Beating the dead horse (or in this case, vampire)

I was still not satisfied with my Sims portraits of Deborah Means. First, it was the age. Then it was the clothing. Then it was the eyes. Then it was the face. Every revision I did failed to produce the image I've got in my head of what she looks like. Part of my problem is that she is, like many of the characters in VbN, based on a real human being. A real human being I haven't seen in almost 20 years, so I'm a little fuzzy on the memories.

That isn't so much a problem as trying to build something out of her half-Asian half-Euro ethnicity. I finally broke down and snatched one of Cenor's few Asian Sims (I've mentioned before what a godsend his Sims site is for this project) and got to work modding her into Deborah.

I can finally say I am exceptionally pleased with the outcome this time. Here she is...

Leftovers

There were a handful of character portraits that I had intended to post for Acts Three and Four of Virginia by Night that I never got around to. So, given that I've started writing (and posting) Philadelphia by Night 1999, I suppose it's now or never.

Guy du Savoy

The treacherous Prince of Richmond is first up on the list. He's based on a PC from our college-era VtM campaign, but I've done a lot more with him. Guy's a pretty complex character, and unfortunately the story line did not give me the room to fully flesh out his motivations and passions. Guy is my first attempt at writing a genuine real homosexual character, not merely someone who lives that lifestyle for the kicks (like Deborah, for example). His grief and rage at the death of his lover, Raoul, is his primary motivator. While that makes him a villain in the context of Michael's story, I wanted his pain to feel real and his anger genuine, even if misplaced. As I said, he's complicated enough that I'd like to flesh him out some more and maybe I'll do that at some point in the future.

In terms of his portrait, I'm exceedingly pleased with how he turned out. This an almost fully self-created Sim, using many of the tools and DLC I've gained from downloading all the other Sims that you've seen here.

Raoul

The ill-fated Raoul unfortunately learned the hard way the dangers of the Dragonbreath shotgun round, making his appearance in Act Three brief, but important. His destruction drives Guy to hatch his grand revenge scheme in Act Four which leads to nearly all the events that transpire in Tidewater in 1996.

Again, this is another portrait I'm very happy with. Like Guy, I've cobbled him together myself with all the various components that I've downloaded over the past few months.

Cranston

Guy's go-to-guy in Act Four, Cranston is another PC from our VtM campaign. Originally conceived as a Caitiff with some Lasombra blood (who was also semi-insane. More on that in a few sentences), I had to modify him for his conversion into VtR. Using the wonderful conversion book Onyx Path put out for that purpose, he's now Mekhet of the Lasombra bloodline.

As I mentioned, Cranston was originally created as being slightly off-his-rocker. That's because he has the delusion of being an old 1930s-era super hero, which is where his name comes from, as well as his description as being an "Alec Baldwin" type.

His character contains yet another homage to pop culture in his weapons. The Shadow carries two M1911 pistols in the above linked film, and I further had them modified to fire .454 Casull rounds (This was also a piece of the original VtM character). That brought to mind the guns used by this famous anime vampire.

Lara

Normally, I wouldn't bother with creating a portrait for a throw-away minor character like Lara, but I did this one anyway. Partly on whimsy, partly because of the origin of the character. Lara comes from a dream I had that played out very much like Michael's encounter with her in Act Four (I meet her in a bar, followed her home. We had sex, etc. Hey, I'm a red-blooded American male and my subconscious doesn't always cooperate with my marriage vows.)

It wasn't until I started scouring the Sims websites and found a Sim that looked like the girl in my head that I realized what my subconscious was doing: She looks a whole lot like a certain crush I had in high school that I honestly hadn't thought about much in 20 years. Alright, I figured, my brain decided to fulfill a fantasy of mine 20 years too late. But it did give me her name and a place in the Virginia by Night storyline.

Virgil

Michael's loyal manager at the Fox Club and Nightstyles, Virgil's pic is a bit more generic than I normally like. I'll probably do a revision of him in the near future to update his look, seeing as he does have a role to play in the early parts of Philadelphia by Night.

Vampire portrait update (revised)

I was still somewhat unsatisfied with some of the updated portraits I uploaded a few days ago, so I went back and made a few new ones. Specifically, I "aged down" the three characters that are specifically described in the story as being (or appearing to be) 16 or younger.

