Makeovers Tips and Guidance

[Snufflesxx]

I am a huge fan of creating Sims. I love mixing different tops and bottoms, re-colouring items, colour co-ordinating colours and just generally messing around with the appearance of Sims. I know everybody has a different style for creating Sims (just as everybody has a different sense of fashion) but I think it would be great for everybody to share their tips on how they beautify their Sims!

My tips

•   Think about the personality of your Sim. Do their clothes reflect their traits (e.g an insane Sims might have some really crazy outfits)? If your Sim is a goth, why not have their hair black with red or purple tips?

•   Think about location. It sounds odd but you wouldn’t have a Sim in Sunlit Tides in a heavy jacket and scarf, would you? In Moonlight Falls, you might go for a darker effect or in Barnacle Bay you could run with a pirate theme!

•   Think about colours. Every Sim has a favourite colour. When creating a Sim from scratch, you get to choose this favourite colour and this could help you when forming your Sim’s personality. If you are giving a makeover to a Sim born in game or an original townie then you might think that the colour doesn’t really fit the person and therefore choose not to use it.
Also think about how colours go together. Complimentary colours are colours that go very well together and can look nice when put together in a pattern or when one is applied to the top and the other to the bottom (or vice versa).
For a list of hex codes for the favourite colours found in Sims, see this thread here

•   Think about patterns. The Sims 3 Create-a-Pattern has hundreds of different designs and textures to experiment with. Each one can be customised using the colour wheel. Occasionally, an expansion will add extra patterns but these patterns can also be found on the official Sims 3 Exchange and on the Forum’s very own Swap Shop. These are player created patterns are made using the free tool Create-a-Pattern, which can be downloaded from the official Sims 3 website.

•   Think about hair and eye colour. Do you want them to be normal? If so, the general colours are already there for you to use. But if you want to be more adventurous, you can mix up hair and eye colours using the colour wheel. You can also save these so that you can instantly recreate them at any time.

I’ve shared some of my knowledge, so it would be great to hear some of yours. Feel free to add pictures too but note that this isn't a thread just to showcase Sims.

Added by Pam:

Due to our rule against discussions and links for third party custom content, tips and images must be only regarding whatever Sims 3 has in the game from Electronic Arts.  Nothing for third party content, please.

[CSquared2]

Heyyyyy, hex codes, cool!  Thanks for those!

I love creating and redesigning sims.  I can spend hours doing that and it's nearly as fun as playing the game itself.  I usually make over any neighbor who comes to be an important part of the active family's life, particularly if the game generated that sim and they wear that beautiful but boring face template.  I would add a couple suggestions:

• Play with sliders.  They can give you some crazy stuff, but they're how you achieve a sim that doesn't look like every other sim in town, particularly when you combine them with one another.  My particular favorites are the cheek, jaw and head sliders.
• If you don't want to create a sim from scratch, don't neglect the preexisting townspeople and the sims in the bin.  Most of the time, these are off-template sims: they were obviously created by makers of the game, not simply generated by CAS.  They're made to resemble the personalities they play, but they make a great springboard for makeovers since they're often quite unique.  Think beyond Agnes and go looking for that townie you never play!
• Adding on to Snufflesxx's pattern suggestion, play with parts of the pattern.  For many of them, switching the light and dark portions or changing colors completely can bring some gorgeous results.  This is particularly true if you seek patterns closer to those you see in real life.

[TheTripWasInfraGreen]

Yeah, CSquared is totally right about sliders, so I'll just re-iterate. I personally never make a sim without adjusting every single slider or close to it. They take a lot of time to get used to, but the sliders are the key to making truly interesting sims, and they're absolutely necessary for making sims based off real people.

And that, kids, is why I always play in Twinbrook.

When it comes to coloring clothes, cool colors often work with beige as one of its neutrals, as it's close to the complimentary colors of those clothes. Spice brown is good for a darker contrast. I always add some black or white to all of my stuff as a second neutral.

