i made you an anime but time eated it

Okay, but, srsly, I've got some Twilight Dreams stuff, yay!

Omake (Extras) for Volume 1:

DVD cover: Front - Back
Twilight Dreams Revised Opening Theme (video)
The Prequel that Wasn't Made Opening Theme (video) (There's some notes in the summary post which are also posted on the boolProp thread.)

And then there's the actual episode. Episode 5: Tests

Still no sign of land. How long is it?

I didn't really do any editing for TD over the weekend like I thought, although I did get some more S&S college played. Some folks are graduated. Some have a bit longer to go. Should be able to do it fairly quickly next time I load up the game.

Skipped Simming yesterday because I felt a little burned out on the concept of college, and because, honestly, I've been dithering about something in the script for TD#5. It's a scene that would be much easier to convey in a real anime, where I could have sound effects and stuff, and I'm worried it's going to come out a bit confusing. I might throw in some description about it to help. Also, I just edited the pics and text for the the first scene and ended up almost completely rewriting the narration in it, hopefully to better effect than what was in the script.

I also tweaked a couple of the standard slides. The title screen didn't look right to me so I redesigned it with the flow from logo to title in mind; the preview page frame got a layer effect to make the frame stand out better; the pre- and post-commercial shots had their colours tweaked. There's going to be a second set of those in the second half but I'm keeping these for now. Also I already put together the commercial, and actually am pretty pleased with it. I think the legacy writer in question will like it, but I'm never sure.

The next two scenes have some heavy graphics editing to do so I'm taking a break, but I am going to try to get some more done today. I don't know if I'll finish, though if not I think I will tomorrow.

Videos and other things

I'm organizing stuff in preparation for shooting video for Twilight Dreams, but I haven't actually started, and I don't think I'm going to until tomorrow, because I'm not feeling patient enough to deal with the "5 minutes of shooting is 30 seconds of video" ratio today. (Thursday-Sunday was All Guild Wars All The Time, because they had a holiday weekend, too, and yesterday I had housework to do, so today's the first day I've really looked at it anyhow.)

I'm actually going to be doing shooting for three videos: a revised version of the opening theme, the video I intend to release ASAP along with one other thing for the close of Volume 1, and one more video that'll probably come out with or just after Episode 5.

The other things I plan on doing, this week and likely part of next: a small batch of CC, some vacation lot building for S&S, and hopefully some scripting for TD.

Today, tho, I think I'm going to veg out on strategy games.

Twilight Dreams updated

Episode 4 of Twilight Dreams, "...becoming the Now", is finally, finally, finally up.

Twilight Dreams and Misc.

Episode 3 of Twilight Dreams is ready (click):



Also crossed off my to-do list were two more buildings for S&S, leaving two. I may just wait to make them since neither of them is likely to be used much for a while, and I want to play, darn it.

I also fixed a couple people's last names/household names (I wanted to hyphenate for Adrian, and Abby's household name was not her married name), and took a backup of both 'hoods since I did some minor building in TD too.

Over the weekend I might play S&S but I also notice a bunch of people updated recently so I want to read and maybe comment. :)

So far today...

I'm probably still going to do a bit more Simming tonight, but even if I don't, I got a fair amount done.

Twilight Dreams - All shots are done. I do have a lot of editing this time around (you'll see why), but I think despite that I might have Episode 3 out tomorrow night. If not, sometime over the weekend... I have to be a bit more vague there because weekend Simming time is erratic.

On the topic of TD, episodes 3 and 4 are really closely linked in a way but I have a video to go with #4, so it's likely to be a while, though hopefully nowhere near as long as the gap between the #2 and #3. ^_^ In a worst case, I might release the video a little after the episode, though, depending on how long it takes. There's also going to be another little extra, again either with or soon after the episode. By the end of Episode 4, you should all have a much better idea of what's going on in the series as a whole, too...

Saints and Sinners - Only one more building built, but I also laid down the rest of the lots and some decoration. Of the remaining four buildings, I expect two to be quick to build and two to take a while... but none of them are as complex as the new Garden in the City. Which, btw, I'm probably going to upload to box.net, as soon as I figure out what to do about CC. I suppose I could bin the lot, duplicate it over in my test 'hood, and replace the CC with Maxis-issue decor... dunno, yet.

Incidentally, I'm sitting on 230 pictures for S&S already, though admittedly a lot of that is excess toddler stuff. But I probably could put together an update out of what I already have, so the next one shouldn't take long to do overall.

Progress and April+Early May Plans

There will be a Saints & Sinners update this week. I'm almost done with college (Abby's graduated and moved into her new house, Aaron's most of the way through his last semester, Adrian's got a year to go). I may want to play ahead a bit before tackling the actual update, so I have a head start on the next one. I think I'll be playing regularly again now... the anniversaries of suck are past, and my distractions, while still distracting, are less so lately. So, you might even get two in short order.

