Date Posted: 25th Apr 2009 at 1:25 PM

The Shih-Tzus are up in moderation (*crosses fingers and toes*). The Saint-Bernard is made, I'll try and get it up after the Shih-Tzu goes through.

I've stopped taking requests for a while, simply because I always take longer than anticipated and feel really awful about holding people up. Apologies to all my requesters for taking so long to upload!

That's all for now.

Date Posted: 9th Apr 2009 at 12:56 PM

The terriers are through, and in record time (astonishingly fast, actually. I uploaded them, went to play Sims for a while and looked back at MTS2 and they'd gotten through!). I have sworn off large collections for a while, and I'm going to be moving back into individual breed uploads.

When I was recolouring the Shih-Tzu I discovered something interesting: the most common Shih-Tzu colours are unbelievably difficult to reproduce in the Sims! I've managed five or six colours, and I'll try and do the screenshots today (grrr, I hate doing screenshots!)

Regardless, it's going well (now if only I could find someone to do screenshots for me :p). The St-Bernard is made, I'll do some fine tuning today. It's turned out well, but the breed presents more challenges than I anticipated.

After this I plan on uploading my Boxers.

Date Posted: 7th Apr 2009 at 3:01 PM

Well, I've submitted the second "Ultimate Terrier Pack" and crossed my fingers that moderation gives it the okay. I'm now regretting the last minute addition of the Yorkie slightly, I should have held it back for more fine-tuning, but I was late already and didn't want to keep the requester waiting any longer. Oh well, I'm reasonably pleased, and I think it will get through.

I have two additional requests to fulfil, a Shih-Tzu and a Saint Bernard. The Shih-Tzu body-work is finished, so I just have to do recolours. I have not yet started on the Saint Bernard, but I'll try at least starting it today.

After this, I have plans to upload my Boxer, which I feel is a vast improvement of the Maxis and the alternatives offered on MTS2. The MTS2 ones are all improvements on Maxis, but I think there's still a bit more realism to be achieved.

Date Posted: 14th Mar 2009 at 12:31 AM

As I'm sure you're aware, the servers recently lost massive amounts of files, many of mine among these. I'm going to focus on fixing up my threads before doing any new uploads, so my promised terrier pack and my requests have been temporarily postponed. Re-uploading everything lost should take several days to one week, so expect the new uploads to be delayed somewhat beyond that. Apologies, but I only have so much time to Sim! I promise I'll get to uploading as soon as possible, and I will still fulfil all the requests I have replied to.

I may break the large terriers upload into several smaller uploads in order to get it up faster. Additionally, I have created a Boxer which will probably be up by the end of the month.

Date Posted: 24th Feb 2009 at 3:29 PM

Well, thank goodness the terriers got through! Thanks for the lovely comments, they really motivate me to keep posting more breeds. I have just finished the second terrier pack this morning, and I figure I might as well spill the beans about what's included:

*Norfolk Terrier
*Norwich Terrier
*Cairn Terrier (in three colours)
*Terrier Brasileiro (aka Brazilian Terrier, two colours)
*Yorkshire Terrier (requested)
*Patterdale Terrier (four colours and two coat varieties. Eight files total)
*Rat Terrier
*Sealyham Terrier

Now that they're all made, it will take me a few days to do screenshots and another to upload, so it may be pushed back depending on my work. Here's hoping it gets through moderation smoothly!
Just to let everyone know, I'm currently exceptionally busy with work, so my uploads may be slower coming. Sorry!

Date Posted: 14th Feb 2009 at 1:54 PM

Hi everyone
Just letting you all know that I haven't fallen off the edge of the earth. Firstly, my family life has been crazy and I've been sick, secondly I've been working on a big upload for all you guys. Wanna know what's included? Well, you can't, it's a surprise! However, here's a bit of info:

*Includes at least ten breeds, perhaps up to fifteen. So big, in fact, that I may split it into two or three posts.
*All of the breeds, save one, are small dogs.
*This group of dogs I have called in moments of sarcasm "pigheaded, vicious little ankle-biters" (for those who own members of this group, that should be hint enough to figure out what I'm up to)

I hope to be uploading in a week's time
Cheers

Date Posted: 7th Jan 2009 at 6:26 PM

Hi all, I figured I'd share some of my favourite tips on making realistic dog breeds.

