Hi everybody. Gnorm Abrams here, standin' in for Polly today. She's sulkin' cuz I down-rated her story.
"I am not!"
Get outta my tutorial, Pol. You double-dog-dared me to do better than that stupid Box thing you wrote.
"Fine."

Nobody knows more about makin' magic in small spaces than a gnome does. Now, some folks will tell you that the bathroom is the most important room in a house. To us gnomes, though, the entry matters most. We live here, OK?
You want a nice balance of shapes and colors like my buddy, Gnathan, has here. When he couldn't find a door to match the shrubs, he made his own. He skewed the front walk, too - to cut the grid. Your brain automatically plays "connect-the-dots" with the blue spots and your feet follow.

The last blue circle is inside. The arch acts like a door so he didn't need to cheat to install the burglar alarm. It keeps out the noise and weather, too.

It looks like Gnathan built a circular pool in here, but that's just a little gnome magic.

It's only half a circle - two of the pool sections that came with Seasons. The fountain sits in the alcove behind them.

He can't use the pool, of course, 'cuz there's no way to get into it. But his Environment score on the way to work is off the charts.

See, it's all done with mirrors - those full length ones that came with Nightlife.

Gnathan put 'em behind the fountain, too, which is why the room looks like a breezeway from the front walk. They're just reflectin' his front yard.

I happen to know he paid about six grand for that fountain so, of course, he's showin' it off with the spotlights above it. Or maybe they're there so nobody will fall in the pool at one of his wild parties. The circle in the corner is an endtable for the newspaper or bills.

Gnathan's house will be available for download just as soon as I get my own simpage.

"Yeah - when Strangetown freezes over. Are you done?"

I'm just gettin' started, thank you very much. Let's talk some more about how your brain understands what your eyes see.

'Most everybody knows what this horizontal bar means - "No Entry". The lines on the crosswalks mean the same thing. The more horizontal lines there are, the slower you'll go 'cuz your brain has to process each of them. It all happens too quickly for us to realize it, but those lines affect the way we think and act. I'm guessin' you'd take one look at that hill and cross the street.

Would you like to visit Gnancy? She doesn't get much company. Most folks walk past her house pretty fast. I guess you know why.

Let's see how you feel about visitin' Gnancy if we get rid of some of the "No Entry" signs.

There - the lines in the grass are vertical now. I changed the roof to point upwards, too. Ready to go in yet?

No? How 'bout some plants?

Most gnome girls like roses, but these aren't helpin' the house much 'cuz they're in the wrong places.

Contrast - the difference between light and dark - is important, too. The shrubs are lost on the dark stripes. Using your finger, trace the dark lines from one edge of the roof around all the dark spots in a circle. It's pretty closed-in, isn't it?

Try it now. See how movin' the shrubs over just one tile opened up the facade? It looks bigger, more welcomin'. If you think of the shrubs as arms, they're open for a hug. Put 'em too close to other dark spots and the "arms" are folded. Now you understand why Polly's always naggin' about paintin' garden soil under the plants. It's just "connect-the-dots" again.

"Nag... hey!"

If you want a design on your lawn, you can make a stencil. For Gnancy's stripes, I just covered the parts of the lawn I didn't want to paint and used dark green paint for the exposed areas. You'll need to use moveobjects on to cover the edges of the lot.

We gnomes like to keep things simple, but elves? Whew! You'd think terrain paint was free, the way they splash it on.
"It is free if nobody lives in the house."
There must be a fly in here 'cuz my ears are buzzin'. Now where was I?
"Elves."

Oh yeah - connectin' the dots. Let me tell you a secret: Gnancy loves that door. She'd sooner drink a plant gnome cure than sell it. All we're doin' here is makin' the rest of her entry go with it. The dark fence pulls your eyes outward, expandin' the house visually, and the roses pick up the gold spots on the door.
The vertical lines on her front walk are brighter than the horizontal bars on the door, so the bars just go away.

Lights are great for connectin' the dots at night. Sconces show off Gnancy's door, fence lights widen the house, and ground lights keep the white lines on the walk visible in the dark. The door was always the focal point of Gnancy's entry. I just emphasized the parts I like and distracted you from the parts I don't. You could call this exercise "romancin' the door".

"Oh, you cheap copycat."

Gnewburg and his wife live in one of those high-rise condos on the lake. They're a very nice couple, really, but that skyscraper they live in makes 'em seem stand-offish and distant. I can fix that with a little gnome magic.

Don't blink.

A single willow tree balances the condo.

Bringin' the tree forward makes their house look shorter while keepin the balance.

When our eyes play "connect-the-dots" with the trees, the birch behind the condo pushes it closer. The birch has a white trunk. If it was dark like the others, it would just look like an extension of the condo's timbers. As it is, our brains only pick up the dark foliage and vertical lines and keep movin' to the next dark spot. We subconsciously group the timbers with the tree trunks up front.

"Why the shrubs?", you ask. See those pink flowers in Gnorma's windowboxes? Right - we're just bringin' em closer by connectin' the dots.

Water lilies bridge the space between pink spots.

And that's how we gnomes use magic to cut a house down to size and bring it closer. Gnomes have short legs, so that stuff is important. But what if you're a long-legged sim and you want to push your house back from the street... make it taller?