High Ho....High Ho....

Well Christmas is over and its back to work we go! I was playing around with some sketches for a friend’s project and started goofing around. At this point it always seems to make its way back to these little guys! I'm not complaining or anything but I often wonder if when I am done if I will be able to draw anything other then a Cropone….haha.
-Jesse

The Clean Up

Here is the video of me cleaning up the previous sketch.
-Anthony-

Working Process

I got a new screen capturing software, so I've been itching to test it out. This first video is me roughing in one of the panels on pg. 3. The next video will be me cleaning it up. I'll post that when I finish, which won't be too long. Sorry its small, I should have zoomed in more while drawing. I'll get it right next time. Still learning the software.
-Anthony-

Dawn of the Nance...

We have quite a few stories in the pipeline for Book II and some of them are easier then others. However, one of the stories that I have been looking forward to the most has got to be “Dawn of the Nance.”
The idea is broken into three tiny skits that tell a little about a creature living in darkness and feeding off the souls and flesh of others. What’s not to love?
Our two main bad guys (or girls) will be Dawn and Nance…actually they are both the same character. One (Dawn) became so cruel and ugly on the inside that she literally pushed out her physical appearance and became what she really was (the Nance). From that point on Dawn basically became a “Siren” calling all passing travelers into her pit of hate.
My favorite part to the story is that everyone sees Dawn for her beauty and it ends up costing them their lives. However, the only one to “see” her for what she truly is…is the one Cropone (Yaunt) who can’t see at all. Irony…I think so! Anyway, I'm getting a kick out of it, haha.
Anthony is working on a short called “What happened to Flight 82?” which a bunch of flight squadron soldiers get separated on a mission, each branching into a new story in the book. One of the soldiers, Coffey, will lead to a Dawn of the Nance storie. This one will be a bit different to handle because both Anthony and myself will have our hands digging into it. We’re not too sure how we will do it but most likely we will each have about a 50% roll in designing and drawing the story.
Anyway, I just figured I would go ahead and post a little bit of what I got. It’s still rough but you will get the point.
-Jesse

1...DAWN of the NANCE

Rumor has it that there is a creature so cruel and malevolent that simply approaching it would wipe your existence clean from this world.

It is called the Nance and it is living proof the misery indeed loves company. It devours anyone and anything that it can lour into its reach.

It does not feed to satisfy hunger but rather trying to fill an endless pit of anger, trying to make all others as miserable as itself.

But not to worry because after all…it’s just rumor.

2...DAWN of the NANCE “A New Dawn”

The Nance, thought once to be a Cropone, was known as Dawn. She possessed an overwhelming beauty that was able to get her what she wanted when she wanted it.

But her beauty was only skin deep, for what was beneath, was truly foul and repulsive

She in fact became so cruel and ugly on the inside that she could no longer keep a grasp on her physical appearance.

Her true self, became the Nance and isolated itself in the cold confines of a cave while Dawn, a representation of her former beauty, was forced to roam the nearby area. Neither of which were who they use to be. The Nance, being the ugly face of hatred and Dawn having nothing remaining but her beauty

The Nance, so feared and repulsive, sent out such a bad vibe that most would avoid the area totally on gut instinct. However Dawn, who possesses more beauty than the eye can even acknowledge, had no trouble leading more than enough victims to Nance’s cave.

3... DAWN of the NANCE “Dawn and the DEAD”

One by one, farmers, workers, lost soldiers, children and stragglers of all sorts found themselves in Nance’s grasp.

It seemed there was no denying the temptation their eyes delivered once settling on Dawn.

Most of the time we do not wait to see past the thin shell of ones appearance. Beauty is skin deep, and unfortunately, “skin deep” is all Dawn needs.

Something called a...a..."Board Game?"