Outside of the change from "adult" to "teen" via the Sims and some new clothing, these are pretty much the same as their adult versions I posted earlier. These are more accurate to how the characters are described in the storyline however.

Ami Janes

Deborah Means

Sarah Cobbler

(Technically speaking, I probably should have included Donna here as well, but I'm quite satisfied with how she turned out, so I'm not inclined to revise her down to "teen" like I did these three.)

Portraits Update - Acts Three & Four

Moving on to the Tidewater portions of Virginia by Night...

Ami Janes

Here's the first of our brand new portraits. Ami was Boar's mentor during his brief stint in the Roanoke werewolf pack. Her death is a big part of the drive of Boar's character.

Sarah Cobbler

I really like the new Sarah as well, although one of the limitations of my Sims DLC collection makes her quite a bit more buxom than she's supposed to be. Still, in spite of that, this is pretty spot on to how I envision her. I really like the traditional dress, the 1920's style hair, and (of course) her amber eyes.

Sammy McKay

You knew she was going to have to be in a bikini right? Of course. It wouldn't be proper for our sexually liberated beach bum cop harem girl to be attired any other way.

Angelica Walton

Our lovely blonde nurse, #2 of Michael's harem, and former girlfriend of Sammy, here dressed for work.

Terra Hines

Number 3 of Michael's harem is the witch Terra.

Rhea Valdez

Sometimes the description makes the image, sometimes the picture brings the character to life. I created Rhea with a good backstory and a solid reason why Michael would want to possess her, but I just wasn't feeling much for the character. Not until I found one of Cenor's pre-made Sims that nailed the character and really brought her to life for me.

Donna Barrera

In a lot of ways, Donna's the third in the line of Michael's college age conquests after Kris and Leigh. So far though, her fate seems to be far more positive.

Julia Snow

Astute observers will note this is not an original character of mine, but one I borrowed out of the World of Darkness: Antagonists sourcebook. Still, I consider this an homage to the hunter character presented therein, with all her bold blonde sexiness intact.

Portraits Update - Acts One & Two

As I promised in a now deleted post, here's the batch of updated character portraits.

A bit of background, when I put together the original portraits, I still had a Sims 3 install. One move later, nearly all my worldly possessions ended up in storage, including a number of my computer games. I did however manage to recover my Sims 2 disks and have since begun playing the older game with earnest. Even got myself some copies of all the expansions and fashion packs (all but one, Manor Life or some such.)

Secondly, I stumbled onto Cenor's Sinford Sims site. I have to give credit where it's due. His stuff is pretty remarkable, particularly his collection of "lady sims," from which many of these character portraits are derived.

Many of the others are from various sites around the web. There's still a good Sims 2 community out there and I owe a lot of them for helping me make these characters in my head come to life.

Michael Allens

I like this interpretation of our lead character much better than any other I've come up with. He's got a nice mix of youth, boy-band good looks, and bad boy charisma, which is really how I've always envisioned him.

James "Mitch" Mitchell

As I mentioned before, Mitch is based on a real life friend of mine and this is a decent facsimile. Different, but not too different, from the person he's based on.

Michael "Boar" Boorman

Boar is also based on a real person, but I decided somewhere along the way to make a change to his race.

Geoff Anders

 Again, the first of Michael's friend-turned-thralls in Blacksburg is based on a real person, and this one's a little too close to the mark. Not sure how I feel about that.

Corwin Morse

Corwin is the second of Michael's friends-turned-thralls in Blacksburg. I haven't created the third (Karl) in Sims 2 yet.

Deborah Means

Deborah was hard to do in Sims 2 for a variety of reasons. One is to find suitable clothing for her. While the punk tank top in the pic above is close, it's not quite there. I probably put the most work into this picture just trying to get the right look for her and I'm still not satisfied.

Rebecca Phillips

Michael's ex-girlfriend-turned-childe was easier than his sire. I like the mix of innocence and sin in this image.

Kris Keller

I really like this pic of Michael's doomed hippie chick blood doll.

Leigh Tyler

Leigh turned out better than I would have imagined. Too bad she's not long for the world either.

Tales grow in the telling...

Now that's she's been fully introduced, I want to talk about the character of Sarah Cobbler.

