Artist Studio and Gallery

This studio/gallery is designed for a fine artist or graphic designer. The attached, two-floor gallery can be dedicated solely to the resident artist's work, or it can house a private collection of both personal work and that of other artists. I don't have OFB; but, if you do, I imagine that this can be easily installed Downtown and converted into an in-home studio with attached commercial gallery.

The lot is fully furnished and includes live-in and work space for one or two artists. Everything in the pictures is included, and there is no Custom Content. For illustrative purposes and so you won't start off with a gallery full of bare walls, I've installed game-provided art which you can gradually replace. Unfortunately, the only in-game lighting that adequately illuminates wall art happens to be a tacky kitchen-ceiling light; so you'll want to replace these with custom lighting specially designed for this purpose, such as that offered on this site by ailias.

This facility is especially suited for players who enjoy creating their own original pictures using the procedure that enables you to have a Sim artist create custom artwork of all types, including your own unique creations such as original art, personal photos -- literally any image that can be re-sized to be compatible with the game's easel. If you're interested in doing this and haven't yet tracked down the procedure, I'll detail it below.

If you want your Sim to recreate your favorite works of real-world artists, many ready-to-clone offerings can be downloaded, or you can create your own versions by collecting pictures from the Web and re-sizing them as described below. If you want to frame your custom pictures there are properly-sized downloadable frames available on this site, as well. Just hang the picture, then hang the frame over it.


How To Create Custom Artwork

This may seem complicated at first, but it will very quickly become second nature.

(1) Preparing Your Art for Custom Content. Though you can do this while the game is running, you'll be able to do it quicker and more efficiently if you prepare in advance more than one piece at a time for your Sim to paint.
Using a graphics program such as MS Paint, open one or more pictures from your files. All you need do is proportion each picture to fit the canvas that appears on the Sim easel. The proportion is 8:5; that is, if the height of the canvas were 8", the width would be 5". Unfortunately, this is the only shape picture you can reproduce; there's no landscape alternative. Use a combination of re-sizing and cropping to get each of your pictures reasonably close to this ratio and your paintings will look properly proportioned. For your convenience, here are some sample 8:5 proportions to help you ballpark your picture sizing:
HEIGHT WIDTH
11"------7"
10"------6.36"
9"-------5.72"
8"-------5"
7"-------4.45"
6"-------3.8"
5"-------3.2"
4"-------2.55"
The default resolution is 72ppi, but you can go up to 95 if your game's graphics settings are high; experiment and see if there's any noticeable improvement in quality.

(2) When you're ready to have your painter produce a custom picture, open the game and have your them go to an easel. A Sim painter must have a creativity level of at least 5 to accomplish this type of art.

(3) Click on the easel and elect to have your Sim paint a still-life picture. A frame will appear that you can center on anything nearby that you might want to paint. (Use the arrow keys or hold down the right mouse button and drag the frame to move it). Since your object is to paint something that's not yet in the game, however, it doesn't matter what you put in this frame, so just find something you can easily recognize in a photo later. When you have your frame set, press "C." This will both pause the game and snap a picture of whatever's in the frame.

(4) While the game is paused, press Alt + Tab to minimize it and return to the graphics program where your prepared art is waiting. Select one of your custom pictures and choose Save As; then navigate to the snapshot you just took. It will normally be found in C:\My Documents\EA\Sims2\Storytelling, and it will be named "Snapshot.bmp". (There will be a duplicate named "Screenshot.bmp", but it's of no concern here.)

NOTE: In NightLife, sometimes snapshots end up in the folder noted above, but often they appear in one of the Storytelling folders that can be found under Sims2/Neighborhoods. However, so far I've always found the easel snapshots in the folder cited.

(5) Save your custom picture as "Snapshot.bmp"; install it in the Storytelling folder and let it overwrite the one you took in the game. Your custom picture has now replaced the original snapshot and has the same proportions.

(6) Press Alt + Tab again to get back to your paused game and, as soon as you resume the action, your Sim will paint your custom picture. Way Kewel!

Here's hoping your artist wins a Simlitzer Prize!