A Cosmic Glow

Something ancient AND low-poly, plus my very first accessory mesh!

It's been a while, hasn't it? Well, I've been plenty inspired to create, and I've been working on some things, but posting niche, semi-realistic TS2 content these days - especially on Tumblr - has been discouraging, and being shadowbanned for absolutely no reason until the other day made it worse. Add to that my OCD (yes, the actual disorder) having my brain in a vice grip about purging and organizing CC to make room for more, and... yeah. But I'm not going anywhere anytime soon, you can pry TS2 and creating CC out of my cold, dead hands.

Anyway, I was reminded of this post recently, and asimplevampire (and Pooklet's delighted response) inspired me to see what I could do with this delightfully ridiculous mesh from 2007. And it was an EPIC journey, so it deserves its own glorious post.



Wicked_Sims Lolita Curlz
(shown in Haunting)
F / YA-Elder / 3532 polys
Textures by Pooklet (V3) and Anto (from Helen hair)

Kujkenaikara! means "Never give up!" and let me tell you, I almost did with this thing. The mapping was an ABSOLUTE dumpster fire. When I tell you I spent several hours over the course of three days in a battle to the death with this monstrosity, I'm not exaggerating. I didn't even consider trying to put Io's edit of Pooklet's texture that I usually use anywhere near it because it would be utterly destroyed by the extent of warping I knew was needed. So I used Pooklet's original V3, with heavy adjustments and blending the wavy texture from Anto's Helen. Doesn't sound too bad, right?

WRONG. The scalp mapping was similar to a lot of Maxis hairs, and was an advanced course in Photoshop's warp tool. And the bangs. Those fuckers were curved in a manner that crossed dimensions. Just putting a new texture on them wasn't enough, either. They looked like somebody Pookleted a piece of paper, cut out some jagged shapes, and stuck them to the sim's head. So I did some serious alpha editing using bits from Newsea and Rose hairs, because I suck at hand-painting hair alphas.

With the scrunchie things I decided it needed some cute patterns, and one of my friends on Discord wondered if it was possible to make them lacy, which turned out to be a fantastic idea. So the naturals each have pattern/lace combo scrunchies and the unnaturals have black lace ones.



So... why the hell would I do something like this? Simple: 1) as a test of my abilities and 2) out of pure spite, because even though I'm generally a doormat I can be petty af. And honestly? I like how this came out. A LOT. I'm considering using it for Lilia when I make Laegrinna's Daemon servants, however this would mean I can't use it on other sims, because in my game unless a hair is extremely generic, if it goes on a character sim it becomes theirs and only theirs. I plan on attempting more old hairs in the future, because I enjoy transforming them with new textures, though I pray that their mapping will have more mercy on my soul than this one did.

I highly doubt anyone else will even use this hair, let alone recolor it, so I haven't included any texture resources like I usually do. However, if your taste is as questionable as mine and you really want to for some unfathomable reason, I'll be happy to provide you with the means to create your own personalized versions of this monster.

DOWNLOAD Wicked_Sims Lolita Curlz
SFS | Google Drive | Mega


Additional credits:
Hair colors by Pooklet, Io, Lilith, Digi, & Furbyq
Fabric texture from Textures.com, lace texture by amidnighteaparty @ DeviantArt
Patterns by:
banozac & sunni-fabric-designs @ Spoonflower
-HolleyTeaTime
-Miss Jediflip

Like I’ve said before, the only clay hairs that even TOUCH my game are natural Black hairs, and I thought putting more realistic textures on them was beyond my skill due to the atrocious mapping. BUT! I was only thinking of using the TS3 dreads, and it suddenly dawned on me - why don’t I try blending Nouk’s afro texture into the original? So I tried it, and I’m thrilled with how these came out!

 

It's that time again! Ended up posting a few minutes past midnight in my time zone... because I was a silly goose and didn’t start taking previews until Wednesday 😫 Everything’s under the cut!

UPDATE 1/24/22: Accessories now have custom CAS icons! Files have been updated, please re-download.

 

I had to close hair requests on Tumblr because I was getting really burned out on it. I would like more time to work on projects in my massive to-do folder, and I've also gotten back into digital art and would like to devote more time to drawing as well. So here are the last few requests I've received (don't worry, I'm not going to stop retexturing hair!)