Adventures in Dating episode 13, titled “Headlong” has been released on the AinD website. Thanks to my amazing cast: Artcgrrl, Tlmeyn, Scapino, and Dave. I had a really hard time working on this episode as you can tell from the shamefully long hiatus between this episode and last. It’s been quite a commitment to work on such a large scale movie project and the prospect of working on the final few episodes feels more daunting than when I started the series. It’s not just the episodes but having to make clothes, hair, and now some custom animations (about 1/2 dozen were made for this episode- some you can’t tell but they helped with the dialogue scenes) really burns me out. As I’ve mentioned dozens of times before, the series will get done I just don’t know when so it would be helpful if people didn’t question my intentions. Dealing with this and asking about release dates on emails and posts is more discouraging than encouraging so please be patient.

*DOWNLOAD Notice: The movie links on the website no longer uses a php file to open up the save dialog box because it no longer works. You must wait for it to stream which may take a bit when buffering and depending on your connection. Comments reporting that links are not working will be deleted.

As always, please do not read further until after you’ve watched the episode since the following contain spoilers. The episode title was inspired by The Frames song “Headlong.” In general, coming up with titles for the episodes are hard but this time, I realized the song title not just fit the first scene but the whole episode as well. Both Emma and Ellen are diving headlong into their desired relationships- Ellen with Elijah, and Ellen who finally tells Nate she wants to be with him over Ryan. I’m hoping that in that scene with Ellen and Nate, you were surprised to see Jane make an appearance and subsequently interfering in Ellen and Nate’s potential romance. I think that it’s really hard for children to think of their parents with lives and a past before they were parents. Especially in this case, Jane has always been a nosy, overbearing mother whom no child would want to listen to but she reveals a whole other side of herself. I’ll talk about this a bit more in the production notes when I get around to writing them.

So, the big thing that happens in this episode is that Emma finally loses her virginity- the poor girl. I always imagined that scene with the Doves‘ song “There Goes the Fear” which I always found wonderfully romantic, especially the lyrics “Close your brown eyes and lay down next to me.” There’s an album version that I don’t like nearly as much but I was lucky to get the acoustic one. I was at a show (can’t remember the band) and sometimes there are people distributing free promotional material after. This was before the Doves came to the U.S. and they gave out a CD that had that song and an acoustic version of “Caught by the River.” I think they are pretty rare- I haven’t seen them elsewhere so I feel lucky to have it. Anyway, you can download it by clicking on the link below; I will take it down after a couple weeks though so snatch it up if you want it now. I did put up the original album version on the radio blog along with other new songs for your listening pleasure. Anyway, my concern with the last scene as well as the opening one is the cheese factor. Maybe it’s because I’m a New Yorker but I find overly-sentimental and overly-romantic stuff gag worthy. I’m hoping that those scenes aren’t cheesy and don’t induce that feeling in you. If so, I apologize in advance. ;)

Doves - There Goes the Fear (Acoustic)

I am sitting here still waiting for my new computer. It’s supposedly being sent today so I should have it by the end of the week or early next. I’m excited because it’s been tested for a week and it’s apparently clocking in at super duper speeds. I actually am getting in the mood to work on AinD now but what’s the point of doing it on my old computer. I shall have to wait.

In the meantime, I wanted to share some of the songs from AinD with you which some of you may want. I chose one per episode and you can download the mp3s. I will take the music down though after a couple of weeks since I don’t want to get in trouble for sharing mp3s with my webhost or have strangers plunder my bandwidth looking for music. Click on the song or download them all at once below.

Ep. 1. “Frustration” - Creeper Lagoon, Cellophane
Ep. 2. “Dreams and Expectations” - Aimee Mann, It’s Not
Ep. 3. “The Barry Manilow Factor” - Idlewild, Roseability
Ep. 4. “Working Relationships” - Badly Drawn Boy, I Love N.Y.E.
Ep. 5. “Reality Check” - Elbow, Great Expectations
Ep. 6. “New Territory” - Guster, Come Downstairs and Say Hello
Ep. 7. “A Different Perspective” - Pilot Speed, The Travel Song
Ep. 8. “Signals” - Nada Surf, Paper Boats
Ep. 9. “Between Choices” - Tracy Bonham, Something Beautiful
Ep. 10. “Crossing Lines” - French Kicks, Only So Long
Ep. 11. “Searching” - Surface of Atlantic, Lights Out
Ep. 12. “Letting Go” - Buddy, Blindsides
Or you may download them all in one file here (warning, it’s a 67mb file).

Please, no requests for other songs from the series and remember, once I take them down I won’t put the links back up. I hope you enjoy them and also check out some of these awesome bands! I’d love to hear which song(s) you especially like.

EDIT: Added Poor Old Ben, In Dreams

Yeah, yeah, I know that’s what you’re thinking- even if it’s disguised in a supportive ‘it’s worth the wait’ insistence (which I really do appreciate). Well to be honest I have had half the episode done which I started to work on a while ago. Since then, I haven’t felt the motivation to get working on it again. I’m sure anyone who’s worked on a big talkie project like this would give the same reasons for their lack of motivation- the general frustration, lip-synching, the game moving slowly, having to boot up, etc. Those are reasons for me too but also, my interest in Sims is waning. It shouldn’t be a surprise since I’ve sustained quite a level of involvement in Simming since 2004- yikes! That’s almost four years that I’ve been making movies, clothes, hacks, etc. while I’ve seen lots of other directors lose interest and fall to the wayside. I guess currently my interest in real life has pre-empted my interest in Sims- not that those two are necessarily mutually exclusive but that’s how things usually turn out.

I do have good news though, well, at least good news to me. I’m having a new computer built. Actually, it’s already been built and is currently in testing stage and will be shipped to me hopefully by next week. That might spark my willingness to work on the series again, especially when the game starts up in a few minutes instead of 15 and filming happens in real time rather than the 10 to 1 second ratio it currently does. Don’t worry, I will finish the series. That’s never been up for debate. But asking me when it will be coming out or whining about it won’t motivate me more so I appreciate those of you who have been patiently waiting. At least I gave you a little audio clip- it’s better than nothing, right?

If you like taking pictures in Sims, you might want to check out the Koinup Sims 2 photo contest. I have seen some amazing work from the Sims community and look forward to seeing them for this ’spring themed’ contest. The reason why I’m blogging about this is because the prize is being offered by me. I will be offering new poses (not sure how many I’ll have done but hopefully 5), with some of the poses exclusive to contest winners. In fact, all the poses may be exclusive, depending on whether or not I update the photo box and if I do, I may or may not include some of them. Anyway, check out the contest here and make sure to read the rules. If you’d like to see 2 of the poses offered, check them out here and here.

If you’re even remotely plugged into the greater machinima community, you would’ve heard at least one of Overman’s podcasts. Now, he’s offering a contest to promote it. The goal is to make a film to promote it and I must say the prizes are pretty jaw dropping. The only catch for you Sims directors is that you must use a platform that allows you to own your work- like Second Life, Moviestorm, etc. So if you’re at all interested in pursuing machinima using these platforms or are already using them, consider entering his contest. I’m one of the judges so I’m excited to see what directors come up with.