Odds and Ends

 She lives! Life's been super hectic lately, hence my scarcity. Thanks for sticking with this blog though - I quite appreciate it. As of late I've been pulling what's amounted to about a 70 hour work week, occasionally more, hopping between various gigs. It's been fun, I've learned a tremendous amount, particularly where 3d Stereoscopic film conversion and Nuke compositing is concerned... but damn, if it hasn't kept my time at bay.

  

Above is the first page in a new sketchbook I've been dicking around with for going on three weeks now in my "Spare Time." And by that I mean a literal line here... a line there... a scritch and scribble on occasion, if I'm lucky. An agonizingly slow process when "free time" amounts to "two minutes until you're up for dailies" - but still an entertaining and much needed little project, especially given my recent musings over the idea of turning Nexus into a graphic novel one of these days (Though, hell if I know where I'd get the time. lol!)

Anyhow! Here's Nexus in its current incarnation, including some new-comers. Clockwise from top left: Blitzkrieg, Geist, Kayo, Noir, Creeper, Oracle, Shay, Dante, Inferno, Annex, and Velocity. All are pretty spot-on in their designs as I see them at current, save for V - She'll be up to bat for a re-design soon, as this look just isn't suiting her character well at all. Over all though, this page has been a fun little diversion, the minute or two per scribbles I got in on it. Plus it was really fun to draw this gang again - it's been a while!

Unfortunately, for the moment, I haven't much more I can show you in way of drawings - 

... Though that's certainly not to say I haven't been drawing in abundance over recent weeks. The above dandy stack is the collection of drawings I've done for one of my freelance gigs as of late (Not including rough sketches - all those have been binned. Had I kept those too, this stack would easily be thicker by a third) Alas, it'll likely be a long while before I can share any of these with you all. One day!

I am amidst Riot's character sheet for ARMSmasters, and Davina's bust commission is underway. I'll also likely be moving on to another "sanity-keeper" sketch page soon, so more art will be on its way... albeit slowly. ;)

Thanks for viewing!

-Mel

An ARMSmasters Weekend

First off, once again, welcome new watchers, and thank you for viewing and supporting my wee bit of an art spot here on the 'net. I appreciate it :)

ARMSmasters: Tyr Hammer Swing Clean-Up from Mel Miller on Vimeo.

I winded up putting a good deal of much-needed focus time towards the ARMSmasters Project this weekend. Above is clean up animation for Tyr's  hammer swing shot - it'll be passed along to my roommate for shading pass, and I'll be doing cleanup on the shadow passes as well.

TYR Clean-Up Stills

As is seemingly the case for every character for this series I've had the opportunity to draw so far, Tyr is absurdly fun to draw. He's a great character as well - both brains and brawn, engineer and warrior. Damn spiffy.

Sekaida, first full-body poses

Full-body shots of Sekaida's outfit. I've altered it from the previous image - buckles and straps have replaced other details, to better reflect these predominate elements in other now-established sky pirate characters' designs. She's also been pushed a bit more "pirate" - hat, boots and blades. I'd still like her to have the giant blunderbus as her signature item, but these blades - a mix of swords and defensive gauntlets - ended up being an interesting and suiting addition to her repertoire of weapons. I've also leaned more towards having her be full-figured: plenty of "junk in the trunk," as they'd say... mostly because it's fun to draw. I'd like to keep the warm-color palette previously posted, as having them against what will often be cool blues of the sky appeals to me. I may re-draw her full-body stance entirely though - I'm still not all that keen on the pose. It worked better in its rougher stages. For now, though, this at least gets the extent of her outfit across :)

Concept ideation for Rune.

