Watching other Sims players landscape on RU-vid is what gave me the guts to try to make my own pond (and it's a bit of a work in progress but I like it!)
I checked out your channel just on a whim and I gotta say a Sim Survival Series is SUCH a cool idea that I subscribed. Hope it gets super popular and that you blow up!
I used to be totally the same way. I don't know if you're looking for advice but what helped me was looking at reference photos, it was a serious game changer
Try downloading houses off the Gallery then just redecorating them. Take it one room at a time & you'd be surprised how much you can change/update just swapping the colour theme from green to blue throughout a whole house for example
One thing I did that got me into building was turning my shoe box homes into little trailer homes! All you really have to do is add nice paneling and some plants for it to look nice.
The key is to take baby steps; anything different at all. Everyone has to start somewhere! You also have to want to do it. Maybe you hate building and that's okay! It doesn't matter what your Sim lives in. But if you want to try something else? Good news, everyone! Building is a skill-set! 😄 You'll suffer, get frustrated, and wonder why you bothered at all but you'll learn something (which might be that you hate building! 😂) Here are some suggestions, if that didn't scare you off: First, take the shoe box and cut a small square or rectangle into the box (you can still roof it as normal or try some experimentation with more than one roof piece; either way you have a patio now) or add a bump-out to one side (any side, including the front or back) as if it were an addition (a kid's bedroom or a porch!) If you want to get really frisky, make the bump-out an unusual shape, put a platform on top of it for the roof, then add a half-wall around the platform. Alternatively, choose one shape and turn it into a house. A square is more challenging than it sounds and an octagon house is fun, plus there's a single roof piece for it already, but if you create anything truly unusual, just add a platform roof on top. Done! Alternatively, if you enjoy game-play mostly, try doing a Rags to Riches and build the house as you go! You can even combine some of these ideas (DO ALL THE THINGS!) If you have the Tiny Living Stuff Pack, try building a home for each tier and make it functional. (You could also try the Too Many Toddlers challenge and build them a functional Tiny Home. Good luck!) If you don't have that pack, try building two or more houses side by side on any big lot in Newcrest (the 50x40, 40x40, or 30x30) so it's basically a small neighborhood. You can even make each one the exact same shape (your own shell-challenge but easy mode) and then try to make each little house look different in any way at all that you're comfortable with (from colors to window style to door placement.) Alternatively, add some random homeless Sims to Johnny Zest's household, go to Johnny Zest's house, and turn it into a trailer park! HOUSE THOSE SIMS! You can also try the Gallery Room challenge where you take individual rooms (including EA options) and try connecting them into a functional house with the only thing you can add being hallways, stairs, windows, doors, and a roof. (Anything strictly from build-mode is okay, but if you want a porch or a patio, it has to be an entire room off the gallery or from your library!) "Easy mode" is grabbing an Apartment build and turning it into a house (just finish the exterior.) IF you need some direction to help you out, bulldoze the Landgraab House, the Pancake House, the Goth House, or the Spencer-Kim-Lewis House and do the challenge with that family in mind (however many bedrooms, for example) and their actual funds to limit your options. But remember, above all else, you don't have to build like other people to make something you'll enjoy looking at. 😃
@@hopelessromantic3786 Yes! Second this! I also download floor plans from real-life houses for inspiration too. If I’m really unmotivated, I either come to this channel or hop on Zillow or Redfin and look at cool houses across the country and save them for later. Still end up with fancier shoe boxes bc I’m not creative at all but the process is fun!
It does look super cool, but is really annoying for game play. But I think the point of these is for pretty builds, not necessarily for great functional game play, so I suppose it doesn't matter!
Hi Marleenh20 here! I just can't believe you did take a look in my Oasis Paradise build from 14:41 ! I really happy that you liked it and I am still shaking about haha! Thank you for you lovely comment on my build! Lots of love from the Netherlands, Marleen
HEY KAYLA have you ever done or thought of doing a "get rich quick" challenge from presents (the item in build/buy) in the Sims? I was playing today, got a couch as a gift. 👀 thought it could be almost as good as dumpster diving?
Paintings from the build/buy menu, or paintings that your Sims’ make? Cuz if it’s paintings your Sims’ make, I’m curious to see a room inspired by the squirrel painting.
OMG, I can‘t believe that you just showed my build (cabin in the desert) in your video! 😱 I never thought you would see it considering how many there were. And thank you for those nice things you said about it. I‘m so happy right now! :D
Omg i saw my built in the beginning!! I knew kayla would never chose my built for the video, but seeing in the beginning just as she opened the gallery was pretty cool hahaha I freaked out
I feel you, but don't get discouraged! Even if you never get to S-Tier, you're making important houses for the entire community and they're great because you actually got to decent-mode in a shell challenge which is nothing to sneeze at; that's still some grade-A stuff. And if you want to shake it up, clearly the obvious answer is to master landscaping, terrain manipulation, and the water tool, lol! That's my take away. Try building some parks and see what happens?? Or don't worry about it and just step away for a bit. Everyone needs a break. You just did a really hard shell challenge. Be proud of that because for every hundred entries LilSimsie got, there's a thousand players who saw the shell and said NOPE. (I'm one of them lol of course I always tell myself I'll try it but I never have the courage or the time. One day I'll do a shell outside the challenge window and be proud but it won't be any time this year most likely.)
"Its not the tools, but the skills of the artist that matters" you can see its true bc people build amazing things with microsoft paint for example. Its just going to take longer than it would if you were to use specialized tools.
I’ve really only been playing since June, and I’m still trying to figure out landscaping and outdoor decorating. Can’t wait for the next one! I’m always so inspired by these videos.
