Attack of the WereChicken!

Eric's commission is now complete! I admittedly had a wonderful time with this whole concept - it was far too silly not to. It started as a mere play between a werechicken and a rather unfortunate coyote.... and between the two of us, just sort of spiraled further and further into silliness from there. Thank you, Eric, for being such a wonderfully humored, creative commissioner!

Up next, I'll be starting Marie's latest commission - I'm quite looking forward to it. I've been drawing droves of anthropomorphic creatures as of late between commissions and contract work - it'll be a nice breather to be able to draw/paint humans again. :)

Cheers,
-Mel

ARMSmasters Blog Banner

 

In efforts to continue the momentum of the ARMSmasters Project, I've recently begun two new undertakings: Creating what will be an expansive public production blog for the project that will be available for all to see, and collaborating with the project's awesome creator, one mister Mike Winn, to create finalized, polished concept art and design model sheets for each of the Project's characters. The first of those collaborations is the above image, created for the header of the new blog, wherein Mike gave me a myriad of wonderful rough sketches of the characters, and I cleaned up, arranged and colored them into the above final image. Below is the process of this image's creation - the same process of which we plan to use for the model sheets to come.

Blogger actually won't allow me to upload the Process image any larger than what's been provided here (click to enlarge) - I'll upload a more viewer-friendly version elsewhere soon, and will direct you all to that link.

UPDATE: The aforementioned "More Viewer-Friendly Version" :)

Thanks for viewing!
-Mel

Kavi, Aeslyn and Inari (Doodles and Such)

My apologies for the slight lull in posts this month all - I've been keeping plenty busy. Apart from contract work, which has been keeping me busy enough on its own, I've been pecking away at commissions, teaching a weekly character design class for a wonderfully creative group of middle schoolers, and have picked back up with aiding the ARMSmasters Project, cleaning up shadow test animation, collaborating with its creator, Mike, to begin to create polished, finalized concept art and character designs, as well as create a public production blog for the project, which I'll be sharing with you all in the next week.

Above is a page out of my current sketchbook of a little blond haired, golden-eyed lantern-baring fellow of no particular origin, by the name of Kavi (Kuh-Vi). Started sketching him during last week's design class, and finished him at yesterday's ARMSmasters production meeting. Below is the current status of the Aeslyn shot form the ARMSmasters trailer - now with shadow model, animated by Patrick Stannard, cleaned up by myself and composited by my other half, Niles. Below that still is a quick color study I created of a couple of 2-inch-tall thumbnail doodles - outfit and color model ideation for the ARMSmaster's Inari.

ARMSmasters Aeslyn Turn shot from Niles Bontrager on Vimeo.

 

Also! Less I forget, this blog now has specialized pages - About, Links, Gallery, Demo Reel, Resume, Comission Info and Commission List pages, to be precise. I'll have their individual content set up fully soon.

More artwork soon, and as always, thanks for sticking with me, everyone.

-Mel

WereChicken WIP and Moxie Progression

 

UPDATE: Here's flat colors! On to the final render.

 Attack of the WereChicken (Line Art)

Alongside a concept art freelance gig, I'm currently having an absolute blast working on Xyk's commission. He has had all sorts of good-humored ideas to go by, making every step of the process a great time. I'm looking forward to getting this project to color. That said, here's the line art for what will be a mock horror movie poser, "Attack of the WereChicken!"

Also, just for the fun of it, below is a quick doodle and it's steady progression into flat colors of my character Moxie, created in those rare tidbits of time available while I'm awaiting feedback on projects. Here's hoping this one gets finished amidst everything else ;)

More again soon. Cheers, everyone!
-Mel

SNAFU Review and Production Blogs of Note

First post of the new year brings us a great new review of Thunderbean Animation's definitive "Private SNAFU Golden Classics" DVD release, which I was recently given the opportunity to help illustrate the cover for. The Review, written by Pietro A. Shakarian at goldenagecartoons.com was kind enough to include a very positive segment about the cover art as well.

"The cover art by Eric Goldberg and Mel Miller is not only impressive but also seems to possess more energy and feeling than most of the cover art from Warner Home Video's recent Looney Tunes DVD compilations."

For the full DVD review, and some interesting history about past attempts to bring SNAFU to DVD, check out its page at the Golden Age Cartoons website. And as always, Private SNAFU Golden Classics comes highly recommended, and is now available at Amazon.com.

Received my own copy of the DVD today. Thanks, Steve!

Also! Over the past couple of years, the College for Creative Studies' Entertainment Arts department has sprouted a number of production blogs for its students' individual senior film projects. Two of those blogs, this year, have really stood out, and are well worth the look at their film maker's progress. The gals behind these productions are extremely talented - I wanted to share them with you all here:

• "Dark Circus" by Erin Greener
• "GatorDog" by Serene Wyatt

While much of the work I've been doing as of late is under NDA, I will have more artwork to post for you all soon, care of commissions and the rare free-moment doodle. A tremendous thanks to everyone for supporting this blog into the new year, and here's for an exciting 2011!

-Mel