This year I had the pleasure of art directing the team that added Vitiligo Skin Details to The Sims 4.
As part of the Sims Delivery Express team, we are afforded a unique opportunity to use our platform to elevate the voices and experiences of people in marginalized bodies and communities. While our backlog is vast, we get to focus on only a few initiatives a year, and vitiligo has been at the top of my list.
We did loads of research and put loads of heart into this feature. We worked with a focus group to ensure that the visuals we are providing and the messaging for how we present it are authentic and aspirational. This is a feature. It is a beautifuland complex part of being human, and we wanted it to be presented as such.
We also had the absolute honor of working with fashion icon, entrepreneur and activist Winnie Harlow on this release. She has literally been the face of vitiligo for a decade, and this release would not be complete without acknowledging the work she has done to bring the disease into public awareness.
So thank you to everyone involved and thank you to the Sims community for being so welcoming and passionate about diversity and inclusion.
I’ve had the honor of art directing exciting new content available in The Sims 4 *Free* Base Game package. Many of these updates focus on communities, cultures and identities historically underrepresented in video games and media.
The update included two new CAS Categories; Medical Wearables and Body Scars, as well as glucose monitor patches, hearing aids, a chest binder, shape-wear and gender affirming top surgery scar.
(Please be assured we do not conflate being Transgendered with being Disabled. These were two separate initiatives that happened to be ready and published at the same time.)
During development we received really meaningful guidance and feedback from our consultants. It is essential that we involve people from the communities we seek to represent in the development of new content, not only to ensure authenticity but also to elevate their voices. We want players to not only see themselves represented, but to empower Simmers to tell meaningful stories, their stories, and I think that this content will open that up for so many more people.
One moment that stands out was seeing the finished hearing aids on a child sim for the first time. We go through a fairly technical process of selecting color swatches, and creating and testing the model and then finally getting to see it on a Sim that is animated and laughing and playing while wearing the hearing aids was really special.
One of the challenges we faced was deciding on functionality for the chest binder. We had to choose between two less than ideal options; Option A meant that the binders would constrict the bust of Sims when applied, but the moment they changed into a different top, the changes would be removed. Option B meant that there would be no change to the Sims appearance when a player places the binder on them, but players would be able to modify the Sims body to the desired appearance, and those changes would remain when the Sims outfit was changed.
We consulted representatives from GLAAD and after careful consideration, decided that the experience of seeing the changed body suddenly revert to its previous appearance would be jarring and potentially harmful to players, and so we went with Option B. The ideal scenario would be to have a layering system, where binders are worn below clothing, however, that change requires revisiting base code and reworking 10 years of existing assets. It is the goal, and I do hope it happens, but we felt that it was still important to include this update, even if less than perfect.
This challenge has been a powerful lesson; the basis of any game needs to include people with diverse lived experiences, to help us build a system that not only makes room for these types of upgrades and additions, butincludes them from the start. I hope to see more of this from Maxis and from other game studios as well!
The binder and shape-wear are available for Teen and Adult Sims. They’re available in a wide variety of skin tones, vibrant colors and patterns.
The top surgery scar is available for Teen and Adult Male Sims, as a gender affirming asset for Trans Masculine players. We made the scars slightly colloidal and ensured that it reads clearly on all skin colors.
Hearing aids are available for Toddlers, Children, Teen and Adult Sims. They can be placed on either ear, or both and come in a variety of swatches, including a selection of vibrant colors and skin tones.
Glucose monitor patches are available for Children, Teens and Adult Sims. They are available in wide selection of color swatches, including a variety of vibrant colors and skin tones.
As Art Director on the Sims Delivery Express team, I focus on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives within The Sims franchise. The Sims Delivery Express team provides free TS4 Base Game content to create a more robust and inclusive player experience. Some of the new items created for SDX drops have included: meals, clothing and accessories, furniture, decorative items, and “Create A Sim” features such as hairstyles, facial features and more.
