8. In order to achieve the affect of every block in a given pixel being taller or shorter than the block to the north of it, dark and light shades need to staircase either up or down. Because staircasing downwards in survival sounds even worse than this madness, I did some planning to make sure each of the "downwards" staircases would touch the ground, so I could simply staircase up from south to north instead. This involved figuring out how many up and down movements were in each individual column and planning out 32 little layouts:

It's worth noting that if you look up minecraft map art on Youtube, most of what you'll find is either, the simple realisation that placing blocks allows you to make custom map art, or an explanation of how to use a generator that will let you plug in any picture and then produce a schematic for you. It's very cool that these exist, but I wanted to do full palette art myself, without an auto-generated schematic, and at the time THERE JUST WEREN'T ANY TUTORIALS FOR HOW TO DO ALL THIS?? Now, having the experience of finagling all this, i think perhaps the reason is that this is a mad undertaking.

ANYWAY: PROGRESS SHOTS!!

I actually love how the staircases look..... its like some kind of modern sculpture

Fewer shots of the second half since I did it on call with friends; the last screenshot is one Thren took of me activating the new locked map to use for the gallery.

Once these paintings are done, I lock the finished maps, make copies, and stock them in the art gallery so other friends on our server can also put these paintings in their homes! It's a lot of work, but really rewarding to see my art decorating various buildings around the server. ;u;

I have one more custom full-palette painting I've done the art for and gathered all materials for; I still need to do the full key and plan staircasing for it before I can start, but HOPEFULLY if my resolve doesn't waver there'll be at least one more of these!!

[insanitysilver]

AO3 Tastemaker Game

You? You're an individual. You're a reader and a forager with fine tastes. You're not afraid to wade into the deep end. Browse the dustiest aisles. Get in the vents. Come, pan for gold with me in the far reaches. The game goes like this:

On AO3, navigate to your pairing/fandom of choice

Apply your standard filters

In the 'Search Within Results' field, paste this: kudos<100 comments<5 bookmarks<5 hits<500 sort:>updated

Press the 'Sort & Filter' button

Read down the line until you find something you like

Comment, bookmark, and mark it as a recommendation

For the ultimate connoisseur: Bonus Points - share your new rec off-site Hard Mode - kudos<12 comments<1 bookmarks<1 hits<395 sort:>updated

[love-death-and-desert]

i like these

[aurorangen]

A House in the English Countryside

[spacebubblehomebase]

"✨️The Stargazers.✨️"

Yeah. These two would usually not get along, but needs must and they have a job to do. Jobs they don't want their respective sides butting in on. Now I would have posted this earlier, but I got dreadfully sick. So I hope this was still worth the wait! A deeper look into Vaggie & Alastor's situation and their other forms to boot! Can you tell I got carried away? XD Introductions are finally done! Next part? Comics! See ya'll then! ^v^

-Bubbly����

[sunderwight]

Nie Huaisang pulling a Jaskier where somehow everyone thinks he's physically tiny, because of how he tailors his clothes and the way he moves and acts and refers to himself, but in actuality he's almost the same height and shoulder width as Nie Mingjue and the impression of him as "just a little guy" is a carefully crafted illusion that would shatter if the main cast all lined up naked together.

[mumbeau]

skizz's "giraffe"

[ciderjacks]

Halfling studies + headcanons

[pastelcheckereddreams]

I built one of the Mysterious Lotus Casebook model scenes!

You may remember that I built the Lotus Tower model kit last year, and made some modifications to it:

(More about new additions to that model in another post!)

So it's probably no surprise that I also an addition of my own to this kit in the form of some tiny model lights. I love the idea that they could be fireflies accompanying Li Lianhua down the river or souls escorting him to reincarnation.

Progress pics below:

You may be able to guess from its size, that this model came together pretty quickly. Assembling the table together with both the boat and LLH was the trickiest bit:

I love all the small details, though, even if the curves were quite intimidating.

In order to wire it up with the tiny lights, I actually made very little irreversible changes to the model itself.

The base is a hollow space, as you can see bellow, so I used a hole that was intended to hold one of the lotuses to instead thread the lights up through the base to the scene. The lotus in question was meant to be positioned behind the boat, and so wouldn't actually be seen at all - perfect for hiding most of the wiring.

Then, in order to secure the battery pack to the back of the model, I cut off a small portion of one of the tabs that help fit the bottom piece in place. This effectively made a hole right at the bottom of the model for the wires to pass through. And that was all it took!

I stuck everything down with tape so it can be removed easily and without damage should I want to remove the lights at all, or make my messy wiring more respectable 😅

I'm really pleased with how it turned out!

Although you can see the wires around the boat when the lights are off, when the lights are on it pretty much achieves the floaty, ethereal effect I was going for:

[luck-of-the-drawings]

[OLD ART ALERT] A COLLECTION OF SCENES FROM THE GILLIONS CATSCRATCH ARC THAT BROUGHT ME GREAT JOY. i love fishy chips especially when its just gillion being delirious and violent and hostile