When we did the Virginia Beach VtM campaign way back in college in 1994 or so, I needed to fully populate my newly created city. Either lacking a certain creativity or being lazy or both, I pulled out my Vampire: The Eternal Struggle cards (then still called Jyhad) and found one of my favorite vampires...

This cheap little Tremere vamp was a solid food-soldier in my VTES deck, only 4 blood to play with advanced Thaumaturgy. So I included her as an NPC in my VtM game. (Lazarus, another VTES card, also got brought in as the soon to be demised Prince.)

I didn't really do much with her at first, but I always liked this character. Her potent abilities in the VTES game matched up with her intriguing youthful purple-haired appearance provided by artist Daniel Gelon made her stick in my mind as someone I wanted to make further use of in the future.

So, when I was in grad-school in 1999 and dusting off my campaign notes for the first Philly by Night campaign, I brought Sarah back. She would be part of Michael's coalition to invade Philly and she became a major player in the plot of that campaign.

After another ten or so years had passed and I decided to put proverbial pen to paper to write down all these stories I'd created for these games as a web novel, I needed to create a reason and a rationale for why Sarah would attach herself so closely to Michael's cause.

So, she joined the cadre of Michael's many and various lovers, secondary as they all were to Rebecca and Deborah. I also had to convert her over from VtM to VtR, so she shifted from Tremere to Ventrue. That opened another subplot avenue in that she would be a childe of Ernie. Her knowledge of the occult remained and that gave me my context to introduce her and Michael. Voila, a reasonably well developed side character for the story.

But I wasn't done.

No, there was Dance in the Vampire Bund and that sneaky and potentially risky idea to introduce something of a lolicon character into the story. Sarah was the perfect fit for that experiment. So she went to being really youthful, as in early teen youthful.

Now, I'm fully aware this road has been trod before by far-more famous and accomplished authors. Anne Rice did an exceptional job of weaving together the love story of Louis and Claudia in Interview With a Vampire, an adult male with a child female, both vampire and both far older than their appearance otherwise suggests. But in Rice's universe, vampires are essentially sexless, so their romance was chaste. That would not be the case with Sarah and Michael in my own story. And I knew that would be risky.

But I still wasn't done. No, the story had taken on a life of its own. As Sarah became more developed as a character, it became obvious that the plot was demanding that she be more than a mere throw-away conquest. The logical next step was to make her into a true romantic counterpart to our anti-hero. Now she would be an equal to, or even perhaps supplant, Rebecca and Deborah in Michael's heart.

What would that mean for the story?

Well, I'll leave that part unspoiled, as I've not posted it (or even written all of it) yet. Suffice to say thought I'm very amazed at what has happened with this single character. She went from functional window dressing to potentially the most important side character in the whole story. I never expected that, but that's part of the fun of doing this. Sometimes, these things truly take on a life of their own.

I'll leave you with her Sims 3 portrait. This'll be the last of the Sims 3 character pics that I've done on my own. All future pics will either be "borrowed" from others or created in Sims 2.

Not quite the same as the VTES card, but maybe I'll give her purple hair back in the future. Who knows with this character?

Act Three Portraits

Well, I posted seven chapters at once. Should do wonders for getting me caught up.

Introducing a lot of new characters...

First up, our mysterious Southern Gentleman vampire, Damian Drake...

Then, the Sheriff Francois du Bois. (This character was based on the alter-ego I created for the SCA when I was a member many years ago.)

The samurai/businessman Hiroshi Takagi, primogen of Hampton (Another borrowed pic, I'll confess.)

The lovely Leigh Tyler, Michael's mortal love interest

"I've got to talk to Max." Well, here he is (not quite as hunchbacked as I would like, but Sims 3 has its limitations.)

Michelle La Croix, Primogen of Chesepeake

Shakespeare, Primogen of Portsmouth

Thomas Calderon, Primogen of Newport News

In the process of moving, I've "lost" my Sims 3 disks, so I won't be able to create new portraits in this style for the foreseeable future. As such, I'll probably revert to Sims 2 to do Guy, Raoul, and others that are notably missing above.

Vampire portraits - Thralls Part 2

A quick post to finish up the Act One portraits. The story's moved well into the Tidewater area now, so I'd like to start posting the pics of the new characters.