I've got Twilight Dreams exactly half scripted, and of the remaining half, half are planned out. (The whole storyline is technically planned out, but the third quarter of the plotline is detailed and separated episodically more-or-less, but the final quarter is not.)

To do list for the rest of the month and into the end of next week:

* Get the college chapter out for S&S.
* Play ahead a bit, so I can try to have another update out soonish.
* Build at least half of the planned downtown lots and the two remaining planned main 'hood lots.
* Come up with names for the lots. Right now they're all "General Store", "Club", etc. Boring.
* Populate downtown with a small batch of townies.
* Figure out what's left to do for E3 of Twilight Dreams. I actually have a shots list, I'm just not sure what shots I already have.
* Put together E3.
* Start shooting E4 and maybe video for the Next Video.
* Try to get another script or two done for Twilight Dreams. This isn't vital, but I'd like to do it.

I've actually got a small list of stuff post that, but it's stuff that I don't think I will get to by then. I think if I play at least some every (week)day I can get this all done, but we'll see if I actually do play every day.

Saints and Sinners vs Twilight Dreams: Round One! FIGHT!

I'm taking a break from working on the S&S update... I've chosen and organized the pictures with some thoughts about captions, but haven't edited or written them yet. So maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow, depending on how long that takes. I'm still feeling my way with characters—not that this is heavily character-driven yet but I'd like it to work towards it—so it's gonna be narration-heavy again, which means it's mostly the time of the editing, as the writing should mostly come easily.

But now I have a dilemma. See, I've already played some of the college years, have about 100 pictures taken (not all of which will show up in the update, of course), and am enjoying just playing. Whereas with Twilight Dreams, I don't "play"... I run people around and arrange them in poses or have them do things so I can take pictures. Now, obviously I don't mind doing that, or I wouldn't be doing the project, but because of the rather long gap between when I last played and now, playing-for-reals is sorta more attractive at the moment.

On the other hand, the next release of Twilight Dreams will answer a lot of questions that people should have at this point, while hopefully raising some new ones, and I'd like my readers to stay engaged.

So now I have to decide: play some more S&S and work towards a second release of that covering college, or go pull ACR out and work on my remaining Episode 3 shots and get some of Ep 4 done for preview purposes. I was originally planning on alternating, moving between the two at update time, but I hadn't taken into account how much I missed playing. Meep.

Well, I won't be done with the actual update for a while so maybe by then I'll have figured it out.

Twilight Dreams opening credits

Although I do think it came out interestingly and actually scans more or less like an opening sequence, there's a few bits that I'm not happy with, and I'm already planning a revised version.

I'd like to clean up the video if possible (I still am not sure where that weird artifacting came in and so I'm not sure that it is possible), clean up and add to the visual thoughts Miho has on the couch, regularize the size and timing of the flashing imagery that happens a bit after that and possibly change it a bit, and add a quick non-Miho sequence of either video or images to show some of the minor characters in lieu of some of the reading. I'll also probably throw the lyrics on as subtitles... I couldn't decide if I wanted to or not since this song's in English and all but now I think it'll work.

However I probably won't do it until I've gotten into the second volume, although we'll see. I have another video project between now and then that will be harder to do and I'd like to concentrate on that one first, because if I can make that one come out well, revising this one will be a breeze.

All in all I actually am fairly happy with how it came out, despite that long list above... it's all tweaks, not major changes. I'll probably leave the original up for comparison even after I do a new version, too, because really it's pretty close to what I wanted. :)

Twilight Dreams Episode 2 & Bonus

Episode 2: Neighbors

Bonus Video: Opening Credits

*twitch*

That's my eye, twitching. Periodically I get weird eye tics, usually short-lived (a few hours off and on, say). This time it's lasted a couple days, and as you can imagine it makes it hard to concentrate on anything. It's not a constant twitching but it's frequent enough to be really distracting.

But in the meantime I'm at least thinking about the video. I've got the basic filming done, and the shots done for Episode 2 (and a few for episode 3, actually), and am trying to decide if I need more shots and/or filming for the video... I think I may need to just put together the basics and figure it out from there to be sure. I have a couple ideas that I'd need more shots for but I actually might be doing it with what I already have depending on how compositing works out.

It's a pretty short video so you'd think it'd be easier to envision, but I guess I'm feeling kinda uncertain about it.

Anyhow... still hoping to have E2 out this week, despite the slowdown from my eyes bugging me. That might mean 'this weekEND', but close enough.

this week...

...I hope to get episode 2 of Twilight Dreams out, as well as the first video, though between insomnia (which you might think would let me get more done, but no, trust me, it doesn't work that way, at least not with this sort) and recovering from a cold I am not sure how much I can concentrate. I've got about... 1/2 of the stuff shot I need to, or so, actually a bit more I suppose. The episode will almost certainly come out, it's the video (which I'd like to release at the same time but may delay) I'm less sure about, mainly because there's some bits of it I'm not 100% sure on how they'll look.

