Arien
Servant of Vána  Guide of the Sun

After all of the "blue" characters I'd done recently, I decided it was time for a dramatic change -- and how much more dramatic could one get than to go from night and stars and the sea to a powerful spirit of fire?  The trick with doing Arien was largely the limitartions of the game.  I'd had a number of design ideas that could be rendered in real fabric, but not as a Sims skin on a mesh.  So I had to settle for some major compromises -- the pattern of fire on the gown, the upright collar with its sunburst pattern.  For her head, I had made a few attempts at making a style that would suggest something more wild and halo-like, emulating hair being blown about in the heat from fire, but I despised every attempt in that direction.  I also found that giving her red hair did not work; it clashed terribly with the flame color of the gown, no matter what I did to tweak the shade.  Literally red hair made her look like something out of comic book, so I skipped that.  Black worked, but I was tired of doing black-haired people, so I finally decided there was nothing wrong with going for a sun-bleached platinum blonde -- it complemented the sun/fire theme, and actually wound up looking more striking than any other color.  Her eyes were also a problem, since it was said that her eyes were so piercingly bright, few could stand to look at them for long (rather like the sun itself).  I'd considered giving her eyes that were all whites, no irises or pupils (not red, that looked Evil, not bright), but frankly, that creeped me out.  So instead, I did another compromise and gave her abnormally large "eye lights" (the "glints" in the eyes) so that no matter which way she turns her head, her eyes should gleam.  I haven't tested it enough in actually play to decide whether or not I'm satisfied with it.  If not, I may change it in the future.

Of course, now that I've done Arien, that means I'll have to do Tilion -- back to silvers and grays again.  Sigh.

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