here’s basically an answer to all the people who are wondering what I’m up to and why I stopped making movies…

I know that some of you have discovered my movies not so long ago, but for me, it’s really been ages. I’ve made my first movie a few months after I started playing Sims 2. Which was 4.5 years ago!

I’ve always been creative, but guess making sims movies was something which actually made me push my creativity to the next level. It was an amazing experience while it lasted. I have learned so much.. from custom content creation to filming and storyline development. and then even some simple animation. all this experience really gave me alot..

but it was 5 years ago and things were really different in my life… back then I was just a student trying to procrastinate my college work, so I just did what I felt most passionate about, which at that time were sims and moviemaking. now that I quit the study I didn’t care about anyways, I just have to occupy myself with something that would help me pay my bills and satisfy my shopping addiction :P and making sims movies is definitely not gonna do that. You know, it’s not like i don’t do anything for ‘fun’ anymore, but making a movie doesnt take just a few nights, it’s just way too time consuming for a hobby

The other thing is my ‘awesome’ personality.. I get into something, then after a while I burn out and get bored with it, and then I get into another thing. When I’m bored with that one, I might go back to first one or just move on to something else. Yes, very annoying…Same was with the sims.. at first I was so into it, but then after I got that ‘been there, done that’ feeling, I cooled off. Now that sims 3 was rather a disappointment, I’m still lacking the interest. I’m really jealous of people who have just one passion in life. I really wish I worked this way. But I need diversity to keep me happy.

I can’t say I’m completely done with making movies. There are at least 2 things I still have to do (in this life). One is a movie I came up with even before making my Nightlife movie. At that time it was totally impossible… even now it would be ALOT of work. and it also would be nice to make that from yesterday ‘sequel’ (i put it in quotation marks basically because i know that it wont be made with sims 2 and therefore the ‘actors’ most probably won’t look too much like themselves and the story that i have in mind is rather disconnected, so it might end up being more like a standlone movie in fact)

and the biggest ‘problem’ is that i really don’t feel like making movies with sims anymore.
as for sims 2.. i didnt have an intention of getting rid of it at first.. but sometime around when sims 3 came out my hard drive died, or should i say i killed it, so basically ive decided to let it go rather than reinstalling whole game and 7 or so eps (as i had no idea where half of those disks were n so on)
plus it’s just too lo-fi even though i do have to admit their faces look simply gorgeous comparing to sims 3 lol
and sims 3, i don’t really see the potential in it. i posted a 10 reasons why i hated sims 3 blog when it just came out. now i could come up with a list of 100 things lol
ive been playing it from time to time, but lately i got bored of even playing as there is literally NOTHING to do in the game. the activities they threw in there like fishing and gardening and collecting are not doing it for me for some reason… the Sims look fugly, or not good enough. there is no control over lighting/time of the day, cc(meshes) is made through milkshape i HATE milkshape. i’ve seen there is animation tool in development but again it’s for milkshape
and finally i’m sick of giving up my own ideas just because sims can’t do this or that, From yesterday is a great example of that. it looked sooo much better in my head lol. so i’ve really had enough, guess no more sims

Oh and another thing.. as most of you know I’ve had some ‘problems’ with copyrighted music in my vids. The voice of reason tells me that I should be using my own sound tracks to avoid that drama..But i don’t think I wanna go there. I didn’t have a ‘natural’ gift for music, so it would take me forever to really evolve in that direction. and all this so that I could make videos.. doesn’t sound right.
So this also to a certain (but rather small extent) discourages me.

So bottomline, yes I’m still on a break, but I’m not saying that I don’t want to mess with moviemaking ever again. So I guess y’all just gonna have to wait

Peace;]

1. The cover

While it might be entertaining looking at all those little simmy icons while you are holding it in your hands, it still just doesn’t make a damn good impression. I think something like a game cover should be distinct and presentable even when downsized to a tiny avatar size image or when looked at from the distance. And it just looks way to cluttered and doesnt have this ‘Bang!’ feeling to it. Although, taking that into account, it does suit the game well..

.

2. The fact that they don’t look like this

haha this is a render of a poser model, well i don’t really expect sims to look like that. I’m fine with level of detail they have.. it’s just I have had a hard time creating a nice looking sim, and looks like its not just me who had the same problem. Their faces could use more angles..and less fat:P
I did see actual beautiful sims made by the game in my neighborhood, so I didnt lose all my hope yet, just still all sims use the same skintone texture, therefore, end up looking like members of one big family. Hate that.

