Magazine Monthly - December 2014
Photo by Demeter - Winter Traditions Challenge
The pre-SIFF festivities begin now
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Letter from the editor
On behalf of the entire Simatography Magazine team - we would like to wish you a joyous holiday season in celebration of your own Winter Traditions. For most of us that means Christmas, but since we have simmers from all over the world joining us, we want to wish everyone their very own special wishes of happy creativity for now and the new year ahead. This is only our second of our monthly issues, and we have added even more content that we hope you will enjoy and we welcome your feedback. While our focus is on Winter Traditions, you will notice that the smell of SIFF is in the air as we prepare for the coming season with much excitement so we hope you will be joining us. For now, we wish you season’s greetings and we will see you again in the new year. Assistant Editors for this issue
Demeter
Jorgha Haq PeacemakerIC
Major contributors this issue CatKetty, LunxiWeis, TenderWolf, Sylent Whysper
Winter Traditions We ended up with a heavy Christmas focus as we expected since the majority of us are from places in the world where this is the main winter holiday tradition, but even then Christmas means something different to each of us. Thank you to everyone who joined in our little celebration and who shared their treasured Christmas and Winter moments. It was wonderful to see a bit of everything from Sims 2, 3 and 4 this season. With winter and Christmas come the joys of the content that these things inspire - Seasons EP is the obvious choice for snowy scenes and activities, and the Sims 4 just this past week brought us winter and Christmas goodies, but we also cannot go without a big thank you to all of the custom
content creators who’s generous gifts allow us to bring our dreams to life. As we celebrate the final month of the year, we are looking forward to an exciting year ahead with even more great inspirations. We hope that you will consider joining us each month in our theme challenges. You can submit anything you create machinima, advertisements, custom content, stories, photos etc. Check for more information towards the back of this issue and you will discover that our theme for December through January, to publish in our next issue, will be‌
GetTing In Character Photo by TenderWolf
Aaron of Wicked Hearts (seen in the past at SIFF’s Battle of the Bands) may not be the most religious person on earth, but this year he decided to pay tribute to his 25% Italian heritage by creating a nativity scene together with his daughter Shaylee. Or… well, actually she was the one who begged him to help her make one once she found out about “Italian daddy”, Christmas things, and cute Christmas dolls!! So here they are, being all cute together and turning the whole house into a HUGE mess… which could be counted as a family tradition I guess. Astrea Nevermore
Tali Morgan, Echo Devereau
Machinim
ux and Dice Smith
ma Makers
with special guest Kodi
Winter traditions for me means baking sweets, snowball fights, drinking hot chocolate by the tree and celebrating Christmas. Dice Smith
Kenzie is obviously very excited about Christmas and winter as we can see from her variety of photo submissions. Thank you to Kenzie also for adding some Sims 2 shots in the mix, to help us inspire our Sims 2 players to join us in the future.
Bavarian Style Titus will spend Christmas with his children Katherine and Julian in the Alps. They will prepare a traditional feast and have lots of things to do until Zoey and her son Josh arrive.
Zoey is always about the FUN so you can be sure that she will be spending her holiday season having plenty of it, and she will surely be found with her son Josh and her best friend Titus at her side.
Winter Wonderlands and Christmas Cheer - our machinima makers have created some fun and festive machinima for you to enjoy this holiday season.
Watch it HERE on YOUTUBE
You have not had a full Sims experience until you have heard Bavarian Kareoke
Angel of Sin presents a very special holiday greeting as she sings to us in this cover of Christmas lights. Watch it HERE on YOUTUBE
Zoey, Titus and Josh rock it out for us in celebration of Christmas in true Little Drummer boy style. Watch it HERE on YOUTUBE
imspiration Earlier this year, at The Sims 4 Creator’s Camp, I had the pleasure of meeting the creative woman behind Babylonia Sims. I was absolutely blown away by this incredible graphic novel series that she had created using The Sims - she even has real-life printed books and a huge Korean fan following.
I know that there are others of you out there that are doing comic books or graphic novels with your Sims, so we would love to see them. If you are doing this, or if you know of someone who is then please let us know. We would love to see more of this. Turn the page and see what Sylent Whysper is doing with her first Sims 4 graphic novel. Find Babylonia HERE http://blog.naver.com/isamuhir
http://kaleekalo.tumblr.com/
As we bring out the topic of story-telling, comic books and graphic novels created with The Sims games, we had to share our adoration for Sylent Whysper. Sylent has been involved with SIFF and Simatography since the very beginning, and has always been an inspiration.
With the coming of The Sims 4, Sylent is showing no signs of slowing down. Her recent venture into graphic novels are a true showcase of story-telling and Sims photography that we hope will insipre you to explore the vast possibilities of The Sims.
