I am almost one hundred pages in and appreciating many of the questions and strategies, but I have not seen an answer to this:
Will it be more valuable in the long run to A) Have a less skilled, but mortal, sim do the painting, ice sculpture, and photograph or B) Have an immortal who has completed all of the value-increasing challenges do the painting, etc etc? Basically it comes down to the appreciation values: is deceased worth more than "photohog" or whatever the sculpture one is.
Currently my 1st generation is holding Anges and Holly captive as "resident artists", but I'm not looking forward to training new ones every generation.
Thank you for any advice!
If you have an Immortal Painter early on in the generations, i.e. your Founder. By the time you reach say Generation Five it probably won't be worth having a Mortal do it because the bonus from the death value might be roughly equal to the amount the Immortal earns per painting from the sheer number of them - I'm no expert on this though.
For photography it's probably best to stick with an Immortal. My second Gen Heir is going to max it alongside her Supermax of Cooking. That way she can complete the various challenges for it as well, that and it will take me several generations to supermax photography!
I've been using this time to read through the Lifetime Wants and Rewards and am putting together an idea of how I'm attacking this Dynasty. The biggest change I'll have to make is exactly when I get my founding sim married, in order to get his portrait done before he becomes a full adult, and so that his partner's painting skill is up nice and high.
You don't have to get the spouse to move in, you could get another sim to move in that will help out. Many Dynasties have a helper/slave Mortal who isn't a spouse. That way if you don't see any potential spouses you like you don't have to pick one and can wait a little while. It's best to have another sim move in as soon as possible to get that painting done.
EDIT: My Dynasty Spouse is glitched in that a Singing Job she has never completed and I had to reset her because she was on that stage performing for four hours after it finished and was unable to cancel it. Now the thing still says she hasn't completed, anyone know how to fix this, I've tried reseting her but it didn't fix the uncompleted Performance which stays open all the time.
