Mini Meta: On Emmi's Look.
I'm not procrastinating today. Honest. Ok, maybe I am, but I'm being productive with it, and this bit of procrastination, should hopefully help me with my writing. You see, what with the rebuild of doom last year, I've spent quite a lot of time, not thinking about my characters, and so now that I'm trying to get on with my story, I'm stumbling slightly at times when it comes to remembering how characters speak or act. Now Emmi won't really appear in this chapter, but I've been thinking a lot about her look as a teen, and as an adult recently, and that has been helping me to re familiarise myself with her as a character. Partly for my own reference, and partly because some of you might be interested, I thought I'd jot down my thoughts here.
Emmi is actually one of my most complicated characters and she is even more difficult to make feel real. This is partly because I think it'd be far too easy to fall into the trap of portraying her as a virtuoso and nothing else. Now it's very true that her musical ability is the most important factor in her personality, but it manifests itself in more ways than her just being awesome at playing the piano. For instance, it makes her short tempered, impatient and forthright, which contradicts her shyness but it also makes her very introverted which makes sense with her shyness. You see what I mean about her being complicated?
Well, when it came to putting together a look for her as a teen and adult, ie a time when her mother wouldn't dress her, I ran into a big problem with how to show her personality with the limited Victorian clothing out there. This never used to be such a problem for me, because there was a time when my sims were sims first and characters second, so as long as clothes and hair suited their looks and sort of fitted their characters, I was happy. That's no longer the case. Now my sims are characters first and sims second, and as such I want their looks to feel as if they have come from them, and not from the limited pool of clothes and hair styles I have. With Emmi, this has led to me spending months and months and months thinking about her style and trying to come up with something which really works for her.
Well, well before the rebuild, when she was still a wee toddler (in 2010), I came up with a look for her as an adult, because I was making the headers for the Emporium and I wanted to get the generation five header done at the same time. Then, about a year later, I made a dress for her as a teen, that went with this adult look. Here they are:
You will have seen these in photoshoots and specials that I've done, and there is nothing terrible about them. They suit her looks a LOT, but they don't suit her personality.
I also created another look for her as an adult, a modern look for when she went off to Antarctica for Robert's BC.
(Picture from Penguingirl03's BC because I no longer have this outfit in my game).
This look, strangely enough, is more her than the two Victorian looks I came up with.
So what is wrong with the looks I came up with, and why did I want to change them? First off, let's talk about her hair.
This style really, really suits the shape of her face, but there are several problems with it. First of all, it's the same hairstyle that Celly wears, and I try not to use the same everyday style for too many of the main characters, especially when it comes to the girls (boys are far more flexible because men's hairstyles didn't have the same variety as the women's). Partly that's because it's not very realistic, and partly it's because a sim's hair is one of their more recognisable features. I mean, can you imagine Spider Jerusalem without his spiky hair? Or Zane without his curls? Or my Eddie without his ponytail? Or Sarah Jane with a bob? Secondly, it is far, far too fussy for Emmi to wear everyday. I can see her suffering through someone doing this to her hair for a special occasion but unlike Celly, there is no way she would get up and style her hair this way herself every single day. This is why the style she wears in Pen's neighbourhood suits her better. Not only is her hair shorter which I think she would like because it's less hair to brush, It's also a simple ponytail that has ended up a bit messy. I can see her scraping her hair into this each morning and forgetting about it.
It's also why the side plait she has, first as a child, then as a young teen suits her. It has been quickly plaited to keep it out of her way, but part of it is falling down and she hasn't bothered to redo it, or ask someone to redo it for her.
I went through I don't know how many hairs trying to find one which suited Emmi as an adult, both looking good and looking like she had done it herself. In the end, I found this one:
Newsea's Agness. Not only does it look good on her (hairs which are too tightly pulled back and don't have any volume emphasise how long and triangular her face is), but I love that it's a little messy and looks to me like she started putting her hair in a french plait, but got bored or distracted at the nape of her neck, so twisted the rest of her hair into a plain bun. That's a very Emmi thing to do.
For most of her teen years, she will be keeping the side plait, but when she changes her clothes at sixteen, she'll start wearing her hair like this.
Let's talk about her clothes now.
Again there's nothing terrible about them. They're just not quite right for everyday wear. Both of them strike me as being too fussy in cut (all that froufrou of the lace around her neck and chest is not Emmi at all) and too well put together for her to have chosen herself. Of course, Carmen could very well have helped her, but it still seems to me that the only input Emmi would have had is the colour of the material.
Again, Emmi's modern look works better, because there's something ever so slightly off and mismatched about it. I imagined her thought process to be something like "trousers? Why are there workmen's trousers in this pile? I need a skirt. That one is nice, even if it's plain and black and very, very short. I need stockings. How odd, these stockings have a middle bit. Ooh, they are patterned, I like that. Boots, I need boots. Hmm, these are higher than the boots I normally wear, but they will do. Antartica is cold. i am going to need something warm to wear on top. That red wool jumper is nice. I will wear that." As you can see, she looked for clothing she recognised, and were her idea of pratical, and yet they look slightly wrong together since the top would look better with jeans.
