Gandalf the White
If I hadn't already understood the complexity of multi-part meshes before this little adventure in mesh-making, I sure do now. There was really no way to get around this and still achieve the appropriate look of the costume (which is pants tucked into knee-high lace-up boots with a shorter over-robe split up the front to about mid-thigh height). Oh, I was able to make a single-unit mesh that accomplished this and even bent at the knees -- but skinning it was another matter entirely. After about three weeks of frustration, I finally decided to take a shot at doing it with a separate "skirt" mesh, and bingo!
I'm actually rather happy with this whole thing, for several reasons: This is my first Sim entirely of my own making -- head, beard, body, accessories, skins, and yes, even that hellacious staff (including the head and body, there are 8 pieces to this figure, with the staff).
I originally made the staff as precisely like the one in the film as I could manage; the head was not only done in the openwork "carving," but was three-sided, like that in the film (thank you, Topps, for having several incredibly clear pictures of that part of it!). But when I tried using it in the game, it didn't work properly; I couldn't get the skin for it to provide the right depth of shadows in the right places to make the three-dimensionality of it stand out and not look like a big white blob. So I finally settled for a single flattened head that can be clearly seen even in the game.
I'm offering two versions of this skin, one with the staff and one without, since I really made the thing as a novelty. Watching a Sim try to go about his everyday life with a staff permanently attached to his hand (at least until he gets ready to go to bed or wants to swim or change his clothes) looks utterly ridiculous to me. You can download both versions and both will work in the game, as they have unique names and numbers. The heads and accessories (except the staff) are the same, so if you do decide to install both, be aware that a number of things (the head, belt, buckle, and skirt and their skins) will want to overwrite whichever were installed first, and that's fine.
Thanks to Openlea's Sim site for the very realistic hands, which I like MUCH better than the default mitt-like ones that come with the game (these meshes and bitmaps are NOT included).
Head Skin for Gandalf the White
as portrayed by Sir Ian McKellen
When I first acquired the latest version of Paint Shop Pro as a Christmas gift, I puttered around with it to see what things I could do with the new features, and somehow wound up trying to see if I could make a version of the facial skin that actually looked like Sir Ian, since I was basing the costume of this version on his portrayal in The Two Towers. As you can see in the head shot and in the sitting pose, it turned out remarkably well -- so well that I started trying to make skins for other characters from Jackson's movie version of LotR. I'm not sure that I'll ever move him into my bizarre Sim neighborhood (the eyes follow you -- no, they really do, and it creeps me out), but it was nice to know I could do it.
Please note: this zip file contains ONLY the skin, not the mesh. It's formatted to work with the head mesh provided in the above sets, so once you have that installed, simply plop this bitmap file into the game and it should appear properly.