Follow Sylent Whysper on Issuu for more chapters to come
Eluvian from Prosims All other Dragon Age items from Champion of Simswall
Bodan’s Wares available for enchantment
Dragon Age tattoos
Grey Warden Shirt from Aikea-Guinea
Fenris tattoos Ÿ Sims 2 Version Ÿ Sims 3 Version
Mage Robes and Origins armor from VacuumMelon
From Kitki: Ÿ Lyrium Idol/Sarabass mask Ÿ Potion clutter
ADOPT A NUG TODAY!
strives to be a truly international festival, but the truth is that we at Simatography are almost all english speaking and our site is an english language site. We do accept all nationality of film makers, but we cannot always provide the support that we would like, simply because we cannot always translate all of the important information. The great staff at All About Sims proposed a sort of partnership or friendship that helps us connect their German speaking community with the English language SIFF. A big Thanks goes to King Leo, Moni Bee and our very own long-standing SIFF patron Titus Linde for helping to keep this connection alive. If you are a german player, be sure to check out All About Sims. If you know german language machinima makers they can use all about Sims staff as a resource to help them if they need anything explained before entering SIFF. We look forward to seeing more international machinima makers at our festivals. Join our partner page Filme mit Sims and share your latest machinima with us https://www.facebook.com/groups/simsmachinima/
www.allaboutsims.net If you have an international Sims fansite with an active machinima community, contact us at simatography@gmail.com to talk about how we can partner together to help your machinima makers ‘ films more recognition in the English language community.
We have so many talented photographers on our website who take the time to share their photos in our galleries that we wanted to showcase some randomly selected examples. Visit our gallery HERE for more inspirations
FASHIION by Blacq Starr While we will never be a fashionfocused site, we cannot deny the gorgeous and creative fashion photographers out there, and how much potential there is in The Sims for this genre of photography.
by Erin Callan
We find that often Sim-tographers tend towards a certain style of photography. In browsing through Erin Callan’s albums we see many gorgeous portraits. I hope you will enjoy these as much as we did. Gorgeous portraits make interesting avitars and beautiful memories of your favourite sims.
by Dana Photographed in The Sims and magically transformed into something otherworldly, Dana has created some breathtaking examples of digital art.
A Sims 2 voice over series inspired by The Lunar Chronicles - HERE on YouTube
Machinima Series Update With Tabby Lloyd
With each issue we will bring you a small sample of some of the great machinima series’ we have discovered. Enjoy the show. The Day of Llamas - ep 1 - by SimsFans.de
Click here to watch it
I had to share this fun little short series because it has a different style to it than I usually see in machinima, and also because it is a great showcase of some of the fun animations we can find in The Sims 4. I liked how the camera seems to take you right into the world of our Sims, as if you are there with them for real.
Speak No Evil - ep 1 - by Misakis Box of Anime
Watch it HERE
This voice over series will feature some of SIFF’s most well known voices it seems. So far so go - very well filmed with a suspenseful and mysterious feeling to it. The story develops nicely for a pilot, with intrigue and anticipation already developing.
Scandal in Green - part 1 - by Loisy Voicy This new series takes over where Loisy’s Willow (seen at last season’s SIFF) takes off. It portrays a young woman’s struggles with the loss of her best friend. Watch it HERE Our goal is to showcase many more Sims Series’ with each monthly magazine. If you have a Sims Series’ and you release a new episode then be sure to share it with us through YouTube or Twitter (by tagging @simatography)
Filmore Noir and Shantel Potins Celebrity and Film These are the things that Simatography and SIFF are made of. Follow our duo of star watchers for a view into the celebrity Sims world, each month in simatography magazine and also in the SIFF Buzz during Festival season. Read up on past issues HERE on ISSUU
Presented to you by Demeter, CatKetty and Nanami
Even when the SIFF seasons end the machinima community still keeps itself busy bringing out many great films and music videos for us to watch year round. I am here to bring you a few of those that I found on one of my many film binge moments.
Click HERE to watch the film
Click HERE to watch the film
Click HERE to watch the film
THE PLACE TO BE for up to the minute Sims 4 game updates, gameguides, custom content reveiws and Much Much MORE Hot Topic This Month‌ All the buzz this week is about the first expansion pack for The Sims 4 - Outdoor Adventures. Get all of the up to the minute news at Sims VIP. Watch the trailer HERE
The Sims International Film Festival and the Battle of the Bands will be here before you know it. In fact, sign ups for the Battle of the Bands start 15 Dec 2015. We can’t wait to see to see who turns out this season. There have been some changes made and put in place for this season. There will now be mandatory photo Prompts to encourage consistent participation to counteract the steep decline in submissions as we reach the voting stage. We also want to enforce that the Battle of the Bands is not a popularity contest; it is about creativity through photography. Check out the rules document if you are planning on joining.
