Date Posted: 27th Dec 2009 at 2:26 AM
Half of the fun of building for me is sharing my lots so when the Exchange went down--again--this week I uploaded my newest house here to MTS. It was promptly rejected for my pictures and I almost didn't take the time to re-take the larger screen shots but I'm really happy that I did because I'm absolutely impressed with the featrues this site has for creators.
One of the best tools for improving my builds are pictures so every now and again I'll stop building to snap a few pictures just to kind of step back and see where I'm at. And I'll be using this journal space to share those pictures.
Stage 1
The first step for me is just putting something down on the lot. I'll have a rough idea of what I want but at this point I'm just figuring out placement and getting a rough shell of a house down so I have something to refine. In this case I want a dock on the left with a little house in the back so that's why I didn't center the house.
I didn't realize journal entries would need to be approved by a moderator or I wouldn't have split these entries up. Sorry!
Stage 2
Now this is better--it's starting to look like a house to me! And this is also where I first notice what I don't like about this house.
First, the decking overwhelms the build. It looks like this massive block of wood with a teeny tiny house on top.
Second, the waves in live mode are floating in the air and sims enter the water under the dock--which looks stupid. This is the first time I've tried to build a dock to I almost gave up on the whole idea before I figured out if I lifted the lot and placed it again it re-contours the ocean floor and fixed the wave animations.
Stage 3
The changes from the last set of pictures is pretty dramatic and happened because I wanted to keep the lattice but I thought it overwhelmed the smallish house.
The first thing I did was make the house a little wider and do away with the side decks and then changed the color to get rid of the brown/matching colors. I really like the new color combination but if anything it made the problem even more noticable.
So my second attempt to fix the problem was to sink the foundation into the ground by 1/4 of a wall height--and that helped a little bit but the decking was still massive.
The third--and quickest change--was to change the fencing and that actually made the biggest difference. The lattice decking is still a major feature of the house but I don't think it overwhelms the build now.
I'm pretty pleased with how the outside of the house is taking shape. I still need to work on the landscaping a bit more and furnish the beach and decks. The house itself stills needs some major work--it's just an empty shell right now. There's also not really that much space inside so it'll be a challenge--for me at least--to come up with a sim friendly layout I'm happy with.
I'll keep looking at these last set of pictures before I start to build again just to try and pick up on any of the things I can change to improve the look of the house. If anyone has any suggestions or feedback feel free to comment--I'd love to hear from you.
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