Sindy Anna Jones

Big thanks to a few people who’ve bought lots from my wishlist recently! Very generous, thank you. Someone commented that I should charge therapy rates for my comics, haha that’s a fine idea! Glad they have some impact in what does seem a rather dark world, especially right now. Lots could be said about these…

OK I’m writing a proper grown-up blog post that I’ll publish on Saturday, but in the meantime, here’s an old scene file I opened this morning and … added a tie to … Wow, that’s … jazzy, Charlie. What are we thinking there, eh? Who knows, who knows. The marvelous human mind, eh? Never ceases…

OK basically, I’ve nearly finished the rendering for Lithium #6. And I’ve done half the pages. So … it’s not going to be this week but it’s going to be soon! Yay! Without giving too much away, it’s freaking hot, this one. That’s the trouble with investing so much energy into developing characters and scenarios,…

It’s weird rendering in 3D sometimes because lighting has to be setup by the render engine to cope with whatever it’s fudging about the real world. So like in this scene I want it to be really dark, just moonlit highlights, but the renderer’s like “NOPE.” and perfectly exposes what I’d intended to be under-exposed….

My oh my we’re nearly …   Yes, yes I hear you. I want it too, believe me. It’s been a tough old summer, hasn’t it? Time for some Autumn goodness to cool the blood and settle the nerves. I want to especially send some of the good loving to my American friends – you…

Well. Well then. Huh. It will be out this week. Probably not tomorrow or Thursday, but definitely by Friday! Wahooooo! Another thanks to the people who bought me 3D props a few weeks back – a few of them make it in near the end of this comic. Couple of haircuts, a jumpsuit and a…

  You know when you do a piece of work, a difficult project or whatever, and you don’t know if it’s going to be a box-ticking exercise or a profound piece of wonderment straight out of the soul of the universe? And then there’s this tipping-point, where suddenly you know … this is going to…

I’ve put together some more scenes to start to show the extent of the baddie’s lair up on the moon-moon, and honestly it took no time at all! Mostly the problem with this stuff is lighting – it makes such a massive difference to the feel of a place. It’s all about Chiaroscuro. The ‘tank…

I wanted to create a comic with just a few characters, and tons of awkward ‘human’ situations. Because they’re the funniest. OK, maybe not funniest but they do happen and are all part of the great wonderful fiasco of real life. And they’re great (like scifi) for getting to the core of what makes us,…

OK this is a silly post, but … I just went into the Co-op round the corner (it’s a supermarket in England), and my total came to £6.69. And … seeing as I am a FUNCTIONING adult, I literally said that total, out loud, then looked the Co-op checkout guy in the eye and said…

OK it’s all going to kick off a little in Lithium comic #3. We discover a little more about Charlie’s Mum’s dark galaxy-domination secrets, and so we need somewhere for the baddies to chat. To that end, I’ve used 3d architectural and prop freebies to create the HQ that was hinted at in comic #2….

Good news everyone, my render machine is alive! Kinda. Anyway I seem to be able to get it to do stuff. Mostly. And I’ve taken this opportunity to limit the CPU usage to like 95% because it does seem to die when it’s trying really hard. Chill out, I say. Have a break now and…

WHY must real life rear its ugly/beautiful head so bloody often eh EH??? It seems if we try to care and love, then we are choosing a difficult, narrow path indeed! The more I understand the path, the harder it seems to get, what the hell is going on?!?! At this rate I think I…

OK! I have a plan. Life has done that thing of avalanching in, but fear not, the comic is almost there. Wish I could release the comic today as anticipated, but I need to (1) finish the last 10 pages of speech bubbles (won’t take long), and then (2) I need a couple of hours…

In Vladimir Nab0kov’s most famous controversial book, the main character goes through three distinct phases: the approach, the act, and the fallout.  This is often the storyteller’s thing, but I firmly believe there is a forth phase available to all humans: transcendence. We learn from our own story and we change. We change, we become…

Really enjoying the great Free 3D stuff that’s out there, this apartment is based on a freebie architectural ‘balcony’ furniture set – I just moved everything inside, changed the textures, then setup the lighting and … ok it was quite a lot of work, but here’s the dev and a few character poses to test…

 … is the break-the-4th-wall face. Sounds (and looks) stupid, I know, I know. I’ve done 3D comics for a little while now, and though I haven’t really got the hang of caustics (it’s a light paths thing; you’ll see caustics slightly improve even within Lithium 8 …), it’s fair to say I have mostly figured…

So I have this lovely friend, without whom I wouldn’t have been able to do these comics. They … basically … and don’t judge us on this … they pinched a render machine from their work for me. I know, it sounds bad, but the thing is it was an old mainframe piece of kit,…

Anyone who’s done any 3D will have learnt the lesson that as soon as you add objects your scene rendering time jumps up – add five chairs and things slow down, add three people and you triple the processing maths; human characters are particularly complex. So you’ll probably appreciate this test render. Fifty actual people…

I don’t like this lighting test, but was going for the deserted twilight-lit office space kinda thing. Not sure I’ll use the scene at all, but it’s cool there’s so many free props like this that come with the software. Anyway that’s all. Quick update to say hello! Hello!

