Sculpting — Show me the Money

[Metropolis Man]

I just finished some pretty raw testing in Sculpting. I was in a hurry and used testingcheatsenabled to max the skill quickly via keeping needs static. My most profitable sculpture so far was a stone one. I think it sold for around $1400. Not bad, but here's the kicker — it took like 9 hours to complete! Now, keep in mind I don't have any Skill Challenges completed yet, so I'm sure it's going to get better, but as of right now the money-making per hour compared to its closest cousin, Painting, falls pretty short.

And I don't know what determines if something turns out Brilliant or a Masterpiece, but it seems like Painting nets you more of those. But, I have to say there are some absolutely enormous wishes with sculpting—huge amounts of happiness points earned for accomplishing stuff. So, that's always a plus.

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EDIT: Well, I figured I may have been jumping the gun a bit with my initial impressions of Sculpting. My tester just popped out a Wood Masterpiece and it sold for $2400. So, things are shaping up.

[Leto85]

I let my sim sculpt only ice. Because when I took a look at the challenges, it turns out that with sculpting ice you have a high chance of getting two challenges for the price of one. Sculpt 20 pieces of a random material (which will be ice) to get one challenge complete so you sculpt faster, then work your way up the ladder with still sculpting ice to finish the ice challenge so your ice sculptings will never melt anymore. Finished that? Than make 5 sculptings of all the other materials to complete another challenge. Then your sim will earn more money when selling the sculpted things.

That way, it is pretty easy to fullfil all those things. And yes, I think it will be even more profitable than painting. Especially with the right traits and LTR.
To be sure, I also give my sim the perfectionist and artistic trait.

[TommyT]

So, things are shaping up.

Hah :p
After finishing Firefighting and giving up on Architect and Stylist, Sculpting is my next target.  I'll post my results in this thread and perhaps we can crunch some numbers together.

[John Allen]

Nice work on this Metropolis man, and very helpful.  Thanks

[Metropolis Man]

Well, I don't know. Sculpting still does not seem very profitable. It's the time to complete sculptures that seems to really knock it out of the same league as Painting and Inventing.

[enigma1717]

I was experimenting with the Da Vinci LTW, and when I did sculpting I had a surprising amount of fun. The discoveries of statues and furniture (even a functional sink!). Now, on the numbers, I had born salesman so it may be a bit skewed. The material you sculpt with determines the length of time a sculpture is modified by, and a cost modifier, and each sculpture type itself is sometimes faster or slower. The "best" from my guess would be the modern flame statue that was relatively fast (maybe three hours after getting the skill goal) and when made with stone sold for over 2k base without masterpiece or brilliant, and if you sold at consignment could go all the way to double that value. I believe a masterpiece sculpture I had sold at consignment for around 12k. With the new consignment store and its traits, combined with the way you can customize a sculpture based on material, type, and quality, I think it is going to become difficult to really determine its hourly best wages.

I'd like to hope it all turns out roughly equal between painting, inventing, and sculpting, because I like them all, I'd like to just switch between them as I feel like on the Da Vinci sim to make money.

The increase in speed from the skill is fairly significant, meaning I could churn out up to five or six ice sculptures a day, more if it was something faster like clay or topiary. So, getting 1000-2000, I was making some good change. That isn't even including the occasional brilliant or masterpiece. The only sculpture type I couldn't figure out how to do was how to sculpt a person. I got a wish for it, but never could fill it. I'm wondering how long those take, and what those are worth.

Edit: That 12k masterpiece was also an ice sculpture, not a stone, so it could have been worth more. I made a clay masterpiece lion statue once, and it sold at consignment for about 5k. So the material does matter, and certainly affects speed. A bit of a "hack" that I found was that I was making the sculpture in my basement, with no decoration. After I was getting "free" materials from the skill goal, I would do this: As soon as I started a long sculpture like stone, I would notice IMMEDIATELY I'd get either decorated, nicely decorated, or beautifully decorated buff for the room. Each seemed to correspond to normal, brilliant, or masterpiece works I was doing. So, long before I completed a sculpture I knew if it was a masterpiece or brilliant and I could ditch the normal stone sculpture since they take too long to only get a "normal" one. Granted, you can't do this until you get free materials, otherwise you are throwing 500 $ out the window each time. Plus, it is a bit tedious, and you could get really unlucky and go hours without getting a brilliant or masterpiece, but that masterpiece might really make it worth it.

[Leto85]

I was excited to see that my sim could not only remake a handbasin from clay, but after finishing it she could even use it like one. Brushing teeth, washing hands. It was all possible.
This will make sculpting really quite handy!

[Simbacat]

When you sculpt furniture, does it look brown or does it look like the furniture in game with colors? or is it dependent on what medium you use?

[Metropolis Man]

The "best" from my guess would be the modern flame statue that was relatively fast (maybe three hours after getting the skill goal) and when made with stone sold for over 2k base without masterpiece or brilliant, and if you sold at consignment could go all the way to double that value.

The whole consignment store thingy is a bit whacked out IMO. I was PMing with Carl yesterday and we both agreed that there needs to be some kind of patch to make consigning items more attractive. Yes, there's more money to be made via that route — BUT, income from consignments do not factor into money needed for individual self-employment promotions. That's a huge strike. The other thing is the number of consignments that happen in a given span of time seems really low. I don't know if there is an average, but one a day seems typical. So, if you're sculpting, painting, or making half a dozen objects a day...you'll basically never get them all sold. Maybe someone can enlighten me on the whole consignment process. Right now, it seems so much easier to drag things in Inventory or go to Buy mode to sell quantities and fulfill those promotion requirements.