Tip #1 - Eye, Head and Foot sizing
The default Maxis sizes for eyes and feet are almost always too big. I generally slide the feet as small as they can go (or thereabouts) and brings the eyes down by a few clicks. Eye size is extremely important to getting each breed's distinctive expression, and studying really good dogs from the breed you're making can help determine the proportions. Maxis default head size is often slightly too large, especially for big dogs. I generally bring it down a click, but be careful as it's extremely easy to overdo this.

Tip #2 - Choose your reference pictures carefully
Never, never, never get images by doing a Google image search. You'll most likely get two things: the Wikipedia image (often portraying a substandard member of the breed) repeated everywhere because everyone wants free images, people's pets from Flickr and dogbreedinfo.com (again, substandard animals).

Always get your references from dog show judging standards and each breed's club, an association of people who all own the same breed, and likely show their dogs. Most breed clubs have excellent literature about the ideal appearance of their breed, and when looking for references the first place I go is the breed clubs. To find clubs, my preferred method is to look the breed up on Wikipedia, which almost always has links to the breed clubs. If this doesn't work, try Googling "[breed name] club" or "[breed name] association".

Tip #3 - Proportions are Everything
Always be mindful of the proportions; everything from how big the head is compared to the body to how long with muzzle is compared to the skull to how bulky the body is compared to the legs. Even if you get one or two features of the breed down well, if the proportions aren't right you won't get something realistic, especially to the eyes of dog show people and artists. This is where good reference pictures are essential, as proportions are often difficult to explain in writing.

Date Posted: 4th Jan 2009 at 2:44 PM

A slightly belated happy new year to you all!

I have uploaded my version of the Spinone Italiano, a rare breed of Italian gundog. I'm very happy with my model, but unfortunately I forgot that they typically have docked tails! I only realized this until I had made all my screenshots and packaged all the files, and I really didn't feel like redoing all of that, so I put them through to moderation with long tails. Thankfully, I can use the excuse that they don't dock them in the UK, and I was getting some reference images from the English breed club, but I'm still a bit ashamed of that stupid, stupid mistake. I'm gonna put up the docked versions as soon as I can. I don't anticipate any problems getting them through moderation, but you never quite know, do you?

I've also submitted a Rottweiler, as requested, and I will soon be submitting my version of the Soft-coated Wheaten Terrier.

Date Posted: 18th Dec 2008 at 12:13 AM

The Poms are through, and in retrospect they turned out better than I thought initially. Sorry, I've only got three colours up (I was feeling productive, but not that productive!), I'll try and have the others up soon.

And now for some rambling. One thing that bugs me about the Maxis-made breeds is that in some of them the colours are ridiculously off. I'm referring specifically to the "chocolate" Labrador Retriever and the Weimaraner. The Lab is way too red (this can be counteracted by simply adding a layer of "dark brown" for the full body and playing with the opacity a little). The Weim is too charcoal grey instead of silvery (easily fixed by adding a layer of silver in the same process as for the Lab).

Date Posted: 15th Dec 2008 at 12:17 AM

Well, my Flat-coated Retriever is now up and through moderation! These dogs are really gorgeous in-game, the screencaps don't quite do them justice (maybe I'll try and replace them with better ones). Depending on how productive I'm feeling I'll either try to upload my Dutch Shepherds or my Pomeranians. I suspect the latter will be more popular here, but I'm very partial to the shepherds. I've got six colour variants of the Pom, and all three coat varieties of the shepherds, so either way you guys will get some nice choices.