3. Custom content now being a taboo
This one I’m frustrated about the most
Instead of making it even easier for us to mod, they take away the option completely. I could swear i would have quit sims 2 after a month of playing if it wasnt for custom cotent, as it managed to keep my interest alive. Stuff in ea store sucks anyways, I pay for content only if i feel it’s worth it, and it so doesnt. so that lets monopolize the custom content creation move was just moronic
Yeah everyone says modders will get to it and there will be some tools to make the game look what we want. Basically, I dont think there will be ‘userfriendly’ tools any time soon. And your average texturer won’t wanna bother with tutorials, dowloading 10 applications or plugins and going through complicated series of steps to import it back. You just want to create your texture and single-click import it and have fun, pretty much like bodyshop did it. So i’m guessing there will be less quality CC because of it, but I hope I’m wrong

4. Game Content
Too little stuff..and too crappy stuff. but ppl are bitching about it all over the net,so no point in another ea is just trying to rip us all off speech

5. Rabbit hole buildings
yea..talk about realism..

6. No new stuff for moviemakers

except camera pans being more smooth and camera tilts.. wow that means revolution…
You even can no longer edit cam parameters in a txt file. [Edit: ok, you can it just can be found elsewhere...]
i really expected at least some new tools, as sims 2 machinima got really popular and could be good (and free) advertising to the game
instead, the game is even less controllable, custom content is under a question mark.. no control of the time of the day and townies. Great job, EA

7. Whatever happened to boolprop

if you look into the boolprop history, it wasn’t commonly known at first, it was an actual debugging tool used by game devs, thats why there were a ton of weird options and no one even knew what those were for.
now of course that we ‘know’, they took them all away
you cant even delete a sim wont even mention spawning an object similar to pauls reaction tester and all other stuff which made moviemaking at least a bit easier

Edit: ok I was sorta right lol you can activate the ‘new’ boolprop and lots of other stuff here:

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,15185.0.html

8. Despite all the promises, the social aspect of the game still lacks alot

i thought the main focus of the game would shift from fulfilling sims needs to making sims social lives more fun and human-like. well i dont see too much changes in their social behaviour. 80% of social interactions are recycled, hardly anything changed really

9. And yes, gotta love recycling

alot of meshes and animations are same as in sims 2, so it just automatically loses its freshness.. and gets you bored more quickly as you already have ‘seen it all’

10. All the stuff that was present in base sims 2, but missing in sims 3

starting with wedding arch and ending with aliens
the list is very very long

and okay not to sound like a complete buzzkill…

10 Things I love about Sims 3

1. Sunset Valley
the scenery, landscape.. just the way the town looks.
that’s the only thing that wows me about this game, it feels like this is the only aspect which was actually taken to another level

2. Traits & moodlets
when i started playing I didn’t pay much attention to those.. i thought like so what, its alot like personalities in Sims2.. in fact traits are much more elaborate.. if you observe them more closely.. you’ll notice how each trait has a set of special animations or interactions..like clumsy sims would be tripping over things all the time. I had a clumsy girl propose and she almost dropped the box with the ring. Thought it was so cute lol

3. Design a style tool
changing colors/pattern sometimes can bring even most hideous clothing meshes to life. Too bad there is no patternmaker tho

4. Performance
Comparing to Sims 2, performance/game load improved, no annoying loading screens!

5. Story progression..
Adds up alot to the gameplay, its one of my favorite new things in the game as it’s nice to have a ‘real family’ who ages along with you, you can visit them and see what they are up to, you can stalk your neighbors too.. (although whenever I did it, they just were standing there.. i know this was made to save up the system resources.. but still.. the game knows when i’m trying to look into the house, it could just make them do something lol

6. Cementary & ghosts
lol i just like it there lol plus ghosts are more fun as you can interact with them, or even control them(which hasnt hapened to me yet)

7. Careers
are a bit more fun and not just a ‘label’ type thing anymore.. as you get the opportunities assignments which are somewhat like quests.. but i wish they required at least a little bit of thinking lol
also creative freelance jobs can actually be profitable.. love that too

8. Gradually changing lighting
self explanatory

9. All the small things
the ambrosia salad, $3000 worth of plutonium found in neighbors trash, steal candy from a baby interaction.. there are a ton of little touches that are not so in your face and you discover them only when playing

10. It’s not sims 2
since ive developed an allergy to sims 2 by now, i much prefer to play sims 3.. even with all its flaws:P

so.. my marketing advice for ea would be

scrap sims 3 release sims 4 in one year lol OR
release a set of tools which will make sims 3 fully customizable

because despite the positive reviews from the ‘critics’, the customers are generally unhappy [link]