First up, Geoff...

Then Corwin...

And now the lovely and corrupt Officer Julia Peacetree (I'll admit I borrowed this one from a Sims 3 site somewhere)...

And lastly, Karl...

Vampire Portraits - Thralls Part 1

Michael and Deborah have numerous allies in Roanoke and Blacksburg. Too many for me to do in a single post. So I figured I'd hit the major ones first and the minor ones next time.

First up is James "Mitch" Mitchell. You should, as I implied in an earlier post, see some similarities to Ernie. But I think I've made Mitch distinct enough that you wouldn't know they're based on the same person unless I'd told you.

Second is Michael "Boar" Boorman. Boar suffers from the same problem as Ernie/Mitch, as the person on whom he is based has two characters in the story. Boar's "other" doesn't get introduced until Act Three however.

Lastly is the lovely Kris Keller, Michael's lover and first thrall. Kris is a character who was once based on a real person, but has been changed so dramatically that she is no longer even remotely like her origin. Thus, I had a lot of leeway here to create whatever I wanted and I like what I've come up with. Kris is a bit of a Bohemian hippy type and I think this portrait reflects that.

Vampire portraits: Okay, I lied.

Well, not intentionally anyway...

I mentioned in my last portrait post that I had no way to depict the Djinn or Prince Mathias. Well, I decided after posting those very words that I would find a way. Here's what I've come up with...



I intended the Prince to come across as a creepy old man, and I think I've mostly gotten it. I say mostly because he's not quite there. Mathias is so ancient and so hideous, that it's actually hard to really do him justice. The Sims 3 engine simply doesn't quite have the means to go all out with the ugliness of this character. (Mathias' other childe, who you'll meet in an upcoming chapter will prove even harder.)

His clothing isn't quite right either. Mathias dresses as a medieval monk and is almost always hooded; another limitation of the Sims 3 engine.



Now I'm a lot more proud of my Djinn. I've always seen this character as a real-world Drow elf, immensely handsome and sexy but utterly alien due to his pitch-black skin. And while this skin tone isn't quite dark enough, it's close enough to show off the Djinn as something not quite human.

Vampire portraits: Solomon and Ernie

The vampires of Roanoke are getting further fleshed out here. Up first is Solomon.



I'm not very satisfied with this pic. It lacks the grey ashen skin tone of the vampires in my previous portrait post, but that's more an issue with Sims 3 than with the appearance of Solomon. But the way I really envision Solomon is actor Chris Hemsworth as Thor. But I didn't want to go completely the route of making him a double of the actor anymore than I did any of the other characters who are based on real people. So this is what I ended up with.



By contrast, I am delighted with this portrait of Ernie. A bit like the real person who played him, a bit sexually ambiguous (he's wearing makeup), and a bit disheveled all in one. Really pleased with how he turned out.

I'm going to mention a couple of notable absences here. I'm not planning to depict the other vampires of Roanoke in these portraits. While I don't mind the absence of Sophia and the other minor vampires, not having the Djinn and Prince Mathias is annoying. But there's no way for the Sims 3 engine (that I can tell) can really do them justice. I find a way, that'll change. But for now, don't be expecting to see our two main villains.

Vampire portraits: The Big Three

As promised, here come the portraits that I've put together, starting with the three main characters thus far.



The first here is, of course, Michael Allens. As Michael is based upon me, he is a rough approximation of what I looked like about 20 or so years ago. The ashen skin tone of the portrait is an effect of being a vampire in Sims 3: Late Night and while all three of these portraits will show that same effect, not all the portraits I've created will do so.



The second is Deborah Means. Deborah is a tricky one, because she too is based upon a real life person (interestingly, the only real life person of these with whom I have no contact today). But she is also meant to be a bi-racial character, half-Irish half-Chinese. I'm not entirely convinced this second aspect comes out fully in this image, but it is a good approximation of the character I see in my mind.



The third is Rebecca. One of the struggles with Rebecca is to make her distinct in appearance from Deborah. The written descriptions of them both being young, petite, pretty, and red-headed make it very easy to confuse the two visually, even if the real life people on whom they are based look nothing alike. (Actually, the real life Rebecca is a brunette, who only occasionally is a "bottle red.") Still, I think I've effectively created a distinct appearance for her here.