The Mansion: Part Four

Yes, it’s seriously here and I couldn’t be happier.

 This installment gave me several headaches and plenty of technical difficulties.  But I won’t fuss about that now.  I am glad to have it done and to be able to continue presenting this story to you guys in movie form.

 I got the chance to try some new camera tricks here,  (ie., flying pencils combined with greenscreen) and I’m pretty happy with the way they turned out.  They actually were a little easier to do than some of the other shots that I initially thought would be simple. 

So after all the delays, glitches and tornadoes,  I’m glad to have this one done and I think that the rest of the series, Parts Five – Eight will be much easier to complete.  Of course that doesn’t mean faster!  But we’ll have to see. lol 

Classes will be starting in a little over a week, so I’ll see what I can do.  I’m hoping to keep up with a filming schedule that will allow me to put out one ep each month, but once again, no promises yet!

 Thanks for the patience you guys and for all the constructive criticism and reviews.  I’m thinking that this one will give you a few things to critique, seeing as how I tried so many new things, including Decorgal’s new Custom Modeling Poses Overlay Hack.  I’m still learning, but this one wasn’t too hard to utilize.  But  I do think working with her other talk hacks first made it easier for me.

I made an effort at the end to give the mod creators I often use a special thanks.  I think I left out Numenor, so a special thanks needs to go out there as well.  I think these people do some great work that I personally can’t figure out how to do!  lol  And they deserve to be acknowledged more often.

I also should take this time out to thank the cast for sending in all of their lines and doing retake after retake.  Especially Ianplayssims whom was willing to do about 3 takes of every line to put across the emotions that I desired.  I was very happy to have some of the original cast return in this installment, including Ianplayssims (Ulan) and Brosys_30 (Ward).  Sims2aholic (the original voice of Sami) will also be making a comeback as another character in a couple of episodes, so keep an ear out for her as well. 

But all of them are awesome for agreeing to continue to work with me on this project and sending in their lines for the whole series quickly and being patient with my picky demands. lol  I would recommend them to anyone looking for quality actors.

Anyway, that’s all for now you guys.  Keep an eye out for Part Five and I hope you enjoyed Part Four!

 ~Kim

P.S.  I have to thank Deb (Maidenfine) once again for allowing me to turn this cool series into a movie!  I think her baby may be due any day now, so this one will have to be a present from me to her! lol  Congrats, Deb!

Seasons (not the EP kind)

I really don’t update these things enough, so I thought I’d try to let you guys know what was up today while it was on my mind.

I’m happy to say that I’m back to filming, now that my unexpected guest has left, and things are progressing quickly.  I still won’t give release dates, but I’m sure that The Mansion: Part Four will be out soon.

I was looking around for the single slap mod this morning and realized that a really great Mod creator, Squinge, decided to retire/resign from–I dunno– everything Sims, I guess, a couple of months ago.  And he has unfortunately decided to take all of his amazing creations with him.  Fortunately, I realized that the mod I was looking for was saved in my downloads folder, and I simply forgot to install it.  But it’s too bad that other future directors won’t have the privelege of using his creations in their films.

As someone who retired this time last year, I can completely understand the need to break away from it all.  What us creators do in the sims community can be extremely time consuming and honestly taxing.  And though it’s a lot of fun, it’s extremely hard to keep up our work consistently without breaks.  Otherwise, the burn out comes and we find ourselves stressed out or disinterested in what, for most of us, is a fun hobby.  Perhaps this would be different if we got paid to do what we do.  But then again, maybe it’s the fact that these aren’t our jobs that keeps us trying our hand at it.

What I do know is that once the fun stops, it’s time for a break.  There’s no sense in stressing over angles or codes or textures when you could be at the park with your family or out to dinner with your significant other. When it comes down to it, we are obligated to no one but ourselves…in the sims community, anyway.

 My advice to anyone feeling exhausted with Sims 2 creating would be to step away from it for a while and focus on other things.  If you decide to come back later, cool.  And if not, that’s cool too.  But I would give it at least a year before making decisions on removing anything else.  You just never know when your muse might strike again.

I found that I deeply regretted removing my films and reviews when I originally walked away and realized that I did not need to disappear completely.  Several wonderful directors have come and gone without taking down their work and in that sense, they leave behind a shadow of themselves for others to learn from.  They sort of become legends and I’ll admit, I often go back and watch their work when I need a little motivation.

 So anyway, I guess all I’m saying is that we all face the decision of how long to stay or when to go.  But I think it can be really hard on a person when they can’t look back and admire their own work and accomplishments from time to time.  I certainly did.

~Kim

Update on The Mansion:Part Four

Okay,

I’m not sure how many of you guys read this blog, but I’m hoping that posting this will stop the continuous questions about when The Mansion: Part Four will be released. 

Originally, my plan was to try to get it out sometime around the end of this week.  But of course, as always, by setting a date, I have jinxed myself, and it looks like it’s probably not gonna happen.  I was just notified today that I have a visitor dropping by tomorrow to stay here for a week and guess who’s hosting???  Yep, me.

So, I’m gonna go for getting Part Four out by the end of this month, before classes start up on September 5th.  After that, my releases may be even slower, because this is my final year of college and I simply won’t have as much freetime.  Sorry guys. 

 But no worries, I don’t plan to retire again, lol.  But after this, I will no longer respond to posts of when my next release of anything will be, because as you can see, life happens, and that simply can’t be planned out all the time. 

 I’ll update again soon.

~Kim