To accompany the Oscars, our horror blog Final Girl Support Group presented Awards Season, a 2-part series honoring the best in horror in 2011. Preceding the big event, we named our favorite genre films from the previous year in Part 1: The Lucky 13.


Last night, we posted Part 2: The Ripleys to honor the specific men and women (Oscars-style) who thrilled us, terrified us, and made us smile this year. 

Like scary movies? What are your favorites from the past year? 

This past fall, I inquired about who was still reading and writing and doing marvelous things in this corner of the internet. I was pleasantly surprised by how many of you are still out there. I've been meaning to dust this page off for some time and I think that time is now.

For the past 3 years, I became less active in my usual circles due to full-time jobs that were either top-secret or a bit square. Or top-secret AND square. Art-wise, there has been very little to share. At the beginning of February, my latest contract, a nice engagement within the rather conservative education field, ended and I returned to the world of freelance. It's a little bit scary and a little bit exciting. I have certainly been keeping myself busy. A quick summary of what I've been up to:

1. To momentarily avoid all the work that goes into designing and maintaining a standard website, my domain is redirected to my official Facebook page until further notice. Too lazy? Maybe. I have updated the galleries quite a bit since making this decision and they'll give you a pretty good idea of what I've been up to.


2. At the tail-end of January, I participated in The Global Game Jam 2012. My lovely friend, J.R. Blackwell, and I met four other game developers for the first time at IGDA Philly's GGJ site and created the silliest card game imaginable in 48 sleepless hours. Velociraptor! Cannibalism! We're not joking. That's the name. We were pleased by the efficiency of our team (especially since it was formed largely by chance) and an enthusiastic reception. One month later, we've been incredibly active in the pursuit of turning our fun idea into a finished product. We launched a Kickstarter one week ago and we're already nearing 50%! More about that soon.


3. While working on projects that didn't involve sci-fi, fantasy, monsters, etc... I turned to my other love to satisfy the creative drive. Horror. Along with two of my favorite people, I started The Final Girl Support Group, a horror blog with a feminist bent, and starting doing writing gigs for local film geek site, Cinedelphia. I'm also dipping my toe into making movies (that's all you get). I write as Jenny Dreadful and leaned toward keeping my two "identities" separate for awhile. I no longer feel the need. Writing doesn't come naturally to me like visual art does, but I enjoy it. If you're into horror, come check out our site and talk movies with us. Our latest post is the Best Horror of 2011. Agree? Disagree?


That's it for now, LJ, but I have plenty more to say about new projects, our game's fund-raising campaign, and all things horror. Check back soon. And thanks for reading!

Hey! Who is still out there reading Livejournal? I've been reading occasionally, but this account has honestly been little more than an inbox for spam. Should I dust this thing off?

Since early 2009, I've been doing full-time work for various clients in interactive media under vows of secrecy. (With upsetting gaps in between as projects have been cancelled and art teams shut down for outsourcing. Sigh...) This means that I have very little to share through my official artist channels anymore and that is sad. But if you're out there and interested, I'll try to bring this thing up to speed at least with artwork, photos and happenings from the past... er... year and a half since I posted last. Ouch.

I might even post userpics that aren't 3 or more years old. No promises!

Good morning, LiveJournal!

I just wrapped up some new artwork for the game, Annalise, by Nathan Paoletta.

Working with Nathan is always great. I love getting a chance to work with rougher, dirtier styles and he's cool with letting me put together whatever imagery the text inspires me to make. I think it works out very well usually and I am very pleased with some of these new sketches in particular. I'm going to show you some of my favorites. (Shown in the order that they were created)



( More behind this cut... )

Stay tuned for more news on this upcoming edition of Annalise. And thanks for looking!

An unfinished fan art sketch. A bit rough still, but fun enough. I thought I was going to have time to mess with this piece and eventually finish it, but no... The way my schedule is shaping up, it isn't going to happen. At least for awhile. Until then, enjoy. :)

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In other news:
A Steampunk Production of Twelfth Night in Philly this spring!

