The Untitled

Vima - Ugh...tripod pop-up. I really do hate those things, but minimizing and on my way. This place seems mysterious with it's strange name and deep lavender. Missing a banner of some sort at the bottom linked to zoom. Probably needs to be removed, since I don't think the hit counter will work on the Tripod servers; I noticed it linked to Xoom. The design is simply gorgeous. I just love it. A beautiful work of art. I think the use of frames on this site is unnecessary. Same effect could've been achieved without the top one. On the other hand, if tripod gives you an option of putting a static banner up there instead of using a pop-up, that would be an improvement.

I'm not big on stories. I read them on occasion, but today I'm just not in the mood. Despite my own personal feelings regarding story sites, the site is rather nice. The layout is pretty good, though there is room for improvement.

The use of the Arial font for a clean look is a common problem on the internet, going against hundreds of years of typography studies. Serif fonts, such as Times New Roman create an imaginary line than enables the readers eyes to follow easier. Otherwise, readers' eyes may become tired.

The pictures sort of break the flow of the text. It would be nice to see them more inlined with the paragraphs. Play with the alignment of the pictures to left and right to see what type of layout you can get from it. Doing that should shorten the pages a little as well.

I'm really bothered by this whole page reload everytime I hit the back button.

Skins: The skins are displayed with these scary Easter egg heads. I'm trying to ignore it, but they are soooo big that I'm thinking it's halloween and these zombies or something. I think the skin models are too big, measuring 390 pixels high. I decreased this one to about 200 high. A small display, for the page. Perhaps if they want to see a larger size, some other method could be used.

The skins have some really great patterns. Some of the earlier pieces lacked any shape. The material was placed on the skin withuth any noticeable changes in necklines etc. The skins could be better with some extra shading, highlights and shadows around the bust line etc. The mermen are cool looking, except for those easter egg heads :)

Heads: Well, this is certainly a unique way of displaying heads. Flashing like disco lights, I think I've made it to the dance floor. Good thing I'm not epileptic, I would probably go into a seizure. A white line surrounds the heads in these animated gifs, so I really don't care for them at all and beg for them to be removed.

Most of these heads are just too bright and textureless for my taste. I like Domina and Madeline okay, but the rest make me crave marshmallow Easter eggs. If you really insist on keeping the colors, think about creating more hair strands. The eyebrows are a bit thin and I say if you are going to go bold...go bold.

I think that the lips need more definition and some of the eyebrows might be a bit small or thin for the game.

The small assortment of walls and objects look very nice. My only qualm is there aren't more than a handful.

No link for us...that's a mark against you. hehe JK Everything on this site is pretty well done. Need a little work on those scary heads! However, I think this site is geared more toward stories and it's doing a fabulous job in that area.

Three martinis and an extra olive to go please!

Skyler - Evening all. My first impression of this site, is I love the deep purple, gold and deep teal. It looks very classy, almost like royalty, with the look of a classical book :) All of her updates are right here on the main page with links provided throughout the update sections.

I'm going to the downloads first, then skins. I really like these a lot! The dresses are the same design, with the Mandarin colors so they have very much an Asian influence. I'm definitely picking up #13 while I'm here, and am SO pleased she doesn't come along with royal blue hair LOL ;) I'd like to see some more shading under the women's chest, but she used great textures.

On to heads... First might I make a suggestion to PLEASE STOP that first row from flashing! These heads are quite scary! Not because the faces are bad, but that hair =:o Hair of various colors aren't my things, but most of these are just blah, no depth to them... Almost like they all got a layer of Play Doh mushed across it. I took out a couple of these, put in some simple streaks of a darker hue of the same shade, it made a world of difference. Some with the eyebrows of these women. Most gals that color their hair, don't go nuts with the brows. They need shaping and thinning. The best two faces there are Rowena and Madeleine. There are a couple others too but these are the ones you can see the highlights in their hair.

On to rooms... The Escher Man room didn't do anything for me, but then I'm not into black and white settings anyway.

Interesting... The pages just stopped loading for me. I'll do what I can by memory (HA) I do remember I LOVED the Window Seat Lady (I think that was her name) and just adored a screen shot that was up there. Beautiful wall papers, and bathroom papers, with matching floors. Lots of nice tiling, with good depth to them. I wanted to download a few but didn't and I can't now. I'm sure I won't have a problem getting in tomorrow :)

She also has a couple stories... Now I don't care for stories in general, that's not why I play the Sims, but her stories didn't go on, and on and she had some cute pictures.

That's all I'm remembering of the site at the moment. I do also recall she gave credit to every object, and skin creator at the bottom of each page with links to their sites. As I mentioned in a previous post, that's a huge plus in my book.

Just to reiterate, I really liked the appearance of this site, it was easy to navigate and the loading wasn't awful at all.

So... I did like this site. I'm making a mental note to go back to the window seat area because it rocks! I toast this "untitled" site with three big 'ol martinis, and a bookmark, I will be back ;)

CC... I missed you Monday. I had half a hunch you were playing with that bubble machine again and flirting with the male entertainer ;)

Squeegee - At first, the name caught me off guard. As I was typing in the URL address I kept thinking that this would be a fast review and I would say things like "the website needs more work" or something following those lines. The title alone just causes you to think that maybe the person just didn't know what name to use, or it was a simple HTML omission where one forgets to use the tags "title" and name the website. But I am happy to say that all those observations were dead wrong.

