Disclaimer
I hold no rights to Sailormoon. I am not Takeuchi Naoko-hime. Sailormoon is distributed via Toei and Kodansya. This is just a site built out of love.
The Current Layout
This layout was initially supposed to be made up as a Wordpress theme but that was not to be; while it taught me a lot about coding it wasn't possible to lay it out quite how I wanted and not have things screw up, so I reverted to using the standard coding I have; but I have converted Mizuno Ami's Journal portion of the site to WordPress because that was screwing up royally and looking absolutely awful in the 'standard coding'.
The main site layout uses a picture of Chisaki Hama, which I have used before in ami-chan.net layouts, but changed around a little bit. I love the picture and I just felt that I should use it again.
Mizuno Ami's journal uses a picture of Komatsu Ayaka who plays Aino Minako in PGSM to Chiskai's Mizuno Ami. Both pictures are from Japanese magazines that were scanned up on Three Lights.
Site Designer
I've been a Moonie fan since I was twelve, and caught the DiC dub on Channel 4, early, early in the morning of summer holidays from school, right after 'Biker Mice from Mars' I think this was. Quite fun. If Mercury and Mars hadn't shown up I think I would have stopped watching the show...but thankfully I didn't, and the result of this you see before you now.
The discovery of the internet when I was fifteen and fan sites which showed me that there was more, so much more to Sailormoon than I had discovered, and that certain people were really men not women, and others were couples, and ooh the possibilities. So, once I got to college I tracked down those wonderful things known as 'fansubs' and then started the site, as the somewhat dorky 'Mitzuno Ami's page' and oh, how it has grown, particularly thanks to PGSM which rekindled my waning appreciation for the series. I obsessively watched .avi's of PGSM, and re-did the site, again and again, and I keep saying 'this will be the last of it.' but no, now I have MYU's!!! So, we'll see where this goes...
Why is the site called 'Shades of Blue'?
Shades of Blue was the second name of my webpage. Originally it was 'Mitzuno Ami's Page' and was hosted on angelfire (oh2/bmercury/) and then my ex and I purchased shenkazi.net and I was given space (shenkazi/ami) there. My ex drew me a fanart of Ami to use in the layout, shaded it blue and the site became 'Shades of Blue' we even colorized all the thumbnails >_<;;. Even though the page has now become the main portion of ami-chan.net, as it has always been the most popular, I feel the name is still appropriate.
Some thing that I realized I should note. I do not use a program such as Dreamweaver, or an HTML aid when coding my sites. Everything is ALWAYS done hand-coded in Notepad which means it takes a VERY long time. I started work on this current layout on the 16th of June. It took me about three hours to do the layout and then the coding, well it's 21st of June and I'm still working on it, having been doing about three-six hours a day on it.
Previous Layout:
The picture in the layout is one of my favorite genga images of Mizuno Ami, one I've had on my computer for quite some time and tried to use on several different layouts, without success. The font used is called 'Billo' and comes to me from dafont.com via Yaten at Starnigh Industries. The layout was coded using Adobe Photoshop CS on June 16, 2006 and coded on the same day.
Shades of Blue v 8.0
This layout was designed...in the summer of 2005. The genga capture comes from three-lights.net, the anime and myu caps were sent to me by Seiya of CAY, and the PGSM capture is from the Kirari Musical, which I capped myself.
The layout was designed in Photoshop CS. In a departure from the normal hectic and busy layouts, full of brushes and layers, I thought I would do something simple and functional. This layout is hopefully easier to read, and perhaps more long lasting, because I don't know how often I'll have to play around with new layouts in the future.
Shades of Blue v. 7.0
This layout was created in November 2004 using filters and brushes of Adobe Photoshop and screen-caps and scans from various sources. The genga sticker of Mercury and the image of Ami are from three-lights.net the anime shot and the Myu picture were part of some images which Seiya donated to me, and the image of Ami from Infinity Collection is part of one I have had saved on my computer for a long time which I believe I found at Manga Style.
Shades of Blue v. 6
This layout was made in commemoration of the end of the PGSM series, using images from the last few episodes of PGSM, and some 'new' brushes I had downloaded and installed from angelic trust. It was designed on 22 October 2004.
Shades of Blue v 5.0
This cap of the layout is from when it was in the 'working' stages still, before I decided I had so many layouts that I would seperate SoB and the main site again. The finalized version is lost in the mists now. I also realize I have done so many incarnations of 'Shades of Blue' that I have forgotten what number it's at. This one I think was six or seven, but the current one isn't even numbered on the layout anyway.