As part of the DEI initiative, I have worked with consultants and concept artists to create new assets, establish a back log of assets for future development, and have helped to create guides and training initiatives for developers across Maxis, with the goal of making the player experience more authentic and representative of our player community.
Here are some of the SDX releases that I have been a part of!
I had the absolute pleasure to be Pack Lead and World Builder on the Journey to Batuu Expansion Pack for The Sims 4. Being a huge Star Wars nerd fan, I thoroughly enjoyed working on this franchise; submerging myself into the world and the story telling, working in conjunction with Lucas and Disneyland Parks to ensure that we were hitting the mark, while also filtering everything through the stylized lens of The Sims.
Maxis sent leadership to the park to gather reference and then we set about not only recreating what you can see in the park, but expanding the world and making minor layout adjustments to fit with TS4 gameplay.
We broke the park into 3 neighborhoods for story telling; a central neutral zone – The Black Spire Outpost, a First Order District occupied zone, and the Resistance Encampment tucked away in the forests of Batuu. We set the world in a canyon, and added additional housing, agriculture and vistas to sell that it is a full biome.
I primarily worked on the Black Spire Outpost neighborhood. The central shipping port and trade district on Batuu, Black Spire Outpost has an open air market, Ronto’s Roasters, Docking Bay 7, Oga’s Cantina, Dock Ondar’s Den of Antiquities, and of course, the Millenium Falcon!
Some of the challenges we faced included creating so many unique landmarks and structures with the package limitations of TS4. We had to be very cleaver about where we allocated our texture budget.
I designed several architectural shells which could be nested and combined to create larger unique structures to fill in the middle ground. These shells used a combination of tiled textures, vertex colors and decals to get the textural, gritty, lived in look of the Star Wars universe.
Doors, windows, greebles and other decos were created as instanced objects with atlased textures, to keep performance numbers looking good while enabling us to create highly detailed and richly decorated scenes.
As Pack Lead, I was also responsible for directing the creation of props, vfx, and interactive objects, overseeing the layout and texturing of the 2 other neighborhoods and the creation of world lighting shared across all three neighborhoods.
This pack was truly a treat to work on! I was challenged with making floating islands; something that had never been done in the history of The Sims franchise!
Our world building tools use a large, open world style terrain surface, which we can sculpt and paint. This meant that I had to figure out away to remove terrain to simulate floating islands. I did a few days of R&D and came up with a solution, and it totally worked!
Individual “islands” of terrain were isolated, and the rest of the surface area was excluded with a polygon model set to not render. I filled in the area around and under the terrain with rock, dirt and rubble models built in Maya.
I then created a custom lighting scenario which was never full bright daylight, but always dusk, dawn, or night. I created an alpha texture set to scroll across a sphere with manipulated UVs and vertex colors to simulate an auror borealis, to give the sky a magical atmospheric effect.
A debris field was created using an animated vertex shader, as well as animating chunks from the broken bridge and adding larger floating rocks and furniture.
I added spooky and magical VFX such as a swarm of bats and bursts of colorful sparkles shooting from chimneys.
The dark moody lighting was brightened by glowing crystals and magical portals were how Sims navigated from one island to the next. Glowing runes trace the ground using a combination of vertex colors and a scrolling light map.
All of this moody, mysterious and maybe a little spooky set dressing is meant to tell the story that the magic realm broke itself apart from the non-magic realm – either intentionally, or unintentionally... thatis up to the player to decide.
As a World Builder, I was responsible for Level Design, Terrain Sculpting and Painting, Set Dressing, Asset Creation, Water creation, Hard Surface modeling, Lighting, VFX placement and Performance Testing and Optimization.
I created levels for the following shipped packages:
The Sims 4: Island Living The Sims 4: Realm of Magic The Sims 4: Journey to Batuu The Sims 4: Cottage Living The Sims 4: High School Years The Sims 4: Horse Ranch
the art of tracey 