I also mute colors quite a bit when I recolor things. The presets for clothing are often garish pastels or colors up to their full brightness and intensity, which doesn't really fit my general game aesthetic and looks eye-searing in game. Bring a bright blue closer to grey for a more slate-like color can work wonders. Bright colors have their place, but not everywhere. It's also far less harsh on screenshots, since JPGs will eat bright colors alive and spit them out with artifacts.

One final thing is to experiment with things you never do or use. Think about features you never give your sims, or that ignored-but-not-totally-awful base-game top that could use a recolor.

[Ricalynn]

One thing I always do is think of all the Sims that came before.  I try to never use the same clothes I've used for someone else in a generational game which means by the time I get to the end of a dynasty or legacy, I'm using combinations I would have never thought of but often they're awesome in their own new way.  Not everyone has to dress the same way.   

 Is your character insane?   Why not have them wear a sweatshirt and jeans on Sunlit Tides?  or flip flops and a tanktop in the snows of Twinbrook.  Always take into what kind of character they are.   Especially since Insane sims will never wear their daily wear anyway.   You'll find them most often in their formal, bathing suit or athletic wear. 

Proper sims love to wear their formal wear so make sure it's something you could see them wearing day to day and then have a real formal outfit for special occassions. 

[CreativeCrayola]

I love dressing my sims! Heres a couple of my tips:
~Often, a Sims favourite colour can really stick out, so if there favourite colour is a bright purple, why not try playing with the colour wheel until you find a better tone.
~When choosing a hair style, I like to choose one that complements the sim. If you have an elder  male sim, they aren't going to wear  a skater hair cut or emo style.

[Zyffyr]

~When choosing a hair style, I like to choose one that complements the sim. If you have an elder  male sim, they aren't going to wear  a skater hair cut or emo style.

They might if they are insane or childish...

[TheTripWasInfraGreen]

Or if I'm too lazy to change their hairstyle.

Never be afraid to accessorize either. Lots of people wear glasses, and a nice pair of glasses can really compliment a face in the game. Most of my female sims wear stockings and misc. long socks too, mostly because I do in real life.

[Audren]

Like CSquared and Trip have said before, don't be afraid to experiment with the sliders. Pre-sets are good as a starting point, but you have a whole host of options and sliders to toy with. The goal of CAS is to create interesting Sims, not necessarily pretty Sims.



Take Brianna here. Her eyes and nose are both pre-sets. She looks fairly attractive, but she doesn't really pop very much. She's boring, for want of a better word. Let's try playing with the sliders for her eyes and nose.



Now she has more interesting features. Her nose is pretty large around the nostrils, but I find that it works with her large lips. Her nose may not be the most beautiful thing in the world, but it's unique. Her eyes in contrast are relatively tiny compared to her nose and mouth, but they're now much cooler looking than they were before. Brianna may not be conventionally attractive, but her features give her character.

[Snufflesxx]

This is my founder, Herman, for a Random Legacy that I'm starting soon. I tried my best to make him different.



He's got a larger nose than I give to most Sims, I played around with his face shape using the sliders and I used the combination of slightly droopy eyes and those low down eyebrows to give him a worried expression.

When playing around with sliders, don't forget about the ones are the very beginning: the ones for weight and muscles, etc. Herman is a bit of a couch potato so I put the weight slider at about half way. I used to drag the weight slider down to the very bottom for girls that I was trying to make look 'pretty' but then discovered that they looked far too puny. I also used to drag the muscle slider to the very top for men but now I think it doesn't look right on most of the Sims I make.

A tip about hairstyles - don't forget the ones in the accessories section! You may just assume it's all stupid costume masks and massive hats but you can find some really nice ones in there, especially for women.

[MarianT]

With regard to the pre-set sims -- I'll often change the gender, especially on male sims. That gives you a female sim who is often quite attractive (with a slight adjustment to the nose or chin), but not conventionally pretty. Female sims can also be turned into good-looking male sims.

For clothing, I'll sometimes pick up colors from the paint, metal, tile, or rock section.

