I spent a year working on the Sims 4 as a Senior Character Artist. I created the first 2 visual target assets for the "create a sim" feature, focusing on a unique handpainted style.
I also re-designed their character customization system to use discreet blendshapes and runtime composited texture layers, which allowed us to maintain that stylized painted aesthetic while greatly enhancing the ability to achieve believable multicultural sims. The system also allowed you to fully age your sim while retaining it's unique facial features, and even inherit traits from generation to generation.
Below you'll see the 2 visual target assets, along with a short video that demonstrates the character customization system. The video starts out with an African toddler who goes through a full life cycle, and then morphs into an old Asian man before going all Benjamin Button and reverting back to a little Asian boy... This was a ton of fun to work on. There was a whole additional bone driven layer as well that allowed us to move and scale features (for example, the eyes on the toddlers would be pulled in by bones, but the blendshapes required them to stay in one spot in the base assets shown here...)
Anyhow... Fun stuff... I also did some cool stuff with hats, allowing players to mix and match hats and their chosen hairstyle in the Sims for the first time...
