Ciem 3 (2009 webcomic)

Ciem 3 was to be the third installment in the Ciem Trilogy, which would have dealt with the tenure of Candi Flippo-Levens-McArthur as the Dozerfleet Comics superheroine Ciem.

The story begins with Candi McArthur and her husband Donte enjoying the temporary peace in Dirbine that has followed the recent death of Duke Arfaas, leader of the Hebbleskin Gang. Kolumn and Milp join forces to strike hard, capturing Candi and forcing her family-friend Dolly to make a terrible choice if she wants to save everyone. Much of this story's plot was considered for recycling for use in Ciem: Condemnation.

Plot
Lloyd Kolumn helps the scattered and disorganized remains of the Hebbleskin Gang regroup after Arfaas' death makes them appear weak. They create their first successful werewolf named Lobe, and unleash him on Dirbine. Meanwhile, Kimiyato "Milp" Hiriyama abandons her post in Tokyo in pursuit of Ciem. Charlotte "Mukade" Yamamura heads to California in pursuit of her, but gets captured by Kolumn shortly after teaming up with Kyle "Meerkat" Freneti.

Candi and Donte begin enjoying the short-lived peace that Ciem has brought to Dirbine, while they raise their children Charlie and Frank. Candi gets a job at a bar, and Donte prepares to take Frank with him as he goes to see Ploribus Philippine for cancer treatments. As he leaves, Candi stays behind to watch Charlie and prepare Charlie for starting school.

Jeral "Botan the Plant-Man" Cormier also returns, as he and his new wife Emily seek out Candi's help to free him from being a plant-man. Kolumn and Milp, in spite their disagreements on the Hebbleskin Gang's future, team up to scatter the city's heroes and capture Candi in their secret facility in California, where they plan to execute their prisoners.

As Kolumn begins his campaign to collect prisoners and execute them in a mass drowning, Milp begins terrorizing Dirbine in Ciem's absence. Henry Malestrom, Jeraime's nephew, is captured and turned into a second Musaran after Lobe is killed while battling Botan.

Ploribus, fearing that he is going to die himself, refuses to take action. Dolly Malestrom grows frustrated, and vows to save everyone herself. She steals a suit with Meethlite AI in it from Ploribus' underground lair, and becomes the Earwig so she can do Candi's job and rescue Candi after. However, things take a decidedly dark turn when the AI in Dolly's new suit reveals that it has its own agenda. This leads to the suit causing Dolly to abandon Nolle Barret to die in a fire, and then attempt to kill Botan the Plant-Man. The latter attack results in Milp exploiting Dolly's struggle to regain control as an opportunity to put an AI backvisor on Botan and control him. The combined forces of Milp and a mind-controlled Botan prove too much, placing the whole city in danger. Even with the suit's dangerous AI, Dolly decides to use it to travel to California and rescue Candi.

With the help of some new friends, she is able to succeed. However, Delusia sacrifices herself to keep Candi from dying when she is placed on the chopping block at Kolumn's orders. Other Phexos manage to flee before the facility is flooded, drowning Kolumn and most of his remaining men. A quick alliance is formed, dubbed the "Forest Funnel Town Demolitioneers." This group consists of Ciem, Meerkat, Mukade, and the Earwig. With Dolly's help, the others are able to regain control of Botan. They take advantage of this to take down Milp, who has transformed into a "milliblob" and is destroying downtown Dirbine.

After everyone concludes the battle, they go their separate ways. Candi and Donte settle down with the kids to a new home in Kentucky. It's revealed years later that Charlie becomes extremely wealthy in his own right. Frank takes on Donte's old mantle. However, Donte eventually dies of cancer and Candi is later murdered by remnants of the Hebbleskin Gang. Her daughter Dana moves in with cousins Lex Philippine and Andy Baret to form "Team Ciem," which was to feature in a since-canceled series dubbed Ciem Tomorrow.

Heroes

 * Candi McArthur / Ciem
 * Delusia
 * Dolly Malestrom / Earwig
 * Kyle Freneti / Meerkat
 * Charlotte Yamamura / Mukade

Villains

 * Henry Malestrom / Musaran II
 * Lloyd Kolumn
 * Jeral Cormier / Botan the Plant-Man
 * Kimiyato Hiriyma / Milp

Supporting cast

 * Donte McArthur
 * Celia Winehart / Taterbug
 * Terry Silverberg
 * Ploribus Philippine
 * Charlie McArthur
 * Frank McArthur

Development
The story as a whole took a long time to organize plot elements. The battle scene planned for the story's end, where the Milliblob and Forest Funnel Town structures fight Ciem and her new friends, was originally going to be a construction site. It was expanded to an entire block of downtown Dirbine, as the construction site idea was thought to resemble Spider-Man 3 a bit too much.

Screen capture
Plans for screen capture of Ciem 3 were to imitate the techniques used for Ciem 2, but with more emphasis on special effects and on high-contrast lighting. There were plans to employ the use of a real-world camera and employ texture substitution for some of the scene composition, such as when the Earwig and Botan battle underground. This story would have employed extensive uses of pseudo-chroma key, a feature that was being used heavily in Ciem 2 but which is mostly absent in Ciem. Principal screen capture was planned for March of 2010, but both Ciem 3 and Ciem 2 were canceled due to health and scheduling issues.

Effects
In addition to the visual effects mentioned above, extensive work was planned to improve the special effects for Botan. The character's suit was relatively simple in Ciem, as Plant Sims are a paranormal state in Seasons that is easy to unlock. With this option missing after Seasons was uninstalled and the machinima studio was reverted to Nightlife accommodations, Botan had to be completely re-designed. A skintone file by HystericalParoxysm at Mod The Sims was reverse-engineered to work with Nightlife as a custom skintone. With a few added adjustments to the facial genetics, Botan was ready to go except for his hair. A Maxis mesh was used as the base and a green repaint was used to produce the reference base for Botan's hair. The idea was that his leafy hair would then be painted into each frame with Photoshop and overlayed on top of the "grass" reference base.

As would have been explained in the story, Milp created her suit to be an evil version of the Ciem suit after reverse-engineering its design from Imaki Izuki, accentuating her lifelong obsession with Candi. Little was done to the suit save to alter the chest centipede to a millipede and recolor the orange theme to purple. Initial promotional work showed the Milp suit as lacking a septagon weaving pattern, since the Milp suit was originally built on the first Ciem suit rather than the one from Ciem 2. After transforming into the Milliblob, Milp would have been able to project globular representations of her former self in multiple places at once. These would've lacked the septagon weave texture on purpose, as they are to be semi-liquid projections rather than a still-human entity.

Kyle used the same skintone as Captain Aardwulf, with one major difference being that he did not use the aardwolf facepaint that Aard used. Charlotte's suit was actually a two-piece suit, and was among the more difficult pieces to edit in Body Shop. Lobe, given that he is a werewolf in a version of The Sims 2 that does not have Pets installed, uses a basic version of Abragon's Werewolf Warrior skintone from Mod The Sims. Only Lobe's clothing and hair are deviations from the original design by MTS user Abragon. This is in contrast to Meerkat and Capp Aard, who are brown-tinted variations on Abragon's design.

Music
Main article: Music For and Inspirational to Ciem 3