#sim tutorial

Step 1: Select your victim

Get the sim you want to turn into a ‘doll’! I just grabbed a randomly generated girl from in CAS. It should be noted, that though I did this tutorial with a female, the same steps can be followed for males. Let’s take a closer look at her before we start.

Step 2: Body Proportions

This step is more of a personal preference. I like for my doll sims to adopt a more cartoon-ey form. It’s not realistic, purposefully. I feel like some of the fun of doll sims is that since they’re dolls they can be pretty much anything.

Now, I’m not saying that doll sims have to be a certain shape or size. I just prefer them this way, since I’m basing them off a certain type of doll. Most of what I do is making the shoulders and hips smaller. Just lowering the size of their frame in general.

Step 3: It’s time to get big-headed.

It’s time to grab that head and pull like nobody’s business. It should be noted we don’t require the maximum head size for this step. Just. Just make it wider. Use the reference below for general head-wideness.

Step 4: BUG EYES!

One of the most refining features of doll sims, or at least my version of them, is that they have GIGANTIC eyeballs. I usually pull them to their maximum size. After this point... they start looking a bit strange. DON’T PANIC! It’s all a part of the process!

Step 5: Looking like an alien.

As the picture above states, once you have huge eyes, it’s time to pull them apart. Because our lovely model looks TOO NORMAL. I don’t pull them as far as possible. I can usually find a bit of a sweet spot.

Step 6: Small faces!

Doll sims have extremely large foreheads. To achieve this look, and get the kind of squished face we want, we have to drag the eyes down a bit. Like so. It should be noted that you want the eyes level with the line from where the ear begin.

Step 7: Chins? What are those?

For my style of doll sims, there is virtually no chin. It exists, yes, but it is not prominent in any way shape or form. In the picture above it looks like she has a bit of a chin, it comes away from her jaw a bit... and we don’t want that! So push it back up!

Step 8: Chubby cheeks.

To complete the whole, let’s round their face, we have to give them some chubby cheeks. You could call them chubby cheeks, baby fat, or even chipmunk cheeks. Either way, they’re going to need some squishability!

Step 9: Nose and Lips

Both of these things should be kept small and petite! the most telling feature of the doll sim is their huge eyes. We don’t want to downplay that! On this particular sim, I didn’t have to do much to the nose. I simply made it narrower and moved the nostrils up a bit. Lip wise, I usually make my lips in this style... so I just did what I usually do!

Step 10: Make-up and accessories!

Here I just changed my default skin up, and gave her some hair. In a moment I’m going to change her skin tone to something I think fits better with the mint color scheme I have given her. 

At this point, you’re done with the tricky parts of creating your doll sim! Now all you need to do is add make-up (if you desire to) and then dress them up. Typically when I am assigning makeup, I will use a hair that leaves the face wide open, like the one on her in the picture above.

Step 11: The Finished Product

After you add some makeup and then some adorable clothes you’re ready to go! I changed up her hair again, because I wanted something more fun than the braids. Hairs with bangs are also a super good choice for doll sims, since it covers their huge forehead. However, it does make their squished faces very apparent, so be prepared! Now you’re ready to go have all sort of fun with them~!

I named this lovely lady Peppermint~

And there you have it! 

That’s how I make my doll sims, which are featured in my story ‘A Spoonful of Sugar’. Y’all can look it up here if you want to see more of my doll sims in action!

IMPORTANT: It will be much easier for you if you download the CAS Lighting Overhaul Mod and the White Background Mod here. Make sure you download both :)

Step 1. Open your sim screenshot in GIMP. You will see your sim layer to the right.

Step 2. Before doing anything, right click that sim layer and choose “Add Alpha Layer”

Step 3. Now select the “Fuzzy Select Tool” and change your settings to match mine:

Antialiasing: Checked Feather Edges: 2.0 Select transparent areas: Checked Sample Merged: Unchecked Threshold: 1.0 Select by: Composite

Select all of the white areas while holding SHIFT on your keyboard.

Step 4. Next go to Select>>Grow and set that to 2px. Click OK.

Step 5. Then go to Select>>Feather and set that to 2.00 px. Click OK.

Step 6. Now go to the top bar and choose Edit>>Clear.

To unselect, go to Select>>None.

