I'm in a funk. I still like playing my legacy family, and I want to continue with them, but I'm tired of taking pics and editing them and uploading them and trying to think of funny commentary to go with them that nobody reads. Seems like such a waste of time. I don't know, I'm just not getting anything out of it. I don't know what I expected, but not this, I guess. So...I'm afraid this update is extremely short and lackluster. I'm not even advertising it in the comm.

( Feel the woo-hoo inside of you! )

I'm eager to get gen 3 on the way. Back to playing.

P.S. Sorry for messing ya'll's flist up today. I was having the hardest time with html. I'd fix one thing and another thing would go all screwy. Then my lj cut completely disappeared. Sorry. :(

I did take in all of the comments everybody left. Thank you very much, guys. And I did try to make everyone happy, but mostly I tried to make myself happy with these.

A couple of things I want to address. #1: Some seemed dissatisfied with how 'shiny' the skins are. I believe this is a matter of preference. Some like shiny skins, some like matte. I myself like a little bit of realistic shine. Not 'I've rolled in a vat of canola oil' shine, but natural shininess. (And I've seen some canola oil skins, believe me...bleh.) Anyway, I'm not doing anything about the shininess. Corvidophile2 created these skins to begin with, I just mucked about with them, and I like the way she designed them, shininess and all. #2: Some asked for a paler tone than s1, and some asked for a darker tone than s4. Pale, I was able to make a recolor of that I am quite happy with. (See pics below.) However, I tried several times to get a darker color than the s4, and ended up with awful blotchy, pixelated skins every time. The s4 has some seams present in the original made by corvidophile2, and any recoloring I attempted made these seams even more visible. So, I apologize, but I did try. I'm happy with the s4.

Anyway, I promised downloads, so here they are.

( ~pictures and descriptions under the cut~ )

If the links go expired, or you can't download for whatever reason, please let me know in a comment.

Thanks for checking my stuff out, and thanks for everyone's comments. :)

For quite some time, I've used corvidophile2's Accent skintone as defaults. I've been quite happy with them. They're, in my mind, perfect as far as texture and color. I wasn't really digging the nose much, but I liked the rest of the skin a lot, so I overlooked it. So I was really excited to see that she released version 2, in which she redid the nose and made the whole skin 'smoother,' to use her word. I downloaded the defaults eagerly, and loaded up bodyshop. I was a little disappointed to see that in exchange for fixing the nose, she'd taken out a lot of the face texture and made it look rather flat and lifeless looking (Maxisy?), at least in my opinion. Also the s2 color seems...weird and grayish.

So I decided to take on the project of blending the version 1 & 2 to make something that I wanted. I wanted the noses from version 2, and the face texture and realism from version 1. Body textures remained the same, it was the faces I was concentrating on. Here's the results:

EDIT: I've edited this post to add an in-game screenshot. I had a feeling that bodyshop makes everything seem darker than it really is. And while I had the nagging feeling that these blends were too dark for a default set, after seeing them in game, I think they're perfect.

I've left s4 (the darkest skin) just as corvidophile2 made it, I agree with her, it's quite perfect. The first three are blends of my own making.

I think they look great, definitely something I'd love to use in game. I'd like to make defaults out of these four as well. But I need a fresh pair of eyes. I've been doing nothing but looking at these skins all day. Do you think this set is too dark? I know a lot of people don't like dark skinned red haired people running around their hoods, so they choose defaults that have generally lighter tones than original Maxis. Or at least the s4 is lighter. But I don't mind dark skinned fair haired people in the slightest. :) This range of tones looks good to me. I think each one is a meticulous step from the ones beside it. But what do you guys think? Is this set overall too dark, and not something you'd choose for your game? I can make the skins lighter, it's just a matter of doing some more blending. I just wanted some different opinions. Don't hesitate to single out a certain tone if it's not what you'd like in a set. I sometimes don't pick a set of defaults just because of one skin.

And of course, what do you think about the blends themselves?

Thanks for taking a look. :)

My second attempt at a legacy. Hopefully I can finish this one.