Success after SIFF
Once the curtain is drawn and the red carpet is rolled up, our SIFF bands still have a career to tend to. Let’s see what some of our past bands are up to these days‌ Castelline has never slowed down. Watch his latest video OVERGROWN HERE
ABOVE - BOYZ, a band managed by WhiteBlueCherry continue their music career with a newly released music video. Watch it HERE
4 Leaf Clover - we first met them many years ago, are still making waves. Their next big date is a gig at the Black Cherry Club. Look for this and more HERE at SWTV
Click HERE for Watch the trailer the trailer
The updated SIFF rules booklet is AVAILABLE NOW - see it over there on the right hand page? Click on it to get to our issuu page where you will be able to read it before you join us at this year’s Spring season of SIFF.
NEW for SIFF this Spring season… Voice actors will be able to submit their SIFF voice acting parts for best voice actor. Sims 4 machinima will be joining in on the mix. Machinima masters will be separated out into fulllength and short-length categories. Machinima series will be separated into established series’ and new starting series’ Watch for promotions and updates starting soon!
Click HERE or on the cover above to view
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For the holiday season we bring a little bit of cultured elegance to the costume design theme - inspired by the classic magical ballet - The Nutcracker
A special thank you and Merry Christmas to all of the pose makers out there who’s hard work and generous sharing help us bring our characters to life
With Minraed Arzhel
Romer Jon of Ansett 4 Films has been recognized at SIFF as one of several Masters of Machinima for his beautifully filmed animated stories made from The Sims 3. With The Sims 4 coming to our collection of tools - Romer Jon has made the switch and is here to share that experience with us. How long have you been makingmachinima, and what are your thoughts on switching from The Sims 3 to The Sims 4? I have been playing The Sims 3 since 2012 when I was really behind on the latest simulation games. I started making machinima videos for The Sims 3 since February 2012 and I enjoyed making music machinima videos in particular. Now The Sims 4 has finally arrived, I decided to move onto The Sims 4. The Sims 4 has a lot of amazing animations and emotions and I absolutely cannot wait for pose and animation players, but The Sims 3 is still the best simulation game for making wonderful machinima videos because it's a big open world and best of all... Custom Contents and Create A Style Tool!
What are you looking forward to in the future of The Sims 4 for your machinima making? I am looking forward to making more music machinima videos for The Sims 4, but it is still pretty early. I am still having many problems with The Sims 4 camera mode, but I will get used to it and I am sure that more new tools will come in time. My next plan is to make a Sims 4 version of Photograph by Ed Sheeran, and I plan to make a Sims 4 machinima very soon for Sims International Film Festival for Spring or Fall of 2015. Can you give Sims 4 machinima makers some quick tips to help them with their Sims 4 machinima? People are always asking me “how did you do this?” I feel badly for ignoring these questions when I am extremely busy, but I will stay in touch with the questions and hopefully put out a special machinima tips video series on my website. Click the banner for Ansett 4 Sims’ YouTube
CLICK HERE to get DETAILS
Photography
By Minraed Arzhel
Experimenting with animation triggers for your Sims 4 photography We all know that there are limitations for us photographers, but limitations do not mean impossible. Here are a few more ideas from my photography attempts. For the above photo I wanted to trigger some flirty poses, or something interesting for a holiday greeting. I put up a fence to keep Asher away from Min, but she kept trying to get closer. There is a limit to the distance that I could keep her away without her getting upset and uncooperative with the camera.
Get your Sims into position and create small fences around them to hold them in position. Trigger the animation and use pause/unpause to stop and start the action until you get the pose that looks right. Enter build mode again and remove the fences. I love how in build mode the Sims now don’t disappear so when you go back to LIVE they are just where you left them.
- The photo above was a complete accidental discovery so I used it for our 100 themes challenge - SMILE
Experiment with everything your Sim comes in contact with. You never know what you may come up with. In this case “play as sea monster� while in the park playground.
While capturing various random animation triggered photos it came to me that we had a story developing‌
The chewing animation looks like surprise at one point A fire starts and Cosima is startled‌ ‌ a random person appears inside her bedroom and plays on her tablet ???
Sometimes it is the joy of randomness that ends up providing the best shots for the story, rather than trying to force what you need and getting frustrated.
Cosima, in witness protection for over a decade after witnessing a huge international crime, has been feeling on edge lately. She hears something inside, and feels that ominous feeling of being stalked. Who is this man prying into her privacy? Have they discovered her secret identity? Will she ever be truly safe?
Join our monthly theme Getting Into Character For this month we will explore the fun of getting our sims into character for their roles as actors, models and bands.
Something for everyone‌ Advertisements - Machinima - Photography Story Telling - Custom Content - Poses - Animations or anything you can think of that fits the theme GET the INFO HERE in our forums
http://www.cafepress.com/simatographystuff