Nexus: Simon, Dominic, and Cheyenne

Ah, bless Figure Illustration 1 for giving me the excuse amidst all of my maddening schedule to HAVE to work in a sketchbook. It's so hard to find the time otherwise, when I'm rifling madly through hundreds of loose sheets of animation paper on a daily basis! This is one of seven images I have to have in my sketchbook for the class. Ultimately, these seven images are supposed to lead up to a final concept for our final project - an illustration of our "Alter Ego." My argument is, as animators, our characters ARE our alter egos in one form or another, seeing as, as the "actors" behind the characters we create and animate, part of us is reflected in each and every one of them.

In this images' case, here's a trio of characters from my "Nexus" series: Simon Valkyrie (Top Left) Dominic Drowe (Top Right) and Cheyenne Valkyrie. Simon and Dom are the Alphas or leaders of rivaling Feral (or what humans would loosely consider "werewolf") packs. Cheyenne is the monkey wrench in their rivalry: Simon's firstborn and Dominic's mate. As you could imagine, all hell breaks loose amidst the lot quite frequently indeed.

Drawn in a cute little 5x8 inch sketchbook I picked up the other day.

♥Mel

New CCS "Game Art" Reel

My apologies for being so quiet as of late! Unfortunately, everything I've been working on is still either in production or in the possession of professors for whatever reason. I'll be able to accumulate the lot by the end of the semester though, for sure, and share it with you all. For now, here's the latest demo reel from the college I attend, this one centering around concept\game art. I have three pieces in this one, which is quite the honor indeed!

-Mel

Akinah Expressions Test

A quick pencil test from this evening - our assignment was simply to animate the transition between three different facial expressions in a character. So, here's poor Akinah, having a rather bad day. I wish I'd had more time to putz around with it then just a couple hours this evening, but cest la vie! Onto the next assignment first thing tomorrow morning. Also of note: The nifty music clip there is from RoyaltyFreeMusic.Com

♥Mel

Agave for Emma Progresson Video

A progression video for the "Agave" image i created for my buddy Emma, in an Unavisi Community art exchange over this past summer. Mechanical pencil line art, Adobe CS3 and a Wacom tablet were used.

♥Mel

This Is My Hell

Our assignment this weekend?
"Animate something weird."
Well, ok then.

♥Mel

Zensei "Bank" Image Progression

I enjoy creating these, actually - it's another step by step display of the progression of my Zensei "Bank" image (which, in all actuality, is really a tradesman's tent for the Zensei clan) for the Environments and Characters class I took last semester. Set to "The Fremen Qizarate" by Brian Tyler from the Children of Dune soundtrack, a tune I tend to lean back upon frequently when thinking about this particular tribe of people from TKP.

♥Mel

The Dawn Watchman (Tobias Rough Pencil Test)

A rough, 7-second, three scene pencil test for my Tech 2 midterm assignment. Tobias ("Toby") hears danger approach Kemono territory, and alerts the post on the edge of the forest across the way. A smoke signal tells him that his warning call has been a success.

Update: Also, to answer the question of, "ugh, why isn't it longer?" Trust me, I think this thing could benefit from at least another 15 seconds of acting time. Unfortunately, per the assignment, we had to be exact in the timing down to the very frame in this assignment, or we failed. So, 1 second (24 frames ) for the first shot, 4 seconds (96 frames) for the second shot, and 2 seconds, 7 frames (56 frames) for the third. Hope that helps!

♥Mel

Unavisi Sketch Exchange: Xand for Lee

An egregiously late all-digital sketch exchange for my buddy Lee of her drop-dead gorgeous Terina character Xand, from the Unavisi community. Lee, thank you again for your gracious patience with this!

♥Mel

Life Studies Set 1

As a bit of something different, here's a set of figure drawings from the Figure Illustration 1 class I'm in this semester - there will be more of this to come, for certain. It's an incredibly busy class. Please excuse the somewhat grainy quality of these images, they're taken with my aging digital camera, as the tablet they're drawn in is quite large. Models present: Richard, Ron, Harry and Heather.

-Mel

Penelope's Debut

Assignment two for Traditional Animation Techniques 2: everyone in class was assigned a line from Sweet's "Ballroom Blitz" with the job of designing a character and lip syncing them to it. It was a first-ever lip syncing attempt for many of us, myself included. Challenging, but fun. Here's Penelope the Shark.

-Mel

Suspicion

I'll definitely try to get better photos of this soon, but for now, I'm in too great of a scramble to keep up with homework, so this will do. It's the first painting of four I have to do this semester for Figure Illustration One, this image's theme being "Suspicion." The model is a classmate, Courtney. It's still rough, I think, but as my first stab at painting in over two years, I'm still fairly pleased with the result.

-Mel

OIAF 2008

A visual medley put together quickly today of photos and clips taken from my trip to the 2008 Ottawa International Animation Festival. Set to "Life in Technicolor" by Coldplay.

Available in a high quality version on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgo_gKMu4J8

-Mel

www.melmillerart.com

In anticipation for Ottawa (http://ottawa.awn.com/) this upcoming weekend, I've purchased a domain name for my up and coming website which, for now, forwards here to my official artwork blog. You can now reach this page through http://www.melmillerart.com, an address that is now featured upon my new Ottawa 2008 edition of business cards. On that note, here are my four new card designs, (which will be accompanying a 36 page portfolio for everyone's perusal) destined for Canada!

Take care,
Mel

Oldies but Goodies

In rifling through my files, and compiling images for my Ottawa-bound portfolio, I came across a couple of older images that I had not yet shared with you all, and still enjoy enough to do so. Included are two concept images from my TKP series pitch, which is continually in development, as well as a ship design for The Defiant, another concept image for Brianne Goetz's "Unavisi", as well as a silly little illustration of the Norse anecdote, "The Tale of Thorstein Shiver."

Cheers,
Mel

Nyx Yawn Rough Pencil Test

I've started Traditional Animation Tech 2 this semester, the first of my Junior year. The first assignment was a rough three-second reaction test, with fast and slow movements, and emotion of some variety. As the first of only two pencil tests I've had the chance to do in the past four months, (I cannot post the other as of yet, as it's for a freelance job, which is still in production) I'm pretty happy with it, and may go back in to flesh it out an clean it up later.

More to come, for sure - college is back in session.

Also, it's wholly worth noting I will be attending the Ottawa International Animation Festival again this year from the 18th through the 21st. Looking forward to it!

Cheers,
Mel