DOWNFALL opens to the public!

I am happy to announce the official opening of DOWNFALL...by me! Go take a looksee here:

DOWNFALL by Jessi "Miss Blum" Jones

If anyone out there finds broken links/issues let me know.
Besides the one at TWC. I'm on it.

Grr...

I was supposed to be taking a break from toning and then I spent way too long on this....it was supposed to be a doodle O_o:

Miyabi and Yumi from THE WAY TO YOUR HEART

Yay for fan art! Please take the time to visit these character's home, The Way to Your Heart by Emily Muto, who continues to inspire me through the years! I can still remember stumbling onto this when it was just into the second track... such a fun story! Go read it! Go!

The Madness Continues!

Still toning/shadowing/adding highlights to the prologue. Ugh...I will be so happy to never work on it again! I keep going back to edit pages that I already decided were done...I feel like I'm getting nowhere! Time to step it up, only 8 more days left to get stuff done! Then the site will be open! Geh!
Sorry, all I have to offer up this time is a quick Wacom doodle:

'Cowgirl' 10 minutes/MS EX 4

Website Design and Endless Toning...

Wow. What have I been up to? Well, I'm about 90% finished with DOWNFALL's website, and it just so happens to be some of my best work. :) The past few days have been filled with long, long nights of toning pages. Bleh. Got distracted by coloring for a few hours too:

Tabi and Shinji of DOWNFALL

You're welcome. Toodles!

Fan Arts!

Soooo... this was supposed to be my early (yesterday) morning 'warm-up' pic but I started to like it too much.

'Sony' from Aisha Thiessen's 'Dealing with the Devil'

I thought that she deserved some fan art for starting  the site up again . . . kinda reminds me of myself. Anyways-gotta get me coffeez. And go check out this comic-it's really pretty and you can even read her old stuff and see how much she's grown as an artist. (I'm now considering making a section for my old comic versions, hmmm.)
http://dealingwiththedevil.com/

Whew.

Been back to work on DOWNFALL the past couple days, and I'm happy to report that progress is slowly being made. Inked a few pages of the prologue, only 7 more to go and finally fixed some website issues. I've decided not to color until the line arts are finished-it'll make the whole process that much easier.
Not much else to say!

It's called STYLE.

Yeah, and finding your own is really really really really really frustrating. But I'm working on it. Maybe I just feel like I've had a little too much 'style overload' or something. I've been reading so many tutorials, how-to's and so-on's that my brain is a bit fried.
I know that if I keep working on it, it'll emerge eventually. Just a bit too down to work on stuff right now. Man. Blah.

Sucess at last!

This is my first real cell shading attempt! What do you think?

Tabi and Jinn from 'Downfall'

I don't know how well it will turn out at this size but that's it! Man-it took forEVER to finish. Oh well. Now I just need to decide whether or not I want to make Downfall a full-color comic or go with the traditional black and white that I'm used to. Been trying to come up with a pro's and con's list for both. If I go with the coloring, it's going to take me longer to get out each page, but it will help me build a good foundation in color sense and be super helpful when I go to do the animations. But black and white is easier and faster. Still not sure. 

I was thinking I'd at least get the Prologue out in color and if I want to switch later, I can just start off the first chapter in b&w. Hmmmmm.....

Photoshop and Actions. . .

Been doing a lot of PS and MS tutorial reading, finding shortcuts and ways to improve my speed at getting these pages out. Anyway, promised a few pencil sketches, here they are:

This is Lemuela (Lem) from a comic idea (Dreams of Dying Stars) I've been throwing around for awhile now.

And this is Zeal Isper Zalesper, another character from DODS.

Well, that's it for now kiddies. Gotta get some more in before Silo wakes up from nappy time.

Computer Virus of DOOOOOMMmmm!!! *andwaffles!!*

  Ugh, that was seriously lame. Night before last I was researching animation software (Celsys' RETA!) and I got myself a terrible, icky kinda virus. Yay. And of course I had no back up copies of Windows that worked for my reinstall. The real kicker? This happens to me every couple months or so.

  WHY DO I NEVER INSTALL ANTIVIRUS SOFTWARE?!?!? Meep.

  So now things are getting back to better, spent most of today (I should probably say 'my free time' because the 'most' is dedicated to running around after Silas) installing my programs. The interesting thing is, because I didn't have use of my wacom I was forced to go back to 'traditional' tools...which I haven't done in forever!!!

   I was amazed to find that I could actually draw with a real pencil!!! WOW! O-O I had a lot of fun with my doodles. I'll put them in here as soon as I get 'em scanned. (Totally installed those printer drivers yeedurrdyhuurr.)
  DAMN YOU VIRUS!!!!

Downfall Studios Logo

  Took me all day but I finished it! I had to do a lot of research on logo design too. I'm still not too happy with it . . . it's honestly too far detailed for a logo. I might  have to go over it one more time with a bit of simplicity. Man.
  Haven't slept in . . . several . . . 30? 50? Hours. Well, not true. I took a nap with Silas today, but he's teething and grumpy so he didn't sleep long, maybe an hour or so.
So I'm off to bed! For really, really, reals!

Finally!

It's a shame that LJ has started acting up (wantingyoutopay*cough*). So I did a little searching and whipped this up instead. Anyway, I'll be posting a Cell-Shading Tutorial here later on. I keep figuring that once I have it all whipped up and online it'll keep me from getting distracted by other crap...seriously. I start lasso-ing (sp?wtf.) out bits of my background flats like I'm supposed to-and before I realize it I've whipped out the stupid airbrush again! Grrr. See you later.