I've also got some more Saints and Sinners playtime/photos but am definitely not ready for an update there... I played Aaron (middle child) through to teen and he's looking good for heir despite rolling Pleasure on me but his younger brother is not yet a teen and I want to wait at least that long until I pick, since that's going to give me a much better idea of what he'll look like. I'm sure I'll get more play in this week but since the update process involves a lot of photo editing (cropping and captioning) I'm doubtful there'll be another actual update this week. Still, we'll see how I feel... it is only Tuesday.

I need to throw together some custom university students and see if the game's going to make any more on its own (I don't have a no student regen type hack in place, unlike with the town itself... I figure I'm more likely to marry people off to students on average and I don't want to be forever making new ones). I have a replacement live.package and it's got some really strange names in it, I'm realizing, but at least the people I make can be named really average things to help make up for it. And I changed one of the professors' names already because I thought it was very odd... and I might change another duplicate one although I'm kinda tempted to not since there's something funny about having two professors with the same first name.

Bleah. Anyhow, to give you an idea about the state of my insomnia, I'm off to at least take a nap right now, and yes, it's mid-afternoon here.

Twilight Dreams Episode 1

Welcome to Episode #1 of Tasogare Yume: Twilight Dreams! Twilight Dreams is an episodic anime-inspired Sims story.

Read here.

misc progress notes

Despite insomnia, cramps, toothaches, etc. I have managed to do a few things:

• Finished up building the main Twilight Dreams neighborhood. Well, mostly; there's one lot that's only partly developed but it doesn't need to be more than it is for now.


• Populated the neighborhood, including with a few generic non-important people so my walkbys aren't always feature characters.


• Improved the dithering issues on clothing. Can't fix 'em entirely (like I said, even the Maxis stuff does this to me) but they're better, although there's still one or two things I might yet do another tweak on. I managed to get charcoal working okay, even, although in some cases 'okay' is better than others. I had to totally desaturate it to make it work, though.


• Made sure there's a second copy of everything, including neighborhoods, in my archive directory. I should (and will) burn some stuff to CD but I really need to organize what I have in archives first, since there's actually multiple copies of a lot of stuff.

Still gonna be a bit before I have anything to release but in the meantime, have a picture:

Today's thought

I think I might be a little too thorough sometimes. Because that neighborhood you got to see a tiny pic of yesterday? That's the BACKSTORY neighborhood. I'm probably going to shoot about 30 pictures total (well, okay, I'm probably going to keep about 30 pictures total) and maybe 10 minutes of video. Naturally I've spent 2 days working on it.

Tomorrow I start the actual story neighborhood.

Izza more update

Okay, first, pursuant to the last post, we are buying a copy of an older version of Sony Vegas, for $42 including shipping. I think it's actually the version I once did download a trial for a few years ago, which I recall having very little trouble adapting to. So hopefully that will take care of any editing woes... I'm about 98% certain that it's got that variable chromakeying, since I found an old tutorial about it from the year it was released, so it should be all good.

Also, here's my progress to date in pictorial form:



Top row: [left] Miho as a teen (with her mom) [right] One of Miho's school friends with her family
Bottom row: [left] Another school friend of Miho [right] A basic shot of the neighborhood TeenMiho is from.

As you can see I've still got some empty lots down. Those represent places people are going (except the blue one, which is obviously gonna be a community lot). Most of the lots you see are slightly-altered duplicates of one another, just shells for background.

Also, in a fit of irony, the one thing I thought had no issues, that being clothes? I discovered today one of the skirts sorta, ahem, doesn't have a texture. I need to go take a look at that and figure out what happened (and upload a corrected file). Cuz, man, having the shape of the skirt but with the barbie nudity plastered onto the shape? Not working for me.

This is me, being productive

Well, okay, not THAT productive... but even though I usually don't get much Sims stuff done on the weekends (and in fact am about to go play Guild Wars) I did manage to do a couple things. The object recolours were mostly things I did before but the livingroom stuff was done today, and yesterday I collectionized some of the flooring. Today I put together the first building in the backstory neighborhood and put the relevant people in it:



Tomorrow I'll get back to collectionizing (building even one building makes me want to finish it that much more), and maybe put together some more buildings, depending on how long that takes me.

Project: Tasogare Yume (Twilight Dreams)

Tasogare Yume (Twilight Dreams) is an episodic Sims story, influenced by anime. The setting is sorta-Japan... things in the setting are based at least loosely on places and character types I've seen in both anime and Japanese drama shows. It's a filtered-through-Westerner-eyes Japan, though, and I make no claims that it's accurate. The character style is also based on anime.

Progress & Stuff

First: Recolours

My custom content post has been updated and slightly reorganized. This link is also always available in the side bar.

Twilight Dreams Teaser