On the Hunt

Another digital mixed media piece for Matihao Whenua. Grimm, withe her "adopted" little sister Sheol and biological older sister Moxie, on a summer afternoon hunt.

Mechanical pencil line art and soft-shaded digital colors for the characters, and as with the last piece I played around with a mix of photomanipulation and digital paint for the background. Roughly 12 stock photos were included in total.

Stock imagery credit (and humble thanks) go to the following stellar resources and stock artists:

http://barns-en.deviantart.com
http://Stock-Stuff.deviantart.com
http://bobbistock.deviantart.com
as well as CGtextures.com

As always, thank you for taking the time to look :)

♥Mel

Moxie in Whenua Forest

Grimm's older sister Moxie (yup, she officially has one!) on the outskirts of the Whenua Forest... and finally with a concrete design. More on her soon - I'm wildly attached to her already.

A piece helping to push me through an utterly intense art block, caused by super busy happenings including but not limited to Animation competitions (what an experience!), having had to fight to the teeth to secure my senior year at college financially (check), find proper summer work (also a success), and searching for a house to rent in this lovely economy (Still on the hunt)

But I digress.

Moxie. I think she's incredibly reflective of my somewhat voracious, pithy, hardened take on things as of late. She's had to work like hell for everything she's got - and she's still fighting.

A digital multimedia piece: pencil line art, digital coloration as well as a photomanipulation/digital paint mix for the background.

Thanks for viewing, guys. You rock. Hope you're well <3

Stock Credits (and humble thank yous) go to:
Deviantart's Moonchilde-Stock, maliniaq-stock, and Momotte2stocks
As well as a number of textures from CGtextures.com

♥Mel

CCS 2009 Year-End Review Reel

At the end of every semester, CCS faculty reviews each student's work and progression throughout the year. Each year, I compile a Review Reel highlighting everything I've done for non-liberal-arts classes. It has, most definitely, been a very busy year.

All visual work seen here is by and copyright of Mel Miller 2008-2008, apart from: Animation assistance on shot four of "Cabin Cat" was provided by Patrick Stannard (http://kiltedanimator.blogspot.com/) Line art for the Code Monkey backgrounds were dawn by Niles Bontrager (http://nilesart.blogspot.com/)

Music by Kevin McLeod, which he has graciously provided for public use under the Creative Commons License. Check out more of Kevin's wonderful resources at http://incompetech.com

♥Mel

Mel Miller Spring 09 Demo Reel

A slightly older version of my current demo reel, the newer of which, having been retimed in areas - images get more air time, for example) will be posted as soon as I get the opportunity and time to sit and render it out in a net-friendly size (It's original to-DVD setting is currently somewhere around 6 gigs!)

♥Mel

Caravan: Mia Ref Sheet & Environment 1

More Caravan concept art! Above is the first official character model sheet for Mia Talbert, and below is the Talbert Farmhouse where she and her father Ethan live. I will be working on the production of this project continually throughout the next four months and beyond, so keep and eye out!

♥Mel

Cabin Cat: 3/4 Clean-Up Animation

Cabin cat, with the first three shots in clean lines. I'll definitely be completing shot four as well, as soon as time permits. This was from our first project from this semester in Tech 3 - which was also, consequently, our first multi-character, multi-shot dialog test. Ted the Trucker faces the harsh truth about his beloved kitty. Dialog clip is from Six Feet Under. My buddy Pat Stannard co-animated the kitty in shot 4.

♥Mel

Caravan: Mia Tie-Down Animation & Code Monkey

On the plus side of things, I genuinely loved the other two of three assignments in Tech 3 this semester. Here is the fully animated, tied-down test for the keyframe test I posted here on 03/27/09. The assignment required us to have a character react to our classmate's plastic pig "MacGyver" which was had to come into the shot from the top left corner, and leave through the top right. Mia here doesn't notice said piggie until he hits the ground