My take on Rune, a member of the cast she's finally getting the TLC he deserves. I couldn't resist, honestly - I got rather attached to the fellow working on clean-up animation for him. I absolutely love trickster/Fae type of characters - and Rune strikes me as such a sassy bloke. This is how he appears in my head currently at least, taking into account versions already pitched. I've used predominantly darker colors then have been seen as of yet, with lighter ones to pop details here and there, have him in a two-tone vest that buttons in a triangular pattern across his torso, giving it something of a harlequin effect, have made the purple slightly redder in tone, given him a rusty orange as a secondary "theme" sort of color (with the dark pants, vest and boots, I think it helps "butch up" the purple coat and hat a bit, while still helping him look like a sassy, confident, flamboyant fellow he is) and have maintained the quirky, more fly-away hair seen in the  trailer, be cause it's ridiculously fun to draw.

Completely unrelated to ARMSmasters, I know, but I also ended up getting "Waking the Big Dogs" as far as flat-colors before having to set it aside for other more important things, and wanted to share it real quick. I'll plug away at rendering it properly soon enough.

 Nexus' Kayo & Dominic

I'll be back on commissions later today, starting with Kate's kitchen-bound pirate trio. Looking forward to it!

Cheers,
Mel

Waking the Big Dogs

Somebody's Kibble in 3... 2...

A drawing whose doodle started Wednesday night at my roommates and I's usual Buffallo Wild Wings venture, and was picked back up last night with a little dash of insomnia. It's Kayo and Dom again... I'm on a kick. This time, Kayo is in her human form, and Dom in his full-on hulking "werewolf"-type form. I'm not sure who Kayo's waking the ol' boy over to rat out, but I suspect that mystery someone is going to wish he'd gotten a better head start in a moment or two.

-Mel

Color Pups and a New Look.

Dominic & Kayo

I actually drew this rather quickly months ago, and the sketch fell to the wayside. Between waiting on information needed to proceed with my next commission, having been illustrating so many humans lately, and knowing I have a couple of canine-related commissions coming up, I thought it'd be a good idea to get in some color-practice on something fuzzy. Also was the need to overcome a recent obstacle - my Wacom tablet has been DOA for months: I've been coloring strictly with the use of a mouse for as long, and hadn't yet really had the opportunity to tackle a stylized and timely method of coloring fur at length. This was the perfect opportunity to do so, and I enjoy the results.

A Spankin' New Look

Also, my newly re-designed double-sided business cards, created in eager anticipation for this year's Ottawa International Animation Festival. Last year's theme was a simple Caravan layout - this year, it's mirroring my new website at www.melmillerart.com. The print version, I should note, will contain my phone contact on the back as well. 

Cheers,
Mel

Poltergeist and Mook

A quickie from my overly-uneventful pre-Spring-Break proctor shift on campus. This here is, along with the previously posted Velocity, another new character I've been considering for my Nexus series' line-up: 12 year old Geist and her little goopy goulie buddy Mook. I keep giggling that it sort of looks like she birthed poor Mook here which was hardly on my mind when I sketched out the poses. Moreover, she's supposed to be creating\manifesting the thing from her hand, as her spiffy comic book powers allow her. We'll pretend it looks like that instead.

Yet another all marker and micron image from a sketchbook named Quirk. The base marker sketch to this was particularly rough because I had no idea what I was going to draw when I began. I am pleased though that I'm getting faster drawing like this. So far so good - the exercise is proving effective! I hope to get speedier through these exercises to help me pick up a bit of pace with Caravan's cleanup in the coming weeks. Here's hoping!

For the record, her hair isn't nearly the intense teal blue you see here - I envision it far lighter - ghost-like. Such is the nature of my hilariously limited marker collection at the moment, however. I make do ;)

I'm on spring break this upcoming week. A large portion of that will be spent completing all remaining rough animation on Caravan and hopping right back into clean-up and final composite. Updates over on the film's production blog will likely come of that. Ill be keeping with Quirk doodles as well, for the sake of sanity (And hopefully skill\portfolio strengthening too!)

More again soon,
Mel

The Art of Quirk (Post 001)

It's been ages since I've last challenged myself to keep a proper sketchbook - not out of my desire to do so, but out of sheer lack of time, what with having a 6+ minute film to create for my thesis. I decided this past week, though, that it was not only more then time to try, but needed, simply for the ability to draw things outside of Caravan, and excise the ridiculousness that routinely runs rampant in my mind.