Well, awhile back I mentioned that I was working on a game and since then I have had quite a few emails asking about it. I can now tell you that the prototype is DONE! Yes, it’s all done. Why a board game? Well as you may have seen in my last post, I'm just trying to get a little something back from my childhood. Who didn’t love Fireball Island, Torpedo Run and Hero Quest?!?! Many of hours were lost on those games and I wouldn’t change it for the world…

As for our game, it has been played over and over and over, trying to get out all of the kinks. I believe that we have got rid of all of them. For the first dozen times it was played, I basically sat back and watched as other players had at it. After awhile I began to play it as well. I can honestly say that I really enjoy it.
It is different every time it is played as well as there is different ways it can be played. It can be played solitaire, two, three or four players. It can be played everybody against everybody or played with teams.
We ordered pizza and stayed in and played. With the amount of times that we played, we came up with the rough average of game duration to be around 10 minutes per player. So 1 a player game will last 10 minutes and 4 players will have about a 40 minute game.

A little bit about the game…the goal is to make it from point A to point B. Each player chooses 1 of the 6 playable characters, put there pawn on a starting zone and roll to move.

2 of the 6 Player Cards

Along the path (whichever one they choose) they will travel trying to get to the FINAL FIGHT space. Whoever gets there first rolls to see which one of the 6 Bosses they will fight. But on there journey to the Final Fight, they may encounter a countless number of events that will alter the game…some good, some bad.

Players can have an unlucky encounter such as rockslides, lightning strikes, enemy attacks, animal attacks, or dangers inspired by fate. All of which can send you back to start. However, if things go well for the players, they can gather weapons and to make their travels a tad more comfortable, and with around 30 different weapons and items to acquire (each with different abilities) each game will differ from the last.

a few of the Weapons and Items

Also, players not only get their share of good and bad events BUT they may also may have the pleasure of traveling with any COMPANIONS that they may come across. Once a player picks up a companion their game will alter once more. Each companion (8 in total) that players travel with have a direct effect on the player he is traveling with as well as other players.

Some Companion Cards

All in all, I think that this might actually be a pretty enjoyable game for fans to play. Now whether or not it ever sees light of day, I don’t know but worst case scenario…me and my friends have something to play over some pizza and beer…haha

Randon Events Book

Everything layed out

-Jesse

No Movable Parts...and still fun!!!

I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before! For some time now I have been making and selling bookmarks with my art work on them. It was something that was fairly easy to do and I could sell them for a cheep price.

When we started working on Berona’s Hundred Year War, I made some more book marks with characters from the book on them. And they sold right along with the books.

Well this week I was working up a new design for some business cards and then it hit me…the whole backbone behind the book and characters is simply, for me, to recapture my childhood. It seems as though all the things that I loved growing up has been completely stripped from me.

I was obsessed with Transformers when I was younger and have never stopped loving them HOWEVER its so hard for me to continue loving them the way I did when every time I turn around someone is making the comment, “Oh you must have LOVED the movie!” or “my son, little Jimmy, watches his Transformer dvd over and over. He’s a fan too.”

Michael Bay…I slap you!

You know what…Stop including us in that abomination of an attempt to recreate my past!!! Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the move, I really did but in my opinion one thing had nothing to do with the other. There was the transformers that “we” grew up with, and than there is today’s transformers.

G.I. Joe…uhg, don’t even get me started because I'm not even going to dignify that Helen Keller production. Stephen Sommers must have rolled out of bed one morning and said, “hmmm, GI Joe… I seemed to remember hearing that name before. I think I will make a movie about it. It’s about giant mosquitoes right? There weren’t any giant mosquitoes? Oh well, Ill just put a bunch of other crap that I think will look cool.”

Stephen Sommers…I slap you!

Sorry about my rant but you see where I am going. It seems as all the great things that we grew up are being stripped right out of our hands. Toys are being RE-made, movies are being RE-made, TV shows, games, books….all RE-made! Stop it already. If you want to be inspired by something, that’s GREAT, and that’s what its all about but don’t go around taking something we loved and ruining it…because you think it will make you lots of money!

Not EVERYTHING HAS TO HAVE MOVABLE PARTS, it doesn’t all have to have a USB port, it doesn’t all need batteries! There is a little thing out there that I like to call, an “imagination.” I know it can be scary to use it but once you get the hang of it, the options are limitless!

