How is your story going?

[joandsarah]

Hey guys I will be trying to get to your stories, just I had my two yearly eye check up this afternoon and forgot all about the rotten eye drops, so I'm off to bed.

[amylu1988]

*hugs* No rush Jo, hope your eyes feel better tomorrow.

I've typed 3 pages of notes in Word, just for the plotty section of the next chapter, so it's already going better than the last one did. Phew!

[Pixx]

Take your time Jo. My stories are on hold as RL is kicking my ass big time right now

[amylu1988]

Hope RL gets better for you soon Pixx!

Woo, I finally finished the preparation for chapter 28! Now just the shooting and writing to do...

[joandsarah]

Yah! You're really moving along with it this year Amy. Goodness though, that means it will soon be finished.

[esmeiolanthe]

Some ages are correct now. (I sent everyone to Uni in a lump and have to play things a little unevenly this rotation to get everyone's ages right. I will also need to bust out some Elixir, both this rotation and next.)

[joandsarah]

Once they are of age to go to uni I just leave them until I get a group and I don't worry too much about correct ages from then on.

Well I can at least say I have finally opened my OWBC house and played three days ageing up the alien twins to children and the eldest Oz to a teenager. I've also started putting some of the photos over into Word with some text, so it's a start.

[joandsarah]

Remember this thread? I decided to revive it as I noticed we were talking about how our stories were going in the Journaling Our Sims thread, which was really meant for how our game was progressing/game happenings. This is the thread to discuss how a story/update is coming along.

So anyway I am on about page 38 and have decided to leave the holiday out and finish it just on Christmas. This way I might get it out before new year!
I've made a rule with myself that if I want to play it must be sims 3 which is right now being slow and annoying again. If I load up Sims 2 I must film this chapter.
Some of the staging in this chapter is really tedious. Like setting a table for ten sims with each place setting and food on OMPS's and trying to get everyone to sit and eat and co-operate with me. I'm really glad the Christmas lunch scene is finished! and now I can move onto some free will snaps of everyone before the second round turn up for dinner. Originally I was going to have them all over at once and realized A) My dining room is tiny and my kitchen is only large enough for two tables or ten sims. Plus my game struggles on that large lot. So half for lunch and half later. All because Joanne wanted a 'proper' family Christmas with photos.

[ning]

hahaha! Meal times are horrible to shoot for! For me, those sims in the background always finish their food to fast, or they would be doing something else inappropriate. >_>

Why can't you play Sims 2 instead, though?

[joandsarah]

Because if I play I won't film!

[amylu1988]

Ah, I'd forgotten this thread! Interesting that this thread was last used when I was still regularly updating, maybe there's a link there...

Well done for all that staging Jo, it sounds great! Can't wait to see the chapter.

I've got the chapter planned and an outline written, and I've got three scenes shot, but depending on how different the new laptop looks I might need to reshoot them so that they fit in with the rest of the chapter.

[joandsarah]

I'm trying to decide how to do all the smustle pictures. Firstly do people like seeing these? Does two to a page sound okay? I'm thinking one per page over a few pages might be too many/boring. But if I chop them and make them small, so they go over only 3 pages might be too small.
I wish I was good at using Gimp, then I would do something artistic such as lift those doing something interesting and put them together, but cropping and pasting things to a page is about all I can do. :/

[esmeiolanthe]

If you do lots of pictures to a page, it's the same effect as a montage in a movie -- kind of "fast." If it's spread out over several pages, then it feels "slower." So it depends on what effect you want. Does that make sense? (I think smustle pics are OK, but I don't need to see pages and pages of them.) Blending one Sim from this pic and one Sim from that pic into the same pic is actually a lot harder than it sounds, since you have to plan and set up the pictures carefully.

My game is kinda stalled now. I have 5 households to play -- not much play time left per household, but still 5. I just haven't had the time/inclination to play, even though I've had long weekends lately. And then I feel grumpy when I go back to work and realize that I did not, in fact, play. *sigh*

[joandsarah]

Thanks Esme, I like hearing your opinion. I'll see how they look as somewhat of a montage. Not having Gimp skills I can't lift or blend or do anything much apart from crop and paste.

[joandsarah]

I still haven't finished filming so the Christmas chapter will be in the new year now. :/ Not a lot to go, but then they need text boxes, borders, some gimping and re-writing and that all takes time. The lot crashing is really slowing things up, I re-loaded my game 3 times today due to it crashing.