The graphics that make up this site are exceptionally marvelous. The viewer will load up a page that appears to look like a lavender leather book. And then each page link is located on the edge of this book that has gold lettering. You can't forget the sapphire silk/satin bookmark that falls over the perimeter and tells you the title of the page. Again, this has got to be one of the best, if the finest looking graphics I have ever seen on a website. And I mean Sims related or not!!

I have a love of reading and books, so maybe that is why I am so much infatuated with the format.

The pages are not loaded with all sorts of animated ads, and the colors used for the text go perfect with the lavender and gold theme.

I browsed the skins area first and was somewhat astonished by all the brightly colored heads!! Now, my personal taste is for the natural look. But these heads must be a part of a science fiction novel!! But, keeping the heads out of arms reach. I do like the fashion and patterns presented. But there is unease over the lack of detail. I know that making skins are not some people's "cup of tea" . But I would not be honest in saying that I don't look for the details in other peoples work since I do make skins myself and sweat over the details myself.

The succeeding page of skins feature some "Mermen". Kind of neat, but I wonder why there is a lack of chest hair on them!! They have to have hair don't they?? Then again, that might cut down the speed of these Mermen in the water. The hair would be a good source of friction and resistance I would assume.

The "Heads" section also feature some of those science fiction hair colors. But I do see some normal colored heads and they look great. I must share with you that the head "Kyna" does resemble Cher. Or maybe I am eccentric.

I love the look of the things featured in the "Bay Window Woman" area. It's pleasing to the eye and that's coming from a guy that tends to not like the very cute feminine stuff.

Currently, there is a small amount of things offered at the site. So there was not much to review. But because of this, I was able to look at the other pages that were not even Sim related. The ease of which this page feels and how fast the pages load were enough for me to look at the whole site. With some of these other websites that tend to bomb the living hell out of users with the animated ads and the pop ups. I would leave without blinking twice. But this was different and the website will stand out in my memory to a point that it will be a pleasure to bookmark and frequent the site more often.

To sum up this review I will state that the graphics were the best that I have seen, and that makes up for the current lack of content. I liked the bathroom offerings and the designs on the "cheongsam" dresses. But again, the hair was not in my tastes.

Storel - Believe it or not, despite several prior visits to "The Untitled", I had never noticed the Stories section until now. So this time I checked it out first.

There are only two stories so far, with more promised. "Aphrodite's Birthday" is a fun little story, rather like an unusually inventive photo album at TheSims.com. "Simulnation" is different. It's longer, with several parts covering several different families, and has much more text than photos. It's also high fantasy, with elves and feudal lords and such. The storytelling is good; my main complaint was that each part of this work in progress stopped just as I was getting interested in the characters. And the characterizations are decidedly non-stereotypical. When was the last time you heard one elf telling his brother "Hey, man, it's not your fault Dad's a control freak"? Don't worry, they don't all talk like that, but they don't do the typical pseudo-medieval thee-ing and thou-ing, either. Refreshing.

The Skins section is not overly large, only two pages long, but interestingly specialized. If you've been looking for Chinese dresses, The Untitled has thirteen qi-pao, or cheongsams, in a wide variety of colors and patterns. The second page has two sets of skins, each containing a custom formal outfit, swimsuit, and pajama, in addition to the "Normal" skin. The first set is in black and gold, and has another qi-pao as the formal wear. The second set is... Mermen. You know, male mermaids, nothing to do with Ethel Merman (thank goodness!). She doesn't specify, but I'd guess that this set also contains a custom nude skin, or they would suddenly acquire legs while showering...

The Heads section contains 35 different heads in a variety of styles. They're all C001 heads, so they can be converted to Fionn's RealHead meshes (available at SimFreaks), and the page shows a lot of the available styles. Be warned, about half the heads have, er, hair colors not found in nature, so if that bothers you then your options will be more limited.

Objects are distributed through different Rooms, each with its own sort of Tour Guide. The Escher Man shows you a room full of 11 different M.C. Escher paintings, all in jumbo sizes so the fine details of these intricate works are not lost. As a bonus, there's an Escher Easel as well, so your Sims can produce their own Eschers! Now, Escher is my favorite artist, and in the interest of full disclosure I should mention that it was, in fact, a comment of mine in an online forum that inspired Josie to create this Room in the first place (for which I have yet to thank her adequately). So it should be no surprise that everything in this room took up permanent residence in my hard drive some time ago...

The Paintings Request Man leads you through the rest of the art gallery, which contains a wide variety of interesting works, many of which were requested by fans. It also contains a selection of movie posters from this year's Oscar winners and nominees, along with a lamp in the shape of the Oscar statuette.

And the Bay Window Woman shows you a page of objects, walls, and floors that were all made to match a bay window seat from Hidden Treasures. While these are a bit, er, feminine for my taste, they're well done and sure to please many.

The Miscellaneous page contains a pair of teleporters -- the kind that summon people to your home, not the new Maxis ones that send you up or down stairs. These are pretty different from any teleporters you've seen before, guaranteed: one looks like a cloud of smoke, and the other looks like a huge fire. Talk about special effects!

Overall, I like this site. It's not large, but as Spencer Tracy remarked about Kate Hepburn in one of their movies, "what there is is choice." The site's layout is stylish yet easy to navigate, and the site and its downloads both display unusual inventiveness. Furthermore, site owner Josie (aka Eisoj5) is remarkably friendly and helpful, as her presence in several online forums and her willingness to fulfill user requests both show. Four martini glasses!