So in closing, please try to use your “imagination” and leave our childhood alone!!!!

Oh yeah, the bookmarks, haha…Here is something that I thought might be fun to have saving your place in your book and also give you a little flashback to what we use to love.

-Jesse

More Speaking....more Signing :)

Ok, nothing big, but I wanted to put up another post here and say a little bit about what we have been up to. We made another trip to Dallas, TX to do another book signing…this one was a bit more of a “special guest” kind of thing. We were set up in a large college class room to speak to some students on the process of the book, as well as the actual book itself. A LOT more people showed up then I was expecting. It defiantly made the whole drive to Texas worth it. This was all done through a Bunch of Short Guys. http://abunchofshortguys.org/ Thanks Guys!
We got to share a little bit about Berona’s War Book II with everyone. We are just as excited as everyone else to get that one in your hands, as well as ours!
I really enjoyed this one because everyone was inquisitive and seemed very interested in what we had to say. We got a wonderful response to the event. Both Anthony and myself enjoyed it.
And to all of you who attended…we wanted to thank you for getting a book, after all it is people like you that we made it for.
Thanks Guys!
-Jesse

Berona

After being asked the question AGAIN…I’ve decided to go ahead and make my next post about the name Berona.

The email received….
“Just wondering how and where you came up with the name "Berona" since it's my last name. I guess I need to read the book.”

My Response….
“You are not the first person to as this question, However you may be the first to ask that actually had the name Berona.
I REALLY wish I had some great inspiring story involving the name Berona, but I don’t. But since you asked....
The original idea was a calendar we called the "One Year War." But like ideas do, it grew into something more. After working on it for a short period of time the calendar idea turned into a book. We could no longer call it the “one year war” so we went with the "Hundred year war."
So we worked on the story for nearly a year and in that year we were asked a couple of times if the story had anything to do with the actual Hundred years war, from the 1337-1453. We, at that point saw the title being a problem. However, we had been calling it that for so long, we couldn’t see ourselves changing it.
SOOOooo, Anthony and myself were sitting in a coffee shop and I suggested that we add a name in front of the title. After a short moment of thinking, I RANDOMLY spit out the name “Berona.” The name of the land at war as well as the character who is responsible for the book is called Berona.
To be honest, I didn’t even know it was a real name and on top of that, I don’t think it was suppose to stick. But just like the original title…it stuck. I'm glad it did because we both like it a lot.
And will most likely continue using it in any future “Berona” related projects!
I hope that answers your question
And yes, you need to read the book! :)
-Jesse

BIGGER GAME

I'm done with the next story in Book II, “Bigger Game.” This one gave me a very large headache but I can say that I am very happy with it. I went ahead and put the levels of work that went into this one. Unfortunately it didn’t flow as easily as Stronger, Faster, Young, but that was because I had to do a lot more struggling with the actual layout of the panels. But here is a look at one of the pages and the stages I took for “Bigger Game!”
-Jesse

On to the next....

Now that I finished up “Stronger Faster Young” I am working on another story for book II. I actually started this story first but dropped it to work on the “Young” story. I am enjoying this one because it is more comic style. BUT that is also what makes it more difficult for me. I am not too familiar with paneling. However, for the most part this has been pretty enjoyable to work on.
I don’t have a working title for this one yet but it involves some of my favorite characters from the first book, the Condyle (my favorite being the Krite). The Condyle warriors are the savages of the land. They suppress there blood lust through their hunts. This is the story of one of those hunts. I have to admit that when I started out wanting to do a Condyle story, I wanted it to be more of a action filled hunt. However, it did not turn out that way at all. I was struggling with it for awhile and then a friend got a hold of it. Opie Cooper had a little fun with the story and took it in a whole new direction. I ended up liking his take on it WAY more than mine. So that’s what I went with. I added a little bit to it here and there but for the most part…its his story.
I will post a little bit more later on the layout of one of the pages but until then, Here it the cover picture to the story.
-Jesse

Stronger Faster YOUNG

Ok, so as we’ve mentioned before, Berona’s War, Book II will be a compilation of short stories and moments from the first book. The first story I started working on was inspired by a pictue I saw years ago by Skottie Young. At the time I didn’t realize that it was Skottie’s picture but I knew I loved it.

