Hangerock (Simple Viking Apron Dresses)
Jul. 9th, 2012 03:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hat_plays_simsUsually, when you're looking for clothing for your Sims, the only category where you don't have any problems finding a a good variety for all categories (but especially Casual and Formal) is Adult Female. For themed games, this is particularly true-- there are lots and lots of meshes for Medieval, Victorian, futuristic, steampunk, post-apocalyptic, classical Greek, whatever kind of ladies you can name... but good luck finding anything for toddlers or old men.
Weirdly, when it comes to Vikings, the womenfolk are a little bit left out. There are plenty of nifty, historically accurate (or at least plausible) recolors of Iamliz13's Rus Viking Tunic, and even age conversions for toddler through teen, but the Viking ladies get left out.
When I found a nifty mesh by Trapping, I knew I had to at least give it a try.
"Each woman wears on either breast a box of iron, silver, copper or gold; the value of the box indicates the wealth of the husband." --Ibn Fadlan
Let me first and foremost say that these are not perfect. I had some mesh limitations and I will readily admit that the hem of the overdresses are on the long side because it just looked nicer to me on this mesh. I'll link to my resources and inspiration and that will do a very good job of illustrating my shortcomings. And there is some pixelation on the darker colors; the way the mesh is separated into two groups, I didn't feel like I could easily add enough texture to prevent that and still have everything line up neatly.
What I liked about the mesh, though, is that it works so well for the shape of a hangerock (literally, apron-skirt). It's loose through the torso and has a nice little meshed-in detail at the neckline that gives the fabric some weight.
Instead of doing a full pallette of eighty-two color actions, I just did a dozen combinations, four for each class.
The Þællkona (thrall-woman) dresses are done in simple earth-tones, colors that could be undyed or cheaply dyed. The brightest bits of color are in the trim around the edges of the hangerock, and the brooches holding everything together are copper, taken from an image of a Durrow brooch reproduction. These dresses are meant for the poor or the un-free, such as serfs or... well, thralls. There was always hope, though; a Viking thrall who had any free time could work at handcrafts or other anything else they could find to earn enough money to buy their own freedom, an event which called for celebration and drinking.
The Bóndidama (free-wife or farmer's wife) are a little richer, a little brighter, but still not impossible for a middle-class lady to wear. (Though Bondi 1 apparently left her hangerock to sit in the madder dye for as long as she could.) Their brooches are silver with images of longships, and are actually probably cloak pins but I liked them so much I couldn't resist. These are for your middle-class ladies, freemen's wives and daughters. (The Norse were one of the only Western European cultures that started out with a middle class; most of the more southerly cultures in Christendom acknowledged the nobility, the clergy, and the commoners, not really willing to see anything but a legal difference between a serf who quite literally belonged to his lord and a free-born merchant who owned a fleet of ships.)
The Jarlsdóttir (earl's daughter, and I want you to know I have taken Google Translate-based liberties with the Norse in naming these outfits) dresses are made of even richer dyes-- well, that green might be possible in the middle classes, but not those blues and purples. The brooch for wealthy, upperclass Norsewomen is a gold conglomerate of a saucer brooch and the spirals from a silver reproduction Aberlemno brooch. In the Viking Age, women had a surprising amount of power-- not only did they as wives generally have power over the household and servants, they were legally able to own property and could, with sufficient cause, divorce their husbands.
Most married Viking women wore their hair covered with a cloth; of the hairs I've made, I'd recommend hitting up my Hat Dump for Clean All The Things and Least I Could Do (which is not ideal, but close to some historical examples) and Hair Dump IX Part Three for various recolors of Decently Covered (the closest mesh we have to the Dublin hood).
Let me throw my detail shot at you and we'll move on to resoures, credits, thanks, and downloads.
I have another chance here to point out an inaccuracy of mine; I was scrambling for a decent texture for the underdress and managed to beat Sherahbim's Lady gown into service... but it's a back-lacing gown, and a proper Viking kirtle would have had a keyhole neckline in the front. It also should have come further up the body under the strap of the hangerock, but mapping issues gave me fits. These are a first effort at Viking womenswear; someday I hope to do better.