Otherwise Sims 3 is a major letdown…not saying its worthless or a waste of time, no, its improvement over sims 2.. just it’s not enough. the main purpose behind this game was to make the majority of sims fans say omg sims 2 totally blows comparing to this one, i’m swtching to the sime 3! and i could see alot of ppl sticking with sims 2 for now.. as basically sims 2 with the best CC on them beats the raw sims 3..at least in some ways

now as for me..
I’ve played it for quite a bit, but then decided to wait till there are at least some new hairs and decent skintones are made..because playing without cc… takes away too much fun for me.
As for the moviemaking, to be honest i didn’t get this omg i gotta make a movie with this, as moviemaking-wise it’s same as the old sims 2 which is imo not moviemaker friendly at all.. So this will surely take some time till some hacks/tools are developed… I’ve made Helena 2 years after sims was released, there is no chance I could make this movie even a bit earlier than that.. so I guess i’m just gonna have to wait and see what modding community comes up with..

Okay guys, guess it’s time to announce that I’m ‘officially’ in away mode and on a movie making hiatus, since to be honest, I don’t have this much desire left to be dealing with Sims 2 anymore. This includes pretty much everything, movies, hacks or even just playing..

Now as for the sims 3, yes i can’t wait to play it, i really hope  the game play will feel more realistic and more advanced, esp when it comes to sim ppl AI’s.
Now as for the movies, like seriously, i think it won’t be after a year after the release before some decent movies could be made with it. Hope I’m wrong, but this is how it was with sims 2. First people got into playing with it, making custom content, and developing hacks and just after that, movie makers had at least some tools at their disposal…
At this point I can’t even say for sure if i will be making movies with sims 3, as well, I’ve no idea what the moviemaking aspect of the game will look like. But what i really really want is making my own 3d animated movies and not be limited by game platforms anymore. currently i’m learning to use 3d editors, so we’ll see what happens.

So to sum this all up, I’ll be in ‘away’ mode.. so I won’t be spending too much time on the site, meaning i may take a loong time to reply, so if you are looking some ‘help’ you know this is not the right place, kay.

Now another small update, if you go to my about me page, you wont see an empty space anymore. I just had this plan of making an awesome page with lost of scripts going on but guess i was too lazy for that so i just put together a brief intro n stuff…

I also remade the mp4′s of my movies, now the the format is more suitable for iPods, so here’s the mp4 links for all of my movies again:

EDIT: These and movie file downloads will no longer be offered, as i had to remove them due to copyright crap

For those of you who still haven’t quit Sims 2 moviemaking… I made the last box from the latest EP. It’ll have around 170 interactions. Please note that I only included the interactions which weren’t released before. And the ep included alot of recycled interactions, so say for freezing, catching fireflies, zomie interactions and so on, check out my other boxes.

Also all of the ‘jungle gym’ animations are intended for teens, so some of them might look kinda odd on the adults. Other than that, you’re welcome to download it here :)

 

My new movie is out! It’s a music video to From Yesterday by 30 Seconds To Mars. It’s a sci-fi drama set in future about an inventor building a robot using technology of a new generation. But later it turns out that something went wrong and…………well find out about the rest here 

Download link: http://www.jd-movies.com/movies/fromyesterday108mb.wmv

Well don’t expect much like I said it’s far from perfect, but.. it’s sure worth watching :) 

And by the way the storyline page is up, and it explains everything in detail and completes the storyline as I tried to stay away from the subtitles, so in case if you’re lost, check it out. But watch the movie first!

So well, thanks alot to all the game modders for making our lives easier and all the CC makers for all your hard work, as it wouldn’t look as good without you guys. Thanks Jovial aka OneJovialSim for helping me out with animations and listening to all my stupid ramblings :P And all my fans for your support and patience so well hope you guys like it:)

The FAQ is under construction, but  I’ll be updating this FAQ thread with what I’ve got so far. If you have any questions about the movie (and I bet you will :P) please post them on the forum, as I will have a permalink of me replying and it’ll be easier for me to just give a url to sb who asks me the same type of q in the future.

The Custom Content page is also under construction, but so far it has all cc used on the main characters. Will update the cc list with everything else asap..

The Making Of page will be up sometime soon and it’s gonna explain everything in detail… so well wait for that

 And I’m uploading it to youtube soon just wait a bit!