So, I bought a sketchbook and a mitt-full of markers. I named said sketchbook Quirk. From here on out, Quirk will be filled primarily in marker-and-ink drawings where I will not allow myself to erase, and push myself to draw faster, and commit more readily to line. So far, it's been a fruitful production.

A Cynic's Life For Me

A teensy bit of a self portrait. Anyone who sees me on a daily basis can pretty much count on this outfit or some variation thereof. Ah, the predictability of animators with nary enough free time to consider that fashion... stuff.

'Guin and Carl.

'Guin discovers Carl, the stupid-happy turnip. Boop.

Inkster, PP, and V

Inkster the creepy comb-over Octopus (Originally doodles for my roommate's awesome "Draw an octopus!" challenge) Velocity, a new-ish character I've been considering for Nexus, and the Pillow Puppy.

WTF

My other half Niles and I had a dinner-out-n-draw-weird-shit date Saturday, and decided upon the following odd combos to doodle: A rabbit and a chimp, a lemur and an armadillo, and a goldfish and an old man.

The Gully Draconis

Dragon-esque creatures in my TKP series are called the "Draconis" species, and they are comprised of numerous types. Little forest-dwelling Dracs (roughly the size of your living room coffee table, are a breed I'd not yet drawn. Despite some proportional fail brought on by making myself draw as fast as I could swing it, I enjoy how this fellow turned out.

More again soon,
Mel

Wolfen Dom and Chey (Lineart)

I once again reached a point where I needed to doodle something that wasn't a 10 year old girl (whoo, Caravan!) And settled with doodling Dominic Drowe and Cheyenne Valkyrie from my Nexus series (Dom being the black haired fellow, and Cheyenne the gal in this previously posted image) in their wolfen forms as a means of taking a wee bit of a break this weekend. I'll color this one soon as well.

Good news on the Caravan front: I now have a good two minutes 10 seconds of the film completed. That's over a quarter of what will be the final product, a quarter of the way into my semester. I'm right on schedule! It feels awesome.

More again soon,
-Mel

"Nexus: Feral Kin" Colored

Another Finals assignment for the semester out of the way: Score. Given some compositional tweaking from the original sketchbook lineart posted earlier, I gave Nexus' Simon, Dominic and Cheyenne here a proper color treatment: More then was required for the assignment itself, which was to simply have a certain ammount of drawings in a sketchbook completed, granted, but hey. This was fun... and if one can make Finals fun, by all means. Rock it.

♥Mel

MSB Pages 1-4

I recently started a new rather dinky thing of a sketchbook - all of 5x8 inches - perfect, I'm finding, for doodling on the fly and note taking. For something a little different, and to give you and idea of how I'm keeping a sketchbook recently, here's the first 4 pages of the MSB ("MiniSketchBook") all 4 of which contain notes and doodles surrounding Nexus' new original incarnation. Characters Pictured: Dominic Drowe, Simon Valkyrie, Cheyenne Valkyrie (Kayo) and Vinnie Lennox.

♥Mel

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

Kayo Expressions

Facial expressions for Characters and Environments. I really enjoyed doing this one quite a bit - it gave me the opportunity to draw Kayo once again; one of my oldest and most favored original characters. Above, the finished sheet. Below, the rough sketch and clean line art stages for some of the busts, to give you an look at my process of working.

2007 Rewind

A hand full of my artwork from 2007 worth a second glance. In order of appearance: "Bring Me That Horizon" (Character: Mallaurie DuPre), "Inferno" (Character: Trevor O'Brien), "Power Play" (Characters: Moxie, Grimm, Cravencro), "Kayo 2007" (Character: Cheyenne Valkyrie), "A Wanderer's Welcome" (Characters: Wren, Thorn, and Apple. Thorn and Apple are property of Peta Fenton), "Noir: Personal Hell" (Character: Collin Shardwick), "Dragon: Necrosis" (Character: Necrosis), "Nexus 2007" (Characters: Top row: Shay, Dante, Creeper and Noir. Middle row: Annex, Inferno, and Kayo. Bottom: Oracle)