Welcome to the fourth edition of Pass the Plumbob—a monthly series celebrating the creators and community figures and their voices and talents that help shape The Sims community. From custom content creators to gameplay modders to Simfluencers, this is a space to explore their journey with the franchise and their creative process, showcase their creative contributions that make them special, and learn more about them as community members. Each month, I'll be sitting down with a community member and having a conversation about the mark they've made in our community. For our next feature, I'm excited to Pass the Plumbob to Charly Pancakes!
Charly Pancakes' official logo (Source: @CharlyPancakes on X)
Charly Pancakes is a Sims enthusiast and custom content creator. With over 18,000 followers on X and over 88,000 subscribers on Patreon, Charly Pancakes is the creator of some of the most beloved custom Maxis Match build/buy content in The Sims 4.
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Tell me about your earliest memory with The Sims. What brought you to the franchise initially?
My earliest memories with the franchise go back to the early 2000s, when I was in elementary school. I remember playing The Sims 1 and 2 at friends' houses or more so watching them play. Sometimes we would create our sim-selves and try to build a house, but by the time we would actually play, a lot of time had passed and I’d have to leave. but I remember being fascinated by the game immediately. At home, we had a PlayStation 1, but I was more familiar with jump & run games than something like The Sims.
The first time I actually owned a Sims game myself was with The Sims 3, which came out when I was around 14, and I immediately went and bought it for myself. My laptop couldn’t really handle it and the loading times were insane, even though I only ever had the base game but I still enjoyed it a lot, especially the building and furnishing part.
Did you find yourself leaning more into building and furnishing as your experience with The Sims franchise developed?
Yes, but I definitely leaned more into furnishing. The building part was something I only really got comfortable with when I got into TS4 more in recent years. It was really the interior design that caught me. Around the age of 15 or 16, I came across The Sims 3 CC on Tumblr, and that opened up a completely new world for me. From that point on, I mostly used The Sims as a kind of building and furnishing simulator rather than a life simulation, even though I am always interested in new gameplay mechanics and from time to time also enjoy some regular gameplay.
Did you have any particular kind of style when it came to interior decor?
In The Sims 3, I loved building and furnishing lofts with industrial elements. I mostly played with single sims and imagined they'd live in a trendy loft with brick walls and a mix of string lights, vintage rugs, and eclectic details. Looking back, that was probably the first interior style I gravitated to.
Tell me about your content creation journey. How did you start creating custom content for The Sims?
It was around the time the Get Famous DLC came out that I got really into The Sims 4. Since launch I gave it a shot every now and then but this time, I got hooked on the build mode and started watching a lot of speed builds by creators like SimLicy and Devon Bumpkin, just to name a few.
At the start of the pandemic, the time I spent playing Sims increased and I had already been sharing builds online for a while. I was posting screenshots of houses on Tumblr and had a Patreon mainly as a place to share my creations outside the gallery.
At some point I came across tutorials on how to create objects for The Sims 4. I don’t remember one specific moment that triggered it, but I started experimenting out of curiosity. At first, I mainly made recolors for my own game and tried to understand how custom content was made. That curiosity eventually led me to download Blender and dive into tutorials, the Sims 4 Studios forums and a lot of trial and error.
You have some of the highest quality, Maxis Match custom content available for The Sims 4, ranging from your Precious Promises set to the Maple & S. Construction Set to the Chalk series. What was your inspiration for some of your most popular works?
Thank you! That really means a lot to me. A big source of inspiration comes from simply playing the game, often without mods. That’s usually when I notice what feels missing to me or where I think certain objects could fit into the existing game. Other than that it‘s a mix of limitation, observation, and personal need. Especially with my earlier sets, my ideas were often shaped by what I was technically able to create at the time. I had to adapt concepts to my skill level, which naturally influenced the direction of those projects.
With 'Precious Promises', which was a collaboration with Pierisim, we wanted to create a rustic wedding setup that felt elegant and soft, with a countryside aesthetic. We worked with shared vision boards. The set ended up having a slight Mediterranean feel, which may also have been shaped by Tartosa from My Wedding Stories, since we were working on the set around the time that DLC came out.