After getting waist deep in the project, I showed him some of the pictures and told him a little bit about it. I wanted to get his approval before I got too far into the story…why you ask? Because the main character is based after Mr. Young himself. He had no problem with it what so ever. In fact I even think he liked it!!! Woo-Whoo!!!

The story is about a character who is inspired by stories he hears about a group of Ele-Alta slayers. These stories inspire him to return to his overrun village to seek revenge. His story in turn inspires others to follow in his footsteps as well.

I enjoyed working on it and wanted to post a piece of it for you to see. Here it is in no particular order. As usual, Anthony did all the Ele-Alta characters and I did all of the Cropones. Enjoy “STRONGER FASTER YOUNG!”
-Jesse

DEAD @ 17 Pin-up

Ok, as you can see below, Anthony and I were asked to do a Pin-up for Image and Josh Howard’s Dead @ 17 comic. It was a nice little break from Berona’s War "Book II". Its been so long, I was starting to think I forgot how to draw girls. This should have been easier than it was….Geez, I almost gave up. Not really Josh…I wouldn’t let you down! But it did give me some problems. What made things even worse is I was at Anthony’s place when he started his piece.
All I remember is he started doing a rough sketch and then the pizza man knocked on the door…by the time I paid him and went back inside….Anthony was done!!! REALLY ANTHONY??? God, I hate him sometimes.
Some how he manages to come up with the concept, do the rough, clean it up, add color and do the background…all in the time it took me to walk four feet to the door and back. I just don’t get it. But what makes things even worse is that I had a sketch that I really liked I had done the night before. But after seeing his picture, I had to throw mine away. Oh well, I guess that’s the price we pay for working with greatness.
So anyway. I had a few ideas in my head of what I wanted the outcome to look like. After playing with some sketches for awhile, I came up with the pictures you see now. I was very close to going with the first one with just the two girls. I was worried that the third girl in the foreground would be too much and cover up a lot of the detail of the other two girls. But by the time it was all said and done, I think the composition ended up working out just fine. I'm actually happy with the way it turned out. From our understanding, Josh likes them and frankly….that’s all we needed to know!
-Jesse

Pinup Art

Well this doesn't have anything to do with our next book, but while we are working hard on book 2 we still enjoy getting to whip out a nice piece of fan art every now and then. We were honored to be asked to contribute to Josh Howard's Dead@17 pinup section. Josh is working on his next compilation of books with Image Comics and he asked if we would like to draw up some hot girls. Honestly, who could resist? Thanks again, Josh.

Storyboards

Here is an idea for a short animated piece we were wanting to do. Jesse mentioned wanting to do some short simple animated pieces and as he was explaining his idea to me this is what I was envisioning. I went ahead and drew up a rough storyboard. It still needs some adjustments, but here is the first pass. Its definitely longer than what Jesse was thinking, but I think it would still be cool to do once we have the time.

Borders Signing Texas

Ok...so it wasnt REALLY this bad but what a great photo huh? haha




After the 3 Alarm signing, I ended up traveling home with Anthony and stayed with him for the week. We had another Borders book signing the following weekend and it just kind of work out for us with the traveling. I got to visit with my buddy Brian Thompson britown.com and we had a pretty good time hanging out. He helped me develop the Berona’s War Game. The idea was semi developed but Brian really helped me hit it home. If things go well I can say we have a pretty good chance of getting a solid board game out. It will have a nostalgic D&D feel with good old school board game fun. The trick was making it so it was fun and versatile enough to want to play again and again but at the same time not making it SO complex that it was a headache trying to figure out how to play...and though we are at the beginning stages, I really think we might have figured out how to do that. More on that to come :)
So on to the Book signing…You know its weird, if you actually ADVERTISE a book signing, it goes over a lot more successful. When we showed up it was almost like they didn’t have any idea we were coming. Not to mention that they didn’t put ANYTHING on their website. When I asked them about it they said, “We sent the information to corporate…I don’t know why they didn’t post it.” REALLY??? God forbid we DORVE 6 HOURS to get there!!!! HOWEVER, having said that, we tried to make the best of it (we usually do) and figured “screw it!” we’re here so lets do this!