[enigma1717]

That really doesn't seem right about the promotions thing. I ONLY consign items now that the shop is there, except for the very random really crappy thing worth less then 300 $ (which you don't make many of after the first few skill points), and I was a master sculptologist (level 10) or however it is spelled, and I never do the opportunities. So, if you aren't getting money towards promotions in sculpting from consigning, then we were doing something differently, or maybe it is bugged, or heck maybe it has something to do with certain traits, who knows at this point. Also, when consigning say 5-6 sculptures a day, I was noting about 2-3 being sold each day, so indeed there was a back up so to speak, where I would only sell all of one day's sculptures over the course of a week, on average. Also, these all occur in "one" sale, where at one time, with one notice, in one payment, I sold two or three sculptures. However, I couldn't complain as once I had a steady stream of sculptures going, the income was steady as well, and nearly doubling my profit on sculptures was well worth it. The only downside was sometimes my ice sculptures melted before I got to the store sometimes when I was having marathon sculpting sessions, that is until they became unmeltable  

Simbacat, in my experience, it is entirely based on the material you use to make the furniture sculptures. For example, I made a very nice stone sink that gave a very high decorated boost, so I used it in my ugly bathroom to get it boosted, however it only made it more ugly to myself because I couldn't stylize it and it was this very dark grey in an otherwise white and black bathroom. Wood has a generic wood color, ice is generic white-ish, etc.

[Metropolis Man]

Good tips, enigma. Thanks. Yeah, I definitely want to go the consignment route. It's obviously more profitable. Heck, the developers put it there for a reason! The obvious traits for da Vinci LTW seems to be Artistic, Eccentric, Savvy Sculptor, Ambitious, and Born Salesman. Were your traits any different? Also, I'm quite sure on the promotion/consignment thing. When you get a notice that something sold at the consignment shop, you should obviously see the green metric bar rise, correct?

[Simbacat]

That really doesn't seem right about the promotions thing. I ONLY consign items now that the shop is there, except for the very random really crappy thing worth less then 300 $ (which you don't make many of after the first few skill points), and I was a master sculptologist (level 10) or however it is spelled, and I never do the opportunities. So, if you aren't getting money towards promotions in sculpting from consigning, then we were doing something differently, or maybe it is bugged, or heck maybe it has something to do with certain traits, who knows at this point. Also, when consigning say 5-6 sculptures a day, I was noting about 2-3 being sold each day, so indeed there was a back up so to speak, where I would only sell all of one day's sculptures over the course of a week, on average. Also, these all occur in "one" sale, where at one time, with one notice, in one payment, I sold two or three sculptures. However, I couldn't complain as once I had a steady stream of sculptures going, the income was steady as well, and nearly doubling my profit on sculptures was well worth it. The only downside was sometimes my ice sculptures melted before I got to the store sometimes when I was having marathon sculpting sessions, that is until they became unmeltable  

Simbacat, in my experience, it is entirely based on the material you use to make the furniture sculptures. For example, I made a very nice stone sink that gave a very high decorated boost, so I used it in my ugly bathroom to get it boosted, however it only made it more ugly to myself because I couldn't stylize it and it was this very dark grey in an otherwise white and black bathroom. Wood has a generic wood color, ice is generic white-ish, etc.

Thanks enigma. I played for awhile this morning and have decided that the metal sculptures are extremely cool. My sculptor made a metal chair that was dynamite.

[Leto85]

When you sculpt furniture, does it look brown or does it look like the furniture in game with colors? or is it dependent on what medium you use?

It looks like the material you will use (wood have different variants of this) but it will have the function of the furniture where it is a sort of clone from.

[Jonna]

You can check the consignment store for the items that haven't yet sold (click the register and either Cancel Consignments -- this option will only appear if you have something consigned! -- or Buy and the items from your household will be grayed out).  The notice that you receive every day at maybe five? o'clock only list the top three items, so it's certainly possible that all your items sold.  You could do the math yourself with the grand total of sold items minus the values of the three "top sellers" of the day.  My Inventor often has ten or fifteen items (maybe more, I never really counted) sell in one day.

Metro, did you check to see if the dollar amount of your consignment sells matches up to the dollar amounts for your career progression (that is, the amount listed of what you have sold, and the amount listed of how far until your next level)?  And that the correct sim sold the items to the consignment shop?  I don't know if your sim would get credit for his creations if you sent your "utility" sim to the consignment shop instead of your Sculptor.  I haven't tested it myself, but I've had my sims, so far, only sell their own creations.  The profession bar did fill up correctly for my sims (in fact, I got up to level 8 sculptor all in one "sale" because the items I sold that day were, I believe, Great quality or better.  I mean to say, they were expensive).

Edit: Also, unrelated to the above, my sim died while sculpting something out of metal.  I didn't see what happened but his ghost was orange and he was smelly.  Sorry I'm not all caught up on what the different ghost colors mean.  But just, you know... be careful.  He was lucky and everything.  Poor guy. 

[Pam]

Edit: Also, unrelated to the above, my sim died while sculpting something out of metal.  I didn't see what happened but his ghost was orange and he was smelly.  Sorry I'm not all caught up on what the different ghost colors mean.  But just, you know... be careful.  He was lucky and everything.  Poor guy. 

Wow! That's totally unexpected! I guess they added a new way to die in this expansion pack, which is probably how they do things. But still. Death from sculpting? I'm curious to find out exactly what kind of death it was.