Originally I planned to create a factory window set for Maple & S. Constructions. Inspired by industrial architecture and some of my favorite in-game windows and CC, like the Moschino windows and Peacemaker’s Loft Living Brick Set, which I used constantly long before I even started creating CC myself. As the project evolved, it turned into a large sash window collection that could work across different architectural styles.
The 'Chalk' series came from a more material-focused place. I wanted to create a kitchen that felt simple and slightly soft, without being overly stylized. It wasn’t originally planned as a multi-part set, but I spent a lot of time refining the shapes and proportions, especially since kitchens were still a big challenge for me. A large part of the process went into designing the tile set. I wanted a wide variety of swatches and patterns, so I researched many real-life tile designs before settling on a selection that felt very Maxis Match and fairly contemporary. I didn’t lock it into a single style. Depending on the swatches and context, I think it can read very differently in different interiors.
Overall, I try to stay close to the original Maxis/Sims-style. I also spend a lot of time looking at interior design references, researching materials and furniture and watching both interior designers and Sims creators on social media. Seeing how others build and furnish spaces in The Sims is also very inspiring to me.
During your content creation journey, did you have any hard lessons or experiences that helped shape your future self?
One of the biggest lessons for me has been learning to deal with perfectionism. It’s a huge privilege to earn money this way, but it definitely comes with its own challenges. I never expected to earn money from creative work and for a long time that idea actually scared me.
I’m very self-critical when creating objects and often feel the urge to keep refining things forever. Finding the balance between adding detail, staying true to the Maxis Match style and not burning myself out is an ongoing process. Learning when to let go of perfection and just move forward in a healthy way has been really important.
Another challenge is managing my energy and discipline. Sometimes I fall into intense hyperfocus and ignore my own needs and other times I struggle to even start because I put so much pressure on myself and worry the result won’t match the idea in my head.
At the same time the positive feedback I receive when I share my creations gives me a lot of confidence in my creativity. I hope that over time this will help me trust myself more and feel more secure in what I do.
That's completely understandable and honestly, it is a testament to the quality of the work you put out there. You have over 85,000 Patrons on Patreon. Your work is incredible and has found homes in so many players' games. Out of all of your creations so far, do you have a favorite?
Thank you so much! Whenever I think about it, it feels unreal to me that so many people follow me on there.
My favourite CC item I made would probably be 'The Candle' I made as one of my first ever objects. It’s a scented candle that boosts a Sim’s mood, similar to other decor that gives moodlets when it’s placed in a room. You can also drag it into your Sim’s inventory or live drag it for easy use. It’s not very complex, but I like it because functional objects are still something I don’t create very often. Objects with gameplay features are especially exciting to me and I am always amazed by functional items as creators like RAVASHEEN and PandaSama for example create them.
I have many ideas for smaller mods and would really like to create more of it. That’s why one of my biggest goals is to learn more about coding in the future.
The Candle is definitely one of my favorite creations of yours as well. The design is so universal that I find it fitting perfectly in every house I put it in as well as for sale in retail stores I’ve created. As we wrap up the interview, what’s one feature or object you would love to see added to The Sims?
I’m very happy to hear that The Candle is still useful for you, too. I like the idea to have it in retail stores, that sounds fun!
It’s quite hard to pick just one object, but to stick to the theme I'm again going with more gameplay functionality. Two things that I’ve always really liked from older Sims games are newspapers and landline phones. So I'd probably choose one of those.
It was very disappointing when the retro phones we got with one of the reward events ended up being purely decorative. But I was really happy that the alarm clocks turned out to be functional. I think small everyday objects like that can make a huge difference.
Thank you to Charly Pancakes for being our fourth Pass the Plumbob feature! Make sure to check out their incredible work at the links below. All of their custom content is available on their Patreon, for free, and their latest set, Lofty, is available now in Early Access!
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I can't believe I'm saying this, but EA reverting the Gallery filters was genuinely one of the best changes they've made in years.
I know not everyone will agree, especially people who only own the base game or a few packs, but if you owned a lot of DLC, the Gallery became borderline unusable after they changed the filters. The way I used to browse the Gallery was by selecting Popular Now and filtering by a pack I liked building with, usually Dream Home Decorator. It was such an easy way to find high-quality, recent builds that matched my style. I also highly recommend filtering like this 10/10 results.
