(aka, Create your OWN Steve Perry-Journey Reunion in 3 easy steps)

The rundown roach motel that is the Journey House in Simville. Five guys trapped in a three room house with no women around...

Why it's so much fun doing Journey in the Sims? Easy -- you're God, and you get to micromanage every detail of the band's toon lives.

Keep 'em up all night playing just for you? Sure!

Make Steve Perry reunite with them? No problem!

Watch 'em get it on with groupie Sims? Er...only if you like watching bumps move under blankets.

The brick wallpaper, windows, skylights, and door are from the Sims Architectural Site, ALL the plants (ground cover, ivy, & indoors) are from Persimmon Grove (one AWESOME Sim site).

installed: The Sims, Livin' Large, House Party, Hot Date, Vacation, Unleashed, and Superstar. All links to named sites are on the Links page.

Back porch. Drums, oil drum lamp, and beaten-up chair are from 7 Deadly Sims, microphone comes from SimSlice, the built-in bookcase & wall posters from the Sims Architectural Society, "jade plants" (wink wink) and other foliage from Persimmon Grove.

Inside view of the house, the living room. The awesome grungy run-screaming-from-the-cockroaches decor comes from three sites. The couch, sofa, refrigerator, TV, fan & overhead lights are all from the "Fringe Set" at 7 Deadly Sims. The curtains, floor lamp, & kitchen chair are from the "Sim Motel Set" at the only Sim site I ever paid money to, the 8th Deadly Sim; it's worth every penny. The door, windows, wallpaper & floor are from Sim Architect.

Inside view of the house, kitchen. The sink is a Maxis default. Stove & fridge are from 7 Deadly Sims' "Fringe" Set, the rest from the 8th Deadly Sim's "Sim Motel" set. The old food plate with the flies is courtesy of 5 extremely messy male bachelor rocker Sims.

Inside view of the house, bathroom. It's based on a bathroom in my husband's old college apartment -- THAT'S the scary part. Anyway, the bath/shower is a Maxis default from Vacation. Sink/counter, overhead lights, mirrors, & fan are from 7 Deadly Sims' "Fringe" Set; the toilet stalls & towel rack are part of the "SimMotel" set from 8th Deadly Sim. Plants are from Exotic Sims.

The Journey Sims are my "test" family in the Sims, where new expansions, objects, wallpapers and floors are tested before I unleashed them on the full game. They're also my first attempts at "skinning", or creating skins.

Head skins require three things - a good head mesh that matches the structure & hair of the person you're trying to recreate, a good full-front facial shot of the person in question, and a lot of patience! It's really easy to end up with a distorted face. I've got lots of pictures of Journey, but very few have full-front face shots -- and I mean dead-on front & center. If the face is turned even a little, the skin gets distorted. It's why I haven't attempted Steve Augeri or Deen Castronovo -- I don't have good full-front face shots of those two that are suitable for skinning, and we won't go into the pure hell of trying to find a *male* head-mesh with a long hair style similar to Aug's. With a few very rare exceptions, sites that have male heads & meshes tend to be very conservative & short with the hair styles.

Neal-Schon-Sim also started as a default Maxis House Party skin, but didn't remain that way. His face is the default "biker" head from House Party, combined with a Fionn mesh and the hair from a head-skin from Simrevolution. It's REALLY scary how much the default biker face in House Party actually LOOKS like Neal! Neal's body uses a base obtained from the old Wages of Sim site (now defunct), recolored to add his blue shirt from many of the Escape promo pics.

Steve-Perry-Sim's head here is my first true attempt at head-skinning. It uses a default Maxis head with a resized pic of Steve overlaid & recolored on top of it. Getting the facial features aligned just right is a tricky picky bitch, and I have nothing but admiration for the Sims fansites that pull it off regularly! The body in the group graphic above is from SixStringSlim's Rock&Roll Sims site. The body shown below is my recolor of that skin to get Steve's leopard shirt from Escape. The two on the left use my attempt at Perry's head; the right uses a head from Karo's SimKagen, recolored from the Maxis default.

Jonathan-Cain-Sim's head, body & mesh in the group-shot above and to the right are from SimRevolution, unrecolored & unchanged -- the lack of shoes is in the original skin. Below are my recolors of this skin, adding shoes & Jonathan's shirt from some of the Escape promo pics. The leather pants were kept, for reasons that should be obvious to any female fan with working hormones. :-) I am looking for a full-front shot of Jonathan's face (preferably from around the Escape era), to make a head-skin from -- please contact me if you have one.

Ross-Valory-Sim & Steve-Smith-Sim are the easiest. They're both default Maxis skins & heads that come with House Party; it's a bit scary how close those heads look to the real people in game closeups. The Smitty-head is as he looks around "Trial By Fire" -- I'm still working on getting a head that matches the "Escape" theme of the others. The body-skin shown below is a recolor of a default Maxis House Party skin, to better match what Smitty wore during both the Departure & Escape tours.