Honestly, the amount of alt placing that has to be done for landscaping and terrain manipulation to look amazing is the only thing that keeps me from like training it more. I'd rather have more liveable spaces with furniture and such than a load of plants and ponds, but that's just a gameplay choice.
my favorites are the ginger bread ,spooky shell and cabin in the dessert .some people are so talented ...i feel like they could be architects or designers in real life
The shell challenge is basically that already because the exterior walls are done for you and you can't change them (other than height). Obviously the ones shown here had lots going on in the garden, but if you look on the gallery you'll see lots of people who did a more basic garden & only focused on the inside.
@@AlexaFaie Well not really. Maybe I wasn't that precise in what I wanted to say. I was more thinking of a challenge that is just focused on the interior, so no exterior and no landscaping at all.
what’d be cool! A video like that would be fun for people that are into interior decorating and it would give a chance to have a really detailed tour of the rooms.
I LOVE that the gallery exists so even when I stink at building I can enjoy playing in other people's amazing creations! Any type of build you need, the gallery has it! Love these shell challenges too!
Oh I attempted this challenge one (1) time and immediately gave up akskdkdkd I'm so incredibly impressed with these builds! I would never have thought of concepts like these. Some ppl are so creative
These are all beautiful! Possible unpopular opinion though, I really don’t like layering of random objects to make custom things - like the windows and the mirror? The flickering really annoys me 😂🙈 I just can’t use builds that do rhat!
These are advance builders and of course their builds are gonna be amazing. Tbh, i'm sick of houses and I would love to see more community builds and builders who isn't so advanced at building too.
Omg, I've spent hours on this shell and I thought I have done a decent job, but when I see these, my build looks so half done and empty 😭 But I've had an interesting story, that counts, right?
If it makes you feel better, some of these houses wouldn't be truly functional nor that enjoyable to play in. Like the paintings in front of cabinets can sometimes get in the way, overlapping items can flicker as the game tries to decide which texture to show on top... Stuff like that. Its completely different when you're trying to design a house to play in compared to one that just looks cool. Its like those fancy rich people houses in real life. Like they can look good, but where the hell is the storage for all my stuff? LOL. They're just big mostly empty rooms with large sofas in. Similar thing.
@@AlexaFaie that is true. my old computer wouldn’t be able to handle half of these builds. and i wasn’t gonna say anything but using that rotational mod feels like cheating to me 😶 i feel a little better i guess lol
I loved seeing the results of this challenge! And I also loved doing my own as well! This was the first shell challenge I've ever participated in and I had a really great time building my school of magic, the Ellia O'Malley School! I've recently built another built set in the same world I thought up when I did my shell challenge build, and have started also creating several of the characters for it as well!
These are all so great! I got a couple of great creative ideas off of them too that I want to play with! And yes Bestie, I want another shell challenge STAT.
Kayla: Basically I build a box. USUALLY a pretty weird box. We all know this is a lie. We know Lilsimsie is an expert at making boxes of Sims 4 building torture 🤣🤣🤣🤣
I would LOVE another shell challenge. I keep telling myself I will do one and then life gets in the way after I've started. I mean, I could do one based off the fact that I'm a single mama working 2 jobs? it would be unfinished and probably quite hilarious.
Don't be too strict on yourself Kayla 😉 I find that you have evolved a lot in your builds and you try to get out of your safe zone more and more you doing good dw! I couldn't participate but maybe next time! All these participations are incredible you have a lot of talent well done!👍
I have a new build challenge idea! :D How about you let twitch chat choose the order of the rooms of your build? For example if they say the first thing you build is the laundry room, you have to star from the laundry room and fully furnish it and then they choose the second room of the build, like "upstairs hallway" and you can't go and change the floorplan xD
Considering the volume of people who did the challenge and Kayla saying "my favorites" I knew mine would not be in this video. XD I also uploaded it on the early side, so she likely could never scroll to it. But I got a few downloads, so some people liked it. :) That first build is amazing, just everything inside, but all that terrain manipulation. I won't feel bad about mine because I was on a ocean lot in Sulani and couldn't manipulate the terrain. XD And your mod's house is beautiful!
Shell challanges are always fun to do for me, regerdless if they make it or not to presentation list. You would have needed a couple of hundreds of clones each one with own PC to review all the submisions
Okay I will work 25 hours a day to hire a builder irl to build me these houses ILL PAY ANYTHING TO JUST LIVE IN ONE OF THESE HOUSES. How they so damn GUCCI??
people who make these things without any custom content never fail to surprise me the taletn and CREATIVITY these people have is amazing i'm in my third year of architecture and I can't do some of the things they do
Truthfully I feel like I could build really well but I feel really limited on console. Like it’s such a pain to do simple nightstand decorations where you put it on the ground and elevate it then put the table underneath. Like it seems super easy on pc but on console it’s a pain.
Looking at these builds made me realize how much I would stuck at building ( I usually go to the gallery and use styled rooms) and bad at interior design. Please do a tip video on building and/or interior design if you haven't already😩😩😩
My strangerville museum without any strangerville items looks terrible in comparison (I mean, it was intentionally terrible, but it’s also terrible terrible)
Not gonna lie, I downloaded the Oasis Paradise home off the gallery without even knowing that it was your shell challenge!! These people are so talented
I love these!!! I get so many ideas from these super talented builders. This was the first shell challenge that I attempted so please do some more so I can practice. Love all your videos. 💖
I’m so happy there are so many base game builds. I’m going to start playing again after having my daughter four months ago and I want to restart some of my challenges.
Actually, those little collectables at 23:50 are from the holiday crackers in the free Holiday Celebration pack. It's one of my go-to easily finished collections for the collection aspiration.