Well, those of you who somehow got this suspicion about my sudden ‘come back’ and all the updates I’ve been making lately, well yeah they are not without a reason.

Yes, I’ve been secretly working on something. Haven’t told many people because I had no idea how things would go anyways.  Like whats the point of making a stir when the release date could be just a month away or it could as well be 4 months away? I had no control over it. I couldn’t work on it *all* or most of the time like I basically did with my other movies. Now there were always some things that would be more urgent than the movie. I started making it sometime in october last year. And then I would occasionally come back to it when i was in a mood.. which caused very very long breaks…. I almost finished it now, as I had some free time and I knew I wouldn’t have it later, so it was one of these ‘now or never’ things and In fact it’s been 99% finished for over a week, I just been waiting for my computer upgrade to make the final edit and in the meantime, I was just redoing my site..

The movie is not that great, but what sucks even more is that everyone is excpecting me to come up with some goddamn masterpiece.. and too high expectatins kill the fun. and it’s nothing that special.. just.. a movie  is that better? :P

Don’t think I’ll post a trailer this time. As I just don’t get what’s the point in making a 30 seconds [<-- and this was my hint :P and besdes the song was on my myspace ]trailer for a movie which is 5 minutes long but well i could tease you just a bit with some raw facts :P

Well the movie is set in the future and has this sci-fi/action vibe. The band’s name starts with a number and the movie title could’ve been Runaway, although it will be same as the title of the song.  Not as romantic as my other movies, although it was supposed to be, but things didn’t  exactly go according to the plan and it will also have an unsolved/interrupted  ending, although unlike helena, it is supposed to be followed by a sequel, which i may or may not make eventually.

I don’t know when I’m gonna post it, as you know it’s not just about a movie anymore.. rendering right size takes time, uploading takes time, reuploading takes time (as i’m sure it will happen), making storyline page takes time and the early versions of faq’s too… so yeah don’t ask me when. I personally want to release it as soon as possible. So this post was just to let you know that you should check back later when youre bored or something, as my new movie could be up sometime :) so yea stay tuned!

Well, as you can see I’ve changed alot of things around here. My site uses a new layout! Yep, it’s quite modest but very fast loading and easy to navigate, so as a webmaster I really love it, as now i can change things around so much more easily. Say if i wanted to add one more menu link option on my old layout I’d have to redo the whole site completely, now it’s really not a problem. plus of course my codes are not as messy and it even looks same in firefox:P

For the ‘scrapbook’ – This is what the front page of my site used to look like:

I’m actually not completly finished with everything yet,

there are a few things i need to change/add. but here’s what i did so far..

+ I’ve reorganized the movies section. so now you will easily find info/custom content lists on each movie

+ The new ‘making of’ pages and about me are not ready yet, but hopefully they will be some time soon

+ New! I now have a mailing list, so feel free to subscribe. I won’t be spamming you too much, just on those days when I have movies or new hacks released. The subscribe form is somewhere on the index page.

+ All pages are .php now. So please update your bookmarks or if you have linked to one of the site pages. I didn’t change the file names except the downloads one

+ New JD stuff (which is just Downloads now) url is

http://www.jd-movies.com/downloads.php

+ If something on the site doesn’t show up right, refreshing might help

+ added all affiliates to links section who requested to date. If I didn’t link back to you, it means your site either wasn’t related to sims movies, or was poorly made or was down or was in some language I couldn’t understand. sorry.

And the other thing that kinda.. surprised me if that’s the right word.. man how many directors from my links have retired and closed down their sites. i think i ended up purging half of my links really sad it’s really sad to see them go, although i can’t say i don’t ‘get it’ completely

So yeah, this is it for today… in my next blog I plan talking about my ‘future’ projects.. so stay tuned :P

Ah yea and the old poll result…

According to the poll, every second simmer is unhappy about how the game will look.  When I saw the Sims 2 trailer for the first time I was just blown away. The jump from sims 1 to sims 2 was enormous.. we all expected the same level of improvement in Sims 3…. but seems like we’re gonna have to wait for the Sims 4…

Just so you know, I’ve uploaded a less ‘violent’ version of Helena to youtube today. This version also has the trailer in the beginning. So if you were unable to watch/fav it from your account, you can do it now :)

Movie youtube page here

And here is the download version. (Trailer+ original movie unedited)

Oh and by the way, from now on I’ll be watermarking my movie files. Never thought I’d end up doing this, but so many people are reuploading my movies all over the web without linking back here, not to mention even using my clips for their own so called ‘productions’ so seems like I just have no other option here…