More information and gorgeous preview photos by Kyle Cassidy at the following links:
http://kylecassidy.livejournal.com/589704.html
http://planetx.livejournal.com/413958.html
http://curiotheatre.blogspot.com/

This is important to me not only because it looks amazing and beautiful... but also because my husband, Russell Collins, is assisting with music and sound design. Leaving out, for a moment, the impressive number of talented friends I have working on the production as consultants and costumers, etc... What I'm saying is you should go see this.

If you're interested in The Dresden Files and/or gaming, check out the new Dresden Files RPG Preview! Nevermore: The Baltimore setting chapter from The Dresden Files RPG: Your Story.
http://www.dresdenfilesrpg.com/2010/03/23/nevermore/
Full game releasing at the Origins Game Fair, June 23, 2010.


The preview looks gorgeous and features some of my recent illustrations. Including this little lady:


Diane Basset; Kitchen Witch and Caffeinomancer.

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What else is new? Well, a new series of Jennifer Rodgers shirts is in the works. First design's final artwork should be wrapped up this week and, hopefully, we'll have shirts in hand by April. No promises yet. We'll post more news when we can! It's very exciting.

Also, you can now become my fan on FaceBook! I try to update here on LJ when I have some real content to share, but I imagine I'll be posting smaller bits of news on FaceBook more frequently.

That's all for now. More news soon!
Jenn

Hello, Livejournal!

If you were waiting for me to post the final illustration last week, I'm sorry to keep you hanging. I did indeed finish it, but needed to take a break from looking at it while I caught up on some other work. (I'm sure lots of you creative types know what I mean!) Here is what I ended up with:



We may have to brighten it up a bit if it test prints too dark, but it's complete for now. Is it perfect? No, I don't think so, but I'm satisfied that it was finished competently and on time. :) I am happiest with the lighting on the girl in the foreground and with how the skeleton came out!

If you have any questions that I haven't covered yet, I'll be happy to answer them today. I'll also try to go through the previous progress updates and address comments I neglected to reply to earlier. Thanks for your kind attention! This experiment was fun!

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I'm moving on now to a big group of character vignettes for the book and I'm super excited about some of these. Will show you some when they're ready! I also have more new art to post, so I'll be back tomorrow!

Hello again, LJ friends!

Thanks again for your replies and encouragement during my progress-posting experiment. I've enjoyed this very much and might do it again sometime. The illustration is not quite finished yet, but it's coming together. The next update you see will be the final. Once that's ready, I'll answer all questions and reply to all comments, etc etc... Looking forward to it!


The various elements are taking shape fairly nicely I think. I need to bump the contrast with some brighter brights, darker darks and I need to add some color holds and effects.

(Color Hold basically means changing the black of your drawing's line to another lighter color. I use this for "magic", water, basically anything without real substance to it. One of the handiest tricks in the colorist's toolbox.)

That's it for now. See you next time with the final and we'll chat. :)

My daily Dresden Files illustration progress update:


Finished dividing the various sections into flats and I'm working on adding shadow and lighting now. Currently at work on the girl and the injured guy in the front. I use adjustment layers in Photoshop for my lighting, but I usually add tints on top of the shadow layers when I'm finished to make things more interesting.

Thanks for following my progress, everyone. I enjoy your comments and I'll be sure to reply to them all when I feel I have a little more time. Possibly after this piece is done. Pencils have been scanned in, cleaned up and my coloring has begun.


The colors in progress. I always start by creating basic color fields that represent the varying planes of distance from "the camera" as separate layers. This helps me manipulate different pieces of the illustration individually. Now, it's time to separate the color fields into "flats." I use the polygonal selection tool and paint bucket in Photoshop.

( Tight pencils behind the cut... )

Moving on. Gotta go! :) Thanks for looking!