Here are her new clothes:
Her adult dress is based on a real dress. it's a dress which i'd seen and thought would suit Emmi down to the ground, but there is no way I'm good enough at making clothing to make it for myself, so I was extremely happy to see Lidiqnata make a teen version of it. All I've done is take the texture and refit it to my updated riding habit mesh. It's the perfect dress for Emmi for several reasons. First of all, it's that gorgeous crimson with a splash of cream which are her signature colours. Secondly, the detail on it is incredibly pretty, and she would choose the embroidery because of that. She's very much an "ooh that's pretty, I like that" kind of girl when it comes to embroidery. Thirdly, even though the detail is very intricate, the cut is very simple, with no froufrou around her neck. Emmi is not the sort of girl would enjoy spending time putting on different layers, and numerous skirts, like Sophia, Celly and Sarah Jane do. This is basically a skirt and polonaise jacket and she would love the fact it's only two things to put on over her underwear.
The whole dress also slightly wrong. Anyone with any knowledge of men's clothing from the 18th century should be getting vibes from that emboidery and jacket, and if you read the museum's blurb about it, you'll see you're not wrong. This is not an everyday dress: it's a dress for a fancy dress ball. A dress which evokes men's clothing of the 18th century. Emmi would like the dress because it's pretty and the cut is simple; she would give no thought behind the shape of the jacket, or that the cream part gives the illusion of a waistcoat.
Her young teen dress is an updated version of the dress you've seen her in in my picspam. It's on my new pinny mesh, and i've been able to make the pinny and dress suit her more, but still there is a feeling that Carmen has had a hand in it, probably by making the pinny for her. This is the dress you'll see her in in future chapters.
Finally is a dress you've seen her wear before. This is currently her Sunday best dress, and she wore it to Bethy's wedding and in the Christmas card last year. It will become her everyday wear when she turns 16, but I have several issues with the mesh it's currently on: it's too short for a girl of that age, the texture stretches on the lower part of the skirt, the skirt glitches and the shoulders are from the wrong decade for me (1890s, not late 1870s, early 1880s). Because of this I think I'm going to refit it to the teen version of my riding habit mesh. Again though, this is much more Emmi than the dress I was going to use, because it's fairly simplem and I can also see Carmen's influence in it.
I will keep the first dress I was going to put her in as a teen, but it'll be her formal dress I think.
And there we go. Just a little bit about Emmi's style and the sorts of things I've been thinking about whilst trying to come up with looks for her in the story. I hope you enjoyed it and if you want me to waffle on about any of my other characters and their looks, let me know.
EDIT: I went ahead and refitted the dress to see what it looks like. Me likey.
Emmi is actually one of my most complicated characters and she is even more difficult to make feel real. This is partly because I think it'd be far too easy to fall into the trap of portraying her as a virtuoso and nothing else. Now it's very true that her musical ability is the most important factor in her personality, but it manifests itself in more ways than her just being awesome at playing the piano. For instance, it makes her short tempered, impatient and forthright, which contradicts her shyness but it also makes her very introverted which makes sense with her shyness. You see what I mean about her being complicated?
Well, when it came to putting together a look for her as a teen and adult, ie a time when her mother wouldn't dress her, I ran into a big problem with how to show her personality with the limited Victorian clothing out there. This never used to be such a problem for me, because there was a time when my sims were sims first and characters second, so as long as clothes and hair suited their looks and sort of fitted their characters, I was happy. That's no longer the case. Now my sims are characters first and sims second, and as such I want their looks to feel as if they have come from them, and not from the limited pool of clothes and hair styles I have. With Emmi, this has led to me spending months and months and months thinking about her style and trying to come up with something which really works for her.
Well, well before the rebuild, when she was still a wee toddler (in 2010), I came up with a look for her as an adult, because I was making the headers for the Emporium and I wanted to get the generation five header done at the same time. Then, about a year later, I made a dress for her as a teen, that went with this adult look. Here they are:
You will have seen these in photoshoots and specials that I've done, and there is nothing terrible about them. They suit her looks a LOT, but they don't suit her personality.
I also created another look for her as an adult, a modern look for when she went off to Antarctica for Robert's BC.
(Picture from Penguingirl03's BC because I no longer have this outfit in my game).
This look, strangely enough, is more her than the two Victorian looks I came up with.
So what is wrong with the looks I came up with, and why did I want to change them? First off, let's talk about her hair.