Step 1. To start create a new layer by clicking the icon on the bottom of the layers window. Now click the brush tool (B) and choose a darker color to contour with. I used #704e3b but you can adjust based on your sim and lighting. Use a variety of brush sizes (5-30px) and a brush hardness of 0% to contour around the nose, face, and collarbone.

Step 2. Go to the top bar and choose Filter>>Blur>>Gaussian Blur. I set my radius to 10px but you can adjust to fit your style. Click OK.

Step 3. Now change the Blend Mode to Multiply and set the opacity to something around 30%.

Step 4. To smooth out some areas I take the eraser brush (E) and set the size to around 150px with a hardness of 0%. Then I just touched up the middle of the forehead.

Step 5. Create another new layer just like we did before, this will be the highlight layer. Use the brush tool again and a variety of brush sizes 10-30px with a hardness of 0%. I used the color #ffffff for the highlight. Highlight on the cheekbones, nose, and forehead.

Step 6. Go to Filter>>Blur>>Gaussian Blur and set the radius to around 10px again. Now set the Blend Mode to Overlay and opacity to around 43%.

Step 7. Now right click the top layer and choose Merge Visible. This will combine the layers.

Step 8. Go to the top bar and choose Layer>>Duplicate Layer. Click OK. Make sure this new top layer is selected and once again go to Filter>>Blur>>Gaussian Blur. Set the radius to anything between 5-10 pixels. I chose 10.00. Click OK.

Step 9. Set the Blend Mode to Overlay and the opacity to something similiar to 50%. You can play around with the opacity a little depending on your image.

Step 1. Start off with a flat image (only one layer). If you have multiple layers and you need to flatten them, go to Image>>Flatten Image.

Step 2. Duplicate the layer by pressing the icon at the bottom of the layers window.

Step 3. Now go to Colors>>Levels and this window will pop up. Choose the RED Channel and change the right output level to 0. Hit ENTER on your keyboard and then click OK.

Step 4. Your image should look something like this. Now select the bottom layer.

Step 5. This time we are going to change 2 of the channels. Select the GREEN channel and change the right output level to 0. Hit ENTER on your keyboard. Don’t click OK yet. Choose the BLUE Channel and set the right output level to 0 as well. Hit ENTER on your keyboard, now click OK.

Step 6. You should see a cyan colored layer and a red colored layer. Click the top cyan layer and set the mode to difference. Your image should look normal again.

Step 7. Now click the Move Tool and click anywhere on your image. You can now use the arrow keys on your keyboard to move the layer right, left, up or down. The more you move it the more you will see the effect.

Step 8. As you move the layer you will notice the edges of your image will become red or cyan. To fix this crop the image by clicking the Crop Tool. Drag a rectangle around what you want to keep and hit ENTER on your keyboard. To merge everything go to Image>>Flatten Image.

Step 1. Start off with you sim on one layer and your background on another layer.

Step 2. Create a new layer by click the “new layer” icon at the bottom of the layers windows. Now choose your rectangle tool (or any shape you choose). Make sure the “Fill Pixels” option is selected at the top. Drag to create your shape.

Step 3. You can add a color or gradient overlay and a drop shadow if you want, but this is not required.

Step 4. Press your CTRL key (Command if you use MAC) and click the little thumbnail with your shape(s) on it. The shape(s) should now be selected.

Step 5. With the shape(s) still selected, click on your sim layer. Then click the “add layer mask” icon. It will automatically apply the selection. The mask is the black and white thumbnail.

Step 6. This part is important. There is a little link between the layer and mask. In order to move your sim or mask separately, you need to unclick it. I usually have them unlinked until I am done moving things around.

Step 7. In step 5 you can see the top of the sims head is cut off, that is because the mask is hiding it. Anything BLACK on the mask is hidden, anything WHITE will be shown. 

To make sure the sims head isn’t cut off, click on the MASK to edit it. I then took a rectangle shape tool in the color white #ffffff and added a rectangle to the top of the mask. The white goes all the way to the top, allowing the top of the head to be shown.

Step 8. Now let’s say I want to add a drop shadow to my sim. When I click “Fx” and choose drop shadow, you can see that the drop shadow is not following the mask I just created. It is expanding past the mask. Let’s fix that!

Step 9. To fix that problem, click Blending Options at the top of the Layer Style Window. Then click the box that says “Layer Mask Hides Effects”. Now the drop shadow is in the mask I just created.