I know what you’re gonna say … I’m spending too much time playing with the Charlie character. Well, maybe. But sorting her clothing is much harder than with Jack, because there are loads of ‘guy’ freebies out there that are normal. Jeans: done. Tshirt: done. Easy. But the female clothing freebies are stupid bloody peephole…

OK this post has nothing to do with ham, I just didn’t want to write the word ‘harm’. This isn’t a big rant or a dark self harm story, though don’t worry. Basically, right, I went to some festivals recently … I know. If you’re an introvert, you’ll know what a big/horrific deal this is!…

I’ve had a lot of feedback over the years. I think it’s an important thing to engage with; if we don’t listen to feedback, what we’re saying is we have all the answers in life; we’re saying “Screw other people’s stinky opinions, my ego’s more happy in isolation”. But feedback can help us grow (I…

OK in this post is a free 3D character giveaway, a request and a competition! Woop woop! REQUEST:  I’ve been playing with an idea, but like lots of my ideas I kinda need to start turning it into 3D scenes to see how it might look, and decide if the idea would actually work as…

Thought I’d log into the ol’ Google-mo-tron and find out [vague information] about my blog visitors. It’s been interesting producing a series of comics which is increasingly equality-focussed in its values – I wondered if that correlated with the type of visitor I got. Turns out it does! I started off with what is probably…

Just occasionally you do a piece of work and you can step back and go “yes”. Tap-tap Know what I mean? Even your harsh inner critic has to shut the f#ck up and nod gently. For that brief moment, your periods of self hatred or lack of confidence or imposter syndrome or inferiority complex or…

Someone recently commented (fairly) on the latest Lithium comic; “It might have gotten a little too on-the-nose about the religious subtext. I understand that religion has been used to harm others and that’s horrible but faith can just as easily lead to peaceful, loving persons. I respect you trying to say something but it just…

I’m sort of learning that good stories are rooted in the real world, that there’s something rich and salty about truth. I’ve been developing Jack and Charlie with details from my actual ‘first time’ sort of stuff. Except with me it’s ‘third time’, because my first time was with a guy who was really fragmented…

OK my work has calmed down a tiny bit, and I thought I’d show some working for the upcoming comic. Just to show some of my thinking. Basically, I took Charlie’s Rainbow Brite top from an earlier comic (which was, itself made out of a chopped up swimming costume mesh), and stuck a Princess Peach…

Okay, you know how I like to put film/TV and niche pop culture references in my comics, well there’s also self-referential consistency MADNESS in every comic, too. Here are the top 10 silly ones from Lithium #10 … how many did you spot?!   ^ circled in red is Skylar’s goddamn TOAST which she dropped…

Think about it right, God gets to show off the magic in minority stuff like orangutans, seahorses, human knee joints, unusual little cosmic events, moon coronas, stuff like that. So of course he’s left handed, because that means creativity and zaniness [sarcasm]. So of course they’ll be left handed in my upcoming comic [not sarcasm]….

Pictured: hung over. Well, the new comic’s had just under a million hits, and it sounds like people like it, which is great. Extremely great (Nicolas Cage in The Rock reference … oh God I’ve got to stop putting Nicolas Cage references in everything I HAVE A DISEASE HALP). I’ve added the comments to the…

So I’ve had a little break from Lithium, celebrated the completion of 0HB, and have been pondering and writing a little. Thoroughly recommend it tbh! Write your shit down, people – seriously it does wonders. Hahaha, aahhhh, Skylar.

Get ready to meet new characters, find out a shit-ton of plot, and get excited about what the hell is going to happen next! That’s right, comic #3 is on the way. Don’t hold your breath, but I’m about halfway through and it’s … pretty good I think. But then I thought  comic 3 was…

Here’s a picture of some naked people with guns.  I’m sitting in a trendy cafe working on the comic AS WE SPEAK. Now, I know it’s a trendy cafe because I’m surrounded by bubbly, noisy people wearing lots of crochet and pastels and I know I’m aaaalmost trendy because I’m wearing something very flowery indeed…

Update: tune in this Sunday for some behind-the-scenes nonsense: It’s interesting looking at some of your feedback for ohb8; most applauding the dig I had at billionaire culture, but a few people saying I was wrong about Musk. I mean it’s an interesting one, isn’t it? I think the point is that billionaires simply shouldn’t…

A few people mentioned that they were surprised by the SH scene – how it was weird going from all smiles in the bra shop to urgent home fiasco. Fair enough. There’s a few reasons why I did it like that, and maybe I was wrong to jump so viciously from one to the other,…

Love those moments when the stage is set and there’s a quiet minute before the brilliance occurs. This happens in the real world too – the right people are feeling ready, they’re present, and the environment is all set. Lovely anticipation. So here are loads of final test renders, putting characters in different scenes and…