The mesh is Trapping's AmarayllSummerBerlinSentateSandals, which has a pregmorph and a fat morph but no bump map (I really wanted to bump map those brooches), and is included in the zip. I used Trapping's original textures for the hangerock (overdress), Sherahbim's Lady gown for the kirtle (underdress, and there would be a chemise worn under that because it's cold up in Viking territory), and color actions by CuriousB, Pooklet, and Aelia. Brooches were taken from reproductions of various archaeological finds, except for the silver brooch which is from the Scandanavian Shoppe. (I don't remember any websites. Serves me right for collecting images without attributing credit.) I owe a hearty thank-you to Lyn, for making sure I had a working copy of Photoshop, Quaxi for SimPE, which let me make proper tooltips and replace textures that were mangled by Body Shop, and DJ for the Compressorizer, which let me reduce the file sizes back down to something reasonable after I replaced the textures.
As far as my resources go, well, let me get my links.
Hurstwic has a great pictoral on Viking clothing in general, including several examples of hangerock hung with treasure necklaces.
Lots of my color choices were modeled after Revival Clothing's Apron Dresses, including my, um, simple trims.
Although not a particularly visual reference, the Viking Answer Lady is always a wealth of knowledge if you ever find yourself needing, well, answers about Vikings.
And this post would just be called 'Simple Viking Apron Dresses' if Medieval Design hadn't used the word 'Hangeroc' (scroll all the way to the bottom of the page).
Since I used Pooklet's color actions on these, I must again say No Paysites. Pooklet says paysites are not a good use of the Project Mayhem actions, and I have to agree. If you're going to charge for your recolors, make up your own color actions.
Let's see, blather, history, credits, resources, policy... Yeah, okay, we're good to go.
DOWNLOAD
on Mediafire | on Sims File Share
Wanna help me feed my cats?
In case you feel like dropping me a buck or two, should you have a buck or two to spare. Donors get two things at the moment: a) a link to the Super Secret Cat Gallery, full of pictures of the cats you'll be feeding, updated sporadically when the cats do something photogenic and I'm fast enough on the trigger to catch it, and b) a link to the list of content I have done-but-not-screencapped, nearly done, partly done, or in the planning stages, and the option to suggest what ought to be in the next batch of things I focus on.
Weirdly, when it comes to Vikings, the womenfolk are a little bit left out. There are plenty of nifty, historically accurate (or at least plausible) recolors of Iamliz13's Rus Viking Tunic, and even age conversions for toddler through teen, but the Viking ladies get left out.
When I found a nifty mesh by Trapping, I knew I had to at least give it a try.
"Each woman wears on either breast a box of iron, silver, copper or gold; the value of the box indicates the wealth of the husband." --Ibn Fadlan
Let me first and foremost say that these are not perfect. I had some mesh limitations and I will readily admit that the hem of the overdresses are on the long side because it just looked nicer to me on this mesh. I'll link to my resources and inspiration and that will do a very good job of illustrating my shortcomings. And there is some pixelation on the darker colors; the way the mesh is separated into two groups, I didn't feel like I could easily add enough texture to prevent that and still have everything line up neatly.
What I liked about the mesh, though, is that it works so well for the shape of a hangerock (literally, apron-skirt). It's loose through the torso and has a nice little meshed-in detail at the neckline that gives the fabric some weight.
Instead of doing a full pallette of eighty-two color actions, I just did a dozen combinations, four for each class.
The Þællkona (thrall-woman) dresses are done in simple earth-tones, colors that could be undyed or cheaply dyed. The brightest bits of color are in the trim around the edges of the hangerock, and the brooches holding everything together are copper, taken from an image of a Durrow brooch reproduction. These dresses are meant for the poor or the un-free, such as serfs or... well, thralls. There was always hope, though; a Viking thrall who had any free time could work at handcrafts or other anything else they could find to earn enough money to buy their own freedom, an event which called for celebration and drinking.