This style really, really suits the shape of her face, but there are several problems with it. First of all, it's the same hairstyle that Celly wears, and I try not to use the same everyday style for too many of the main characters, especially when it comes to the girls (boys are far more flexible because men's hairstyles didn't have the same variety as the women's). Partly that's because it's not very realistic, and partly it's because a sim's hair is one of their more recognisable features. I mean, can you imagine Spider Jerusalem without his spiky hair? Or Zane without his curls? Or my Eddie without his ponytail? Or Sarah Jane with a bob? Secondly, it is far, far too fussy for Emmi to wear everyday. I can see her suffering through someone doing this to her hair for a special occasion but unlike Celly, there is no way she would get up and style her hair this way herself every single day. This is why the style she wears in Pen's neighbourhood suits her better. Not only is her hair shorter which I think she would like because it's less hair to brush, It's also a simple ponytail that has ended up a bit messy. I can see her scraping her hair into this each morning and forgetting about it.
It's also why the side plait she has, first as a child, then as a young teen suits her. It has been quickly plaited to keep it out of her way, but part of it is falling down and she hasn't bothered to redo it, or ask someone to redo it for her.
I went through I don't know how many hairs trying to find one which suited Emmi as an adult, both looking good and looking like she had done it herself. In the end, I found this one:
Newsea's Agness. Not only does it look good on her (hairs which are too tightly pulled back and don't have any volume emphasise how long and triangular her face is), but I love that it's a little messy and looks to me like she started putting her hair in a french plait, but got bored or distracted at the nape of her neck, so twisted the rest of her hair into a plain bun. That's a very Emmi thing to do.
For most of her teen years, she will be keeping the side plait, but when she changes her clothes at sixteen, she'll start wearing her hair like this.
Let's talk about her clothes now.
Again there's nothing terrible about them. They're just not quite right for everyday wear. Both of them strike me as being too fussy in cut (all that froufrou of the lace around her neck and chest is not Emmi at all) and too well put together for her to have chosen herself. Of course, Carmen could very well have helped her, but it still seems to me that the only input Emmi would have had is the colour of the material.
Again, Emmi's modern look works better, because there's something ever so slightly off and mismatched about it. I imagined her thought process to be something like "trousers? Why are there workmen's trousers in this pile? I need a skirt. That one is nice, even if it's plain and black and very, very short. I need stockings. How odd, these stockings have a middle bit. Ooh, they are patterned, I like that. Boots, I need boots. Hmm, these are higher than the boots I normally wear, but they will do. Antartica is cold. i am going to need something warm to wear on top. That red wool jumper is nice. I will wear that." As you can see, she looked for clothing she recognised, and were her idea of pratical, and yet they look slightly wrong together since the top would look better with jeans.
Here are her new clothes:
Her adult dress is based on a real dress. it's a dress which i'd seen and thought would suit Emmi down to the ground, but there is no way I'm good enough at making clothing to make it for myself, so I was extremely happy to see Lidiqnata make a teen version of it. All I've done is take the texture and refit it to my updated riding habit mesh. It's the perfect dress for Emmi for several reasons. First of all, it's that gorgeous crimson with a splash of cream which are her signature colours. Secondly, the detail on it is incredibly pretty, and she would choose the embroidery because of that. She's very much an "ooh that's pretty, I like that" kind of girl when it comes to embroidery. Thirdly, even though the detail is very intricate, the cut is very simple, with no froufrou around her neck. Emmi is not the sort of girl would enjoy spending time putting on different layers, and numerous skirts, like Sophia, Celly and Sarah Jane do. This is basically a skirt and polonaise jacket and she would love the fact it's only two things to put on over her underwear.
The whole dress also slightly wrong. Anyone with any knowledge of men's clothing from the 18th century should be getting vibes from that emboidery and jacket, and if you read the museum's blurb about it, you'll see you're not wrong. This is not an everyday dress: it's a dress for a fancy dress ball. A dress which evokes men's clothing of the 18th century. Emmi would like the dress because it's pretty and the cut is simple; she would give no thought behind the shape of the jacket, or that the cream part gives the illusion of a waistcoat.
Her young teen dress is an updated version of the dress you've seen her in in my picspam. It's on my new pinny mesh, and i've been able to make the pinny and dress suit her more, but still there is a feeling that Carmen has had a hand in it, probably by making the pinny for her. This is the dress you'll see her in in future chapters.
Finally is a dress you've seen her wear before. This is currently her Sunday best dress, and she wore it to Bethy's wedding and in the Christmas card last year. It will become her everyday wear when she turns 16, but I have several issues with the mesh it's currently on: it's too short for a girl of that age, the texture stretches on the lower part of the skirt, the skirt glitches and the shoulders are from the wrong decade for me (1890s, not late 1870s, early 1880s). Because of this I think I'm going to refit it to the teen version of my riding habit mesh. Again though, this is much more Emmi than the dress I was going to use, because it's fairly simplem and I can also see Carmen's influence in it.
I will keep the first dress I was going to put her in as a teen, but it'll be her formal dress I think.
And there we go. Just a little bit about Emmi's style and the sorts of things I've been thinking about whilst trying to come up with looks for her in the story. I hope you enjoyed it and if you want me to waffle on about any of my other characters and their looks, let me know.
EDIT: I went ahead and refitted the dress to see what it looks like. Me likey.