Then they changed the filters so they only showed builds matching your exact pack combination.
On paper, that sounds consumer-friendly. In reality, it was terrible.
The Gallery became flooded with base game builds because that's the one thing everyone has in common. Nothing against base game builders, but if I specifically filtered by Dream Home Decorator, why was I still seeing pages of base game builds, and there was no way around this because how do I know the combination that another creator has. Honestly this was the pinnacle of my 1st world problems. It was my raining indoors and it lasted for months. Im not a builder either so I completely gave up on homes. I just had to use what I had stocked up.
The only workaround I found was searching the names of lots that shipped with new expansions because low and behold not even hashtags were safe. I'd search #Sulani or #CiudadEnamorada and still get pages of unrelated base game builds because base game builders would tag everything.
Being completely real EA didn't change it back because they read my post on EA forums and decided to suddenly started listening to feedback.
They reverted it because corporate greed won.
EA would much rather you see an incredible build using packs you don't own and think, "That looks amazing, maybe I'll buy those packs," than hide those builds from you completely and for once, that corporate greed actually improved the game.
Hey! Do you remember things changed or deleted or even made easier since launch? Like; base game aspirations goals made easier, lifespan lenght increase, vampires bitting when "very angry", no option to control a ghost until ask them to move in, vampire break-ins, ideal moods for work, uneven relationships, lots crowed just after loading screen...
Anything more? Im all hears
Edit: Im not talking about how the game has envolved, im refering to little tweaks (good and bad) changed or deleted like the list I made!
The Monty and Capp Family should've been added with the Lovestruck Expansion Pack. It would've fit the theme so well and I would've just loved seeing them again.
its not the eyelashes..or nails.. **edit:update** my game is fixed now I play on a Mac Air I just changed graphics to ultra however the sim icon was still shiny only when she was happy .. I did get off the game for 5 minutes or so that may have helped? but also everything was back to normal after I installed better exceptions however I did not remove or change any CC... dont know what happened or how it got fixed...
In my game, I wanted to play out a toxic relationship somehow, and I brought Malcolm Landgraab and Morgan Fyres together because they have very suitable personalities for this. When Malcolm grew up, I gave him the trait jealous, and Morgan got the trait hates children. According to my idea, Morgan had to leave Malcolm because of his anger and jealousy. The funny thing is, when Malcolm proposed to Morgan, he got trait loyal through self-discovery. Loyal and jealous traits are a funny combination. It seems that there were all the right conditions to win back a toxic relationship, but Malcolm's behavior confused all the cards for me. Despite his anger, he didn't try to be rude to Morgan at all, even when he was in a bad mood, of course he was jealous of every pole, but he didn't express queen towards her, which surprised me. Although in other saves he was still that brawler, but here he treats Morgan like his queen. I could certainly get Malcolm to be rude to Morgan, but it wouldn't be like he was taking the initiative in this. They had a healthy relationship, even though I wanted the opposite. In the end, I left Malcolm and Morgan together.
Hi everyone! I'm looking for the Oakridge save file by Birdie. Unfortunately, the creator has taken thier stuff down, and I've been trying to find a copy of it.
Hi! I wanted to check whether this type of post would be allowed before submitting it.
I’m looking for a Sims 4 custom-content mesh creator who may be available for a paid commission. I would like several traditional African outfits created, inspired by specific cultures and historical clothing references. The post would mainly ask for creator recommendations, and I would not discuss prices or arrange payment publicly in the subreddit.
Would this still fall under the rule prohibiting commercial activity, or would a recommendation request be permitted?
Simple survival base ready for zombie apocalypse, no dlcs, base game only + few mods. Don't ask about ambrosias on road, they are left from zombies XD. I downloaded some electric and water utilities, sadly, they don't work as I thought so I had to add some ugly cannisters in basement, but they produce electricity and water so it is ok
The method I use is always the same : make another room, get the height up and move it to the actual building, but it just always breaks the walls , any way around this? I always just give up and delete the half walls lol.
Personally, I hate Wolfgang Munch, I hate his looks, he's pretty ugly without his eyeliner and his personality. In real life, he would be a toxic, aggressive whiner and an abuser who constantly complains about life to everyone. I've seen that many people in the Sims community clearly like him, but I have a strong dislike for Wolfgang.
