Extreme Make-Over: Skintone Edition

[simgaroop]

Meet Turin Grunt-Summerdream. He's only made a small cameo as a baby in the Broke Legacy so far, so you probably don't remember him.

He's the second son of Helena Summerdream and Ripp Grunt. He's the oldest of a set of triplets, followed by James and Lyndi.

As it often happens with my spare's children, they are often doomed to spend the rest of their pixilated existence in the family bin, for I really can't play their lives as I do with the main Broke family line (otherwise I'm pretty sure I'd finish the Legacy in the year 2020 :P). So, I decided to bring back Turin for a little while and use him as my Guinea pig for a couple of Sim Experiments.

I'm currently taking a short hiatus from the Brokes and I've just finished setting up the "Twin Islands" for my story for pixel_trade (I just need to figure out how to start it!), so meanwhile I've been downloading some neat hacks and trying to create some custom content.

And that's how I discovered Christianlov's hacks at MTS2. He's recently updated his All-in-One NPC (which I'm gonna try out in Twin Island) and the Skintone changer, complete with a small program that lets you customize it with any skin you want. I also followed a tutorial on making contact lenses so I decided to try both of them with Turin.
So, here are the results of my skin/eye in-game experimentation :D.

There was no make-up used at all in these pics.

Finally, the pictures were taken in the beach lot I built for simply_home 's first challenge. Yeah, I actually built something for a challenge! :P






Hey there, Turin! Are you ready for your photoshoot?
"Errr yeah... except that I don't know what the heck I'm supposed to model! I only have this swimming suit!"
And that's all we are gonna need!




Well, we'll also need a mirror (to try out the contact lenses I've made or downloaded lately) and that nice little painting over there.
What's it for?




That's Christianlov's skin tone selector.
I'd link you to it but I've just realized that he took it down for some reason :(.
(I guess I'll download the Sim Cloner while it's still available...)
I have the files if someone is interested in them, though.
Anyway, I customized it so it will show several skin tones I've downloaded recently.
By the way, don't try to genetize your skins with the Wardrobe Wrangler if you want to use them with this hack.
Why? There's a glitch and your males will actually show the female textures! Turin was not amused by those results! :P

Actually, I found a pic I made during the initial experiments (look at James Grunt, on the left O_o):





Back on topic, once I was done customizing the selector (which was pretty easy, as long as you keep your files organized) it was time to try it out.
It's pretty easy to use! You just need to click on it and select the skin you want to try. It takes a couple seconds for the change to take place (and it doesn't affect the sims genetics, BTW, this is a mere cosmetic change).
There were several skinstones I've been very curious to see in game for a while, so let's see how much Turin will change once I use them.

________________________________







January
- Regular Maxis Skintone (downloaded from MTS2)
- Eyes by Lyran (I couldn't find the Maxis regular eyes as custom content, though).
Turin looks pretty good with the Maxis defaults, right?







February
- Ephemera Doll Skin V2 (MTS2)
- Doll Eyes by Ga-laxy (aka Ephemera).

I wanted to see how these doll skins look like in game. A bit creepy in my opinion, especially with those eyes :S.







March
- Enayla Fantasy Skins (in the pic you can see Pixie Gloom)
- Rensim's Confutatis Blue Alien Eyes (I made these contacts! ^^)







April
- Lin's Edition of Simcriblings #7 Skintone.
- Realistic Eyes by Barcelonista (v4)
This is the skin-eye combo I used in the first updates of Generation 3.
I also used in earlier Legacy attempts.







May
- Lyran Skintone
- Lyran Eyes
But this is actually the skin-eye combo I used for YEARS!
It's also the first custom skin and eyes I ever downloaded.
I really like Lyran's stuff.
Despite the several options you can find these days, these are still my favorite skins.
But I eventually got bored with them.







June
- Enayla Pixie Skins (Hero)
- Yumedust Eye Love
This is one of the infamous "shiny/greasy" skins, though I think that was more evident in Enayla's first skins.
Looks good, but not my style. Turin looks too "real" with this skin.








July
- Pooklet's Ephemera's Soft Edition Skin Blends.
- Eyes by simrenity.
Whoa! What a change! These eyes are beautiful (they seem to have long lashes too) and the skin is not as shiny as the Pixie ones.
But I still prefer my sims to look more cartoony.
I bet this skin/eye combo would be great for pretty photoshoots or modeling contests.







August
- Ephemera Doll Skin (V2), without the ball joints.
- Bruno's Prettiest eyes.

This is the odd doll skin, but without the joints.
The eyes are nice, but too shiny for me. Not my style.







September
- Ephemera Doll Skin (V2)
- Kamikitten's Glass Glint Eyes

I wanted to try out the doll skin, but with different eyes.
Yup, I think it looks a lot better now.







October
- Rensim's Circonflex Skins
- Pooklet's Rensim Confutatis Eye Edits (Contacts made by me)

These are my current default skins.
Despite their yellowish tones, I really like that they still look a bit cartoony and smooth.
I wish the tones were more varied, because I can barely tell the difference between S1 and S2.
I'm pretty sure I'll end up changing my defaults for that reason in the future.







November
- Louis #7 Skintone in Yellow-Green.
- Confutatis Alien Defaults.

These are my current alien defaults. I don't really like the chest area (too real), but the face is nice, and I like that green tone.
I looked for the Maxis Default Minty-Green skin (I wanted to try it out so badly), but couldn't find it either.
Bummer...







December
- Astiees GS Galaxy Explorers Skintone (Stardust Dragon)
- Confutatis Alien Defaults.

I really like that alien skintone! Just take a look at Turin's three bellybuttons! :D
But I still prefer my aliens with green skin, and I'm not fond of the MartiniOlive skin enough to make it my default either.







Extra Pics because we ran out of Months! :P
- Rensim's Freshie Aqua Alien Skintone
- Confutatis Alien Defaults

Yeah, I was just curious about these skins :P.







And...
- Maxis Zombie Default Skin.
- Pooklet's Confutatis Eye Edits (Contacts by me).

For my current storyline, featuring Lyla Grunt as a zombie, I looked for a nice zombie skin.
But I think I'm gonna stick with the Maxis default. It's the best one I could find.
And it looks pretty nice, IMO.



So now I'm curious: Which skintones and eyes do you prefer for your game?