hat_plays_sims | High Elf (Almighty Hat's GoS Blind Date gift to Sunatharon)

The thing about Garden of Shadows swap events like Secret santa and Christmas in July is that I am usually either insanely busy or getting my ass kicked by reality somehow. I've participated in one Secret Santa swap in 2009 (I learned to recolor objects!) and tried to participate in 2010... but had to drop out. Advent, I can usually manage (although I was on hiatus last year, so didn't get invited), mostly because I get to create a gift for Garden of Shadows, not one specific person I have to stalk.

So when the Blind Date swap was announced, I debated for like two days before I said 'hell yes lemme fill this sucker out.' A one-day doll show here in town was no sweat to get ready for-- mostly I just had to pack the car and straighten out a parking pass issue-- so I actually had the time and the lack of stress to create something.

I was Mordred, but my Blind Date was Westley, also known as Sunatharon. I really wanted to do some architectural recolors, but I ran short of time for anything but this one window I found. When I went in-game to take pictures of the window, I discovered the glass only shows from one side and the diagonal does not exist. So... yeah, no architecture. Just robes.

Most of my testerhood Sims are peasants... except the fairies.

When I saw Westley liked high fantasy robes in the World of Warcraft style, I went "... I think I can do this!" I rushed to the back of my clothing catalog, where the old things I can't bear to part with lurk, and grabbed Arthelope's High Elf robe, from Parsimonious. I love that robe, even if I'm not entirely sure how all the layers go together. I go on repeated CC culls to remove things that aren't period or aren't period enough or are no longer the kind of quality I look for... but that crazy, high-fantasy robe has stuck around for years.

That's how fond of it I am.

I fiddled with parts of it so the brocades wouldn't wash out, ran color actions over it, separated various and sundry bits so it was easy to combine colors, and then...

... Then I kind of descended into madness.

Auberon wears AM in Cove on his white horse, Lankin wears AM LBB in Tomato on his roan horse, and Princeling, on foot, wears TM LBB in Verdigris.

I made 82 recolors of Aligeth's nightshirt using Arthelope's textures, plus those same 82 for the AM and TM Lean Bodybuilder conversions of the mesh. (I didn't find a regular Maxis TM conversion, or I would've done that, too.) Adult robes work for Young Adults and Elders, as well, and since all the meshes have pregmorphs, they're all categorized as Casual, Formal, and Maternity.

Nothing is townie-enabled, texture-referenced, BSOK-ready, or compressorized, because I wasn't sure whether any of that was anything Sunatharon would be into. The tooltips on these are a little bit insane; some robes have as many as five colors.

Auberon and Lankin showing the difference between AM and LBB chest depth.

Sunatharon said not to worry about period accuracy, but I spent kind of a lot of time trying make the robes look physically possible. The color combinations may occasionally show that I got a little sleep-deprived at one point while I was working on these. When in doubt, I aimed for 'elemental,' so hopefully some of the combinations will make you think 'cloud' or 'fire' or 'sand.' (Occasionally I just said 'the hell with it' and went for Disney Villain or Peacock.) I really, really tried to keep all the color combinations relatively masculine, but I don't think it always worked, particularly on the more delicate pinks.

Let me lay some credits on you, and then I'll get to swatches and download links.

Credits go out to Marvine and Synapticsim for the Lean Bodybuilder shape (I think I forgot Syn in the tooltip credits, but really, those are already impressively long), Aligeth for the original mesh, Cynnix for LBB conversions and AM pregmorph, Arthelope for textures, CuriousB, Pooklet, and Aelia for color actions, Lyn for making sure I had a working copy of Photoshop 6, and ZeroDark for letting me know how to make Photoshop CS5 stop opening everything in new tabs, because that was driving me up the wall.

As far as photo credits go, I think most of the trees are by Maxis-- if they're not from one of the expansions, they're from Castaway Stories. Horses are by Dragonslave, tack and horse-riding poses are by Jusfels over at Feenwald. The skins and eyes are from my Stolen By Fairies set, as are Auberon and Lankin. Princeling is the born-in-game offspring of Auberon and Titania (he favors his mother). Auberon and Lankin's hairs are by me and can be found in my hair dumps (and I think both are XM meshes); Princeling's is HP's Kara FtM by Aquilegia. I'm pretty sure you can find it in my memories.

Adult Male, Maxis Shape
Pooklet Naturals Swatch
Pooklet Naturals Download
on Mediafire | on Sims File Share (7.92 mb)
Aelia Autumn Swatch
Aelia Autumn Download
on Mediafire | on Sims File Share (7.43mb)
CuriousB Any Color You Like Swatch
CuriousB Any Color You Like Download
on Mediafire | on Sims File Share (15.74mb)

Adult Male, Lean Bodybuilder Shape
Pooklet Naturals Swatch
Pooklet Naturals Download
on Mediafire | on Sims File Share (7.92 mb)
Aelia Autumn Swatch
Aelia Autumn Download
on Mediafire | on Sims File Share (7.43mb)
CuriousB Any Color You Like Swatch
CuriousB Any Color You Like Download
on Mediafire | on Sims File Share (15.74mb)

Teen Male, Lean Bodybuilder Shape
Pooklet Naturals Swatch
Pooklet Naturals Download
on Mediafire | on Sims File Share (7.92 mb)
Aelia Autumn Swatch
Aelia Autumn Download
on Mediafire | on Sims File Share (7.43mb)
CuriousB Any Color You Like Swatch
CuriousB Any Color You Like Download
on Mediafire | on Sims File Share (15.74mb)