I'm glad we stuck with it because it actually ended up turning out pretty good. We sold WAY more than we thought we would. We can thank the crowd that showed up towards the end of the signing. I kid you not, when we got there…there was like four people in the store and three of them were about 90 years old! Fortunately we had a D&D crowd show up as well. Yes, you heard me correctly…a Dungeons and Dragons Roll playing group showed up! I guess they have a scheduled game night or something. Anyway, it worked out for us. Come to find out, they seem to be a target audience! HA!
So to wrap things up, again, we had a pretty good time and got a good bit done on Book II.

-Jesse

3 Alarm Signing

Book Signing on the Coast!

the 3 Alarm Exclusive Sketch Poster

the Hard Rock

Sorry for the stupid amount of time away from the ole Blog…been a bit busy. Don’t be too hard on me because Anthony has already smacked me around!
We are still working on Book II and are pretty happy with what we got so far. We had our book signing at 3 Alarm comics the other weekend and had a pretty good time. Got to hand out with the owner Scott as well as Mitch Byrd…two really cool cats we enjoyed hanging out with!!! We not only had a good time but also got to sell a few more books as well as some posters. We put out a 3 Alarm exclusive poster and sold quite a few. We only had 100 so we didn’t think they would last too long. After the signing we headed out to the Hard Rock and got our grub on! All in all we had a good day…Thanks 3 Alarm!

-Jesse

It's Why They Fear the Water...

I’ve been working a lot on some of the possibilities for the next book and though, for the most part, we have a good solid game plan, there will be some figuring out to do for the last section of the book. The first part (possibly the first 3/4th of the book will be stories of Berona’s War, the end of the book will pose as a possible new treat.
Anthony and I haven’t really figured out any exacts to what we want to do with the over-all look to the third party but we know we want it to be 30% fun mixed in with 70% scary! Maybe something a bit different then the characters from Berona’s War. But what we do know is that it’s going to be a challenge for our little heroes.
The Ele-Alta and the Cropones have plenty of experience with destroying one another but the challenge will come when they are faced with a new foe…An enemy with far more firepower and superior technology. It will be their challenge!
I am a huge fan of the classics. Black and white monster movies, you know, the Evil Alien Brain From Planet X, kinda stuff!!! Godzilla, War of the Worlds, Jason and the Argonauts, anything where you have one who triumphs against many!
Having said that, I love the idea of combining the Ele-Alta’s sheer brute force with the cunning intelligence of the Cropones…and at the end of the day, it’s still not enough! So how will they overcome? Hell if I know, but it’s gonna be good!!!
-Jesse


these are just a few Coffey Shop sketches, trying to figure out a "feel" to the new threat...

In the Works!!!

Even though we are still pushing the book we have out (Berona’s Hundred Year War) we want to keep the momentum going and have already began work on a second book as well, not to mention possibly trying to get out some designs for our “Army Men” type collectable characters.
First things first…The second book, if things go as planned, will be done in the same fashion as the first one except it will be more “story” based. We have been calling it a Tale of Two Runners but the odds are that it will end up being something different. However the content will be the same.
The book will consist of a bunch of short stories about the characters from Berona’s War. Since the first book is a bit of a tease (a beautiful tease, but a tease none the less) we thought we would go ahead and slap the readers with a bit story…actually put them with soldiers in the battle. The feel of the book will be the same as the first because we will be doing the stories with a bit of mixed medium. Some of the stories will be done in the comic style paneling while others will be a few pages of text followed by a picture or two, then we will have a few one page type story (this will be done in a Far Side manner). So the plan is to give a nice mix of story telling. Again, this is the plan and as we all know, plans do change!

