Saturday, November 22, 2008

Ack, ok.

Well, my brain is like a badly trained terrier. When it grabs hold of something it will rip and tear at it despite possible harm to itself. Until something else shows up to grab and tear at.

So yes, I put a lot of work into the tree houses. A lot of work into the island. A lot of work into my event hall and my current store building. And guess what I can't let go of? I want to tear it all down.

Ok before you get scared that what you love will be gone forever... take a moment to breath and have faith that whatever I do make will still have my aesthetic. It will still have the same feel and the same mood, and the same peace about it. I intend to keep the same pallet and feel of golden stone and forests, but I intend to make it a bit more overgrown and more integrated.

What bothers me now is that most of the island was designed when I only had half of it, and despite my efforts, it still feels divided. It doesn't feel cohesive. It doesn't use the land efficiently and there's a lot of wasted space. Meanwhile, again, my abilities have improved and I have more landscaping tools at my disposal. My goal is to finally have a unifying theme that will work for all of the buildings that I need. My main store, event hall, homes, and limited commercial rentals, all need to work together with my pretty spots and a fishing area.

I've been looking at a lot of concept art, and I've decided even though more extreme things (like an elven swamp, or an underwater Atlantis) seem like a lot of fun, and I could certainly make them, they're impractical and this needs to be something I could live happily with for more than a year.

So I asked myself a question. Would you guys want to move in to the treehouse for two months, to have the sim be rebuilt during January, or just wait until you see the final product?

I've wanted to change the sim ever since I first had it transferred to my name, but without time or planning I threw something together so I wouldn't just have empty space. My brain tends to be so devoid of architecture and landscaping, I couldn't do it without heavy inspiration, planning and forethought. I built the tree houses because I was so sure I would not be able to handle tier on my own... but as I worked on them, my ears and pirate sets carried me through and I realized I could handle it. I break even on my expenses vs income from SL, but in the tough times to come I have the urge to start making enough profit to start saving, and for that I need rentals. I've been blessed with this time to be able to start serious planning, and to build floor plans and models and pieces ready for setting up through January.

As for the Christmas season, I'll be putting out my christmas coats and hats again, and I'll be finishing up a few random projects just to keep releases coming. I hope you guys aren't too worried about the island, really it'll be for the better.

4 comments:

Terry Toland said...

If you plan on redoing your architecture work, you might consider having the older builds for sale. Just a thought; I'm not sure what that market is like, nor if you were going in that direction of thought.

As I'm not a renter,I really can't weigh heavily in on this. However, as an outsider, I think it would be a good idea to let people move in now that want to, especially as people are being 'uprooted' with the OS mess. Some people also like to watch the building process. My RL house was built from scratch, and while we couldn't live there, we really enjoyed going over and seeing what progress was made over the months.

So, I'm for the flexible option, whatever that may be.

And ham.

Terry Toland said...

Oh, oh, random thought: you should put up one of those little building notices with an architectural plan of the island, just like they do in real life. XD

Katey B, said...

I think your shop should actually be in the middle and things should branch out from there, that might help the whole "divided" feeling.

XD

Nef said...

Thanks Green, though sadly I don't think people will see too much of the actual building progress. I'm planning right now on building each building up in the sky, then doing a sort of "flash terraform" and closing the sim down for one or two days while I assemble all of the pieces.

But as I'm currently planning via a little in world model, obviously I can totally do the other suggestion :D

And Krikki, it's more than just the divided feel... it's that there was no planning at all involved in my current layout, and to me it shows.