The Bóndidama (free-wife or farmer's wife) are a little richer, a little brighter, but still not impossible for a middle-class lady to wear. (Though Bondi 1 apparently left her hangerock to sit in the madder dye for as long as she could.) Their brooches are silver with images of longships, and are actually probably cloak pins but I liked them so much I couldn't resist. These are for your middle-class ladies, freemen's wives and daughters. (The Norse were one of the only Western European cultures that started out with a middle class; most of the more southerly cultures in Christendom acknowledged the nobility, the clergy, and the commoners, not really willing to see anything but a legal difference between a serf who quite literally belonged to his lord and a free-born merchant who owned a fleet of ships.)
The Jarlsdóttir (earl's daughter, and I want you to know I have taken Google Translate-based liberties with the Norse in naming these outfits) dresses are made of even richer dyes-- well, that green might be possible in the middle classes, but not those blues and purples. The brooch for wealthy, upperclass Norsewomen is a gold conglomerate of a saucer brooch and the spirals from a silver reproduction Aberlemno brooch. In the Viking Age, women had a surprising amount of power-- not only did they as wives generally have power over the household and servants, they were legally able to own property and could, with sufficient cause, divorce their husbands.
Most married Viking women wore their hair covered with a cloth; of the hairs I've made, I'd recommend hitting up my Hat Dump for Clean All The Things and Least I Could Do (which is not ideal, but close to some historical examples) and Hair Dump IX Part Three for various recolors of Decently Covered (the closest mesh we have to the Dublin hood).
Let me throw my detail shot at you and we'll move on to resoures, credits, thanks, and downloads.
I have another chance here to point out an inaccuracy of mine; I was scrambling for a decent texture for the underdress and managed to beat Sherahbim's Lady gown into service... but it's a back-lacing gown, and a proper Viking kirtle would have had a keyhole neckline in the front. It also should have come further up the body under the strap of the hangerock, but mapping issues gave me fits. These are a first effort at Viking womenswear; someday I hope to do better.
The mesh is Trapping's AmarayllSummerBerlinSentateSandals, which has a pregmorph and a fat morph but no bump map (I really wanted to bump map those brooches), and is included in the zip. I used Trapping's original textures for the hangerock (overdress), Sherahbim's Lady gown for the kirtle (underdress, and there would be a chemise worn under that because it's cold up in Viking territory), and color actions by CuriousB, Pooklet, and Aelia. Brooches were taken from reproductions of various archaeological finds, except for the silver brooch which is from the Scandanavian Shoppe. (I don't remember any websites. Serves me right for collecting images without attributing credit.) I owe a hearty thank-you to Lyn, for making sure I had a working copy of Photoshop, Quaxi for SimPE, which let me make proper tooltips and replace textures that were mangled by Body Shop, and DJ for the Compressorizer, which let me reduce the file sizes back down to something reasonable after I replaced the textures.
As far as my resources go, well, let me get my links.
Hurstwic has a great pictoral on Viking clothing in general, including several examples of hangerock hung with treasure necklaces.
Lots of my color choices were modeled after Revival Clothing's Apron Dresses, including my, um, simple trims.
Although not a particularly visual reference, the Viking Answer Lady is always a wealth of knowledge if you ever find yourself needing, well, answers about Vikings.
And this post would just be called 'Simple Viking Apron Dresses' if Medieval Design hadn't used the word 'Hangeroc' (scroll all the way to the bottom of the page).
Since I used Pooklet's color actions on these, I must again say No Paysites. Pooklet says paysites are not a good use of the Project Mayhem actions, and I have to agree. If you're going to charge for your recolors, make up your own color actions.
Let's see, blather, history, credits, resources, policy... Yeah, okay, we're good to go.
on Mediafire | on Sims File Share
Wanna help me feed my cats?
In case you feel like dropping me a buck or two, should you have a buck or two to spare. Donors get two things at the moment: a) a link to the Super Secret Cat Gallery, full of pictures of the cats you'll be feeding, updated sporadically when the cats do something photogenic and I'm fast enough on the trigger to catch it, and b) a link to the list of content I have done-but-not-screencapped, nearly done, partly done, or in the planning stages, and the option to suggest what ought to be in the next batch of things I focus on.
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Date: 2012-07-16 11:18 pm (UTC)no subject
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