Up coming interstitials. Well that’s what we’ve been calling them! However, that’s probably not the right term but you know what….I don’t care! I’ve wanted to do a fun little project in After Effects for a long time now. I ran an idea by Anthony and he said “Lets do it!” So I guess we’re gonna do it :) If we actually get them done, we will post them on our site and they will be short little scenes from the war. We are doing them for no other reason then just to do them and because we think they will be fun.

The Army Men! In the back of “Berona’s War” there is a page of our character in the classic army men poses. We also had this design on our t-shirts (which ended up coming close to selling out). So we figured why not? I admit we know very little about doing molds and such but we are learning and we both feel good about creating a bag of our little heroes! The plan is to have a bag of three Ele-Alta soldiers as well as a bag of three Cropone soldiers. If that works out, we might actually try creating a bag of “Slayer vs. Zombie Pack”

-Jesse

The proto type

On To Borders!!!

We left from there and headed over to Borders where we did more of the same. We were scheduled to be there from 5-7pm but ended up staying until 10pm. We stayed busy the whole time and were both VERY happy with the support we received from fans, friends, family and co-workers…not to mention all of the strangers who just walked up and liked what they saw.
We needed to sell 20-25 books to hit the “High End” list so we can get into the other Borders book stores. At the end of the night Catherine, the store employee, walked up to us and gave us the total. 104 books!!!
At the end of the night we all headed over to Chilies and filled up on sustenance! While eating, Anthony and I continued to talk to about the possibilities of book II, a Tale of Two Runners (working title…haha). We are excited about the possibilities.
-Jesse

Heroes and Dreams Book Signing!

The book signing weekend is over! Anthony and Our friend Brian traveled from Texas to stay the weekend. They arrived late Friday night and we immediately began sketching in some of the books to get a head start for Sat. We knew we pre-sold 40 books to Heroes and Dreams, so we had to get to work on putting sketches in them.
Saturday morning we woke up and continued sketching in the books before we headed out to the comic shop and book store.
We got to Heroes and immediately began to set up and pass out books. We stayed there around 3 hours and stayed busy the whole time. The time went by pretty quickly because they’re a pretty good group of guys there and we always enjoy hanging out with them.

-Jesse

Book Signings

This weekend Anthony will be heading down to Mississippi to join me in a couple of book signing events. First from 1-4 on Sat.22nd we will both be attending a “Meet and Greet” at Heroes and Dreams (http://www.heroesanddreams.com/) where we will be handing out the pre-ordered books as well and signing any new books bought! PLUS we will be selling a limited number of shirts there as well.
After that we will head to Borders in Flowood to do a book signing there too. That signing will be from 5-7pm…also Sat. 22nd
After that we will (traditionally) go for a much needed bite at a local Applebees.

-Jesse

Wizard World Chicago 2009

Anthony and myself just returned from the Wizard Convention in Chicago where we released our book to the public for the first time. We had a pretty damn good time! Not only did we have a good time hanging out with some of our favorite artists, we sold out of all the books we brought.Oddly enough we sold our first book in the plane terminal…who would of thunk it? We were over weight on our luggage so we had to start pulling out books so we could just add them to our carry-on. The lady doing the check in saw the books and wanted one. Not to mention the girl checking us in our hotel wanted one as well. Two books gone and the convention hadn’t even started! Sorry to say we only brought three boxes of books. 75 books in all!Personally the highlight of the con for me was getting the “Skottie Young Seal of Approval!” http://www.skottieyoung.com/Skottie is a hell of a guy, busy as can be…but one hell of a guy! Its one thing when a fan comes up and tells you that they love your work but when someone that you admire tells you they like what you do….its a whole new sense of triumph! Thanks Skottie!So after the rubber band war in the hotel, stupid amount of pizza consumption, selling out of books and shirts, laughing till our sides hurt…I would say we had a great weekend!!!

-Jesse