[Cheezey]

Another fun way to get interesting sims is to save a lot of townies to your bin, and then load them up in combinations and play with genetics to generate new sims, and then tweak those further.  I also save any townie offspring with features I find interesting or striking for that purpose.

[AlienTwins]

Sorry to disappoint, but I just whack the randomize button a few times until I find something that looks 'about right'.  Micromanagement of physical features isn't really my favourite part of the game

[Janna]

I understand what you are saying, but for me, I live in deadville, hicktown, call it whatever you want, it a a small village and there are no beautiful people here, ones who have any good looks and smarts leave as soon as they can.  I stayed because of a commitment to my family, elderly parents.  I make my sims be what I wish I was, slender, beautiful, great shape, great body, what I wish I looked like.   Males are hot, not too much muscle, but you can see that he isn't the guy who sits and watches tv, he love to work out. 

I don't want to see plain Jane, I see that every morning when I look in the mirror.  So, for me, I go with making her what to see; the pretty woman walking down the street and gets the looks from all the guys she passes by. 
Males who have women drooling, dreaming of all kinds of things she would like to do with him. 

It all boils down to, what you enjoy playing with. Some enjoy, like me, making beautiful people who are the image of what you want to be.  Some want to make the unique sim,  sims that don't look "perfect", that have the nose with the slight bump (like mine) or the too small mouth (like I have) and that is great, and I think  the suggestions here are helpful for those players. 
For me, I want that beautiful sim, I love bright colors, I don't like to make a variety of clothes as it takes up space, slows down my computer with all the "stuff" that it has to process.  Of course, I am the strange woman who has only three pair of shoes; one for dress, one for regular and the nasty ones for doing nasty work that I don't care about my shoes, they are already ruined. 

[shibamistress]

Janna, that was a really beautiful post, and speaks, I think, to the different things that we get out of simming!  Thank you!

I also like "micromanaging" features, and really getting the Sims they way I want them to look.  I tend to make them more beautiful/exotic/unusual than real life, because  also enjoy that part of play.  I also spend a lot of time redoing dogs to get dogs to look like my dogs.  (Like I made some Kai Ken, a rare Japanese breed I have!)  So in these cases, the sliders are a must, and learning how to use the advanced features for layers and coat colors in pets (that was a steeper learning curve for me than figuring out how to adjust the features on people!)

I probably don't spend quite as much time in creating my Sims as some might, because my favorite part of the game is remodeling and redecorating houses (or better yet,whole towns!), but I still enjoy creating my sims!  (though honestly, I don't do much with them after I make them, since I seem to prefer building towns more than actual game play!  )

[Pam]

I get quite a few compliments on my Dreamweaver Sims, but they aren't anything I create.  Out of all of them, Carina is the only one I've created.  All the others are various mixtures of all the townies who come and go.  But what I always do for them is give them the hair, makeup, and clothing that sets them apart.  I'm working on Ninth Dreamweaver right now and realized that something I can share is the makeup colors.  I firmly believe in "warm" and "cool" colors of makeup for women with different coloring.  I guess is was in the 1990s that I had my "colors" done and came up as an Autumn, which is a darkish set of warm colors.  I use what I've learned about color when putting the makeup on my Sims.  With red hair, green/aqua eyes, and a warm skin tone, I use browns, greens, and rust type colors.  I always match the eye shadow with the blush and lip color.  Never, ever mix warm with cool!  Tawny cheeks with mauve lips just never works for me.  Let me see if I can show a couple of examples.

This is Eighth Dreamweaver and I felt she is a Winter with her dark brown hair and dark blue eyes.  Her skin tone is hard to judge because she's got rainbow skin, but I put cool colors on her. 



Next is Seventh Dreamweaver, who is actually Eighth's twin sister.  Seventh has a warmer brown colored hair (it's actually the color of Christopher Steel's hair) and green eyes.  I put her in warm colors. 



Can you tell the difference?  It just so happened that their favorite colors of blue and green worked perfectly with the cool and warm choices I made.  Their rainbow skins also worked perfectly.  Seventh has a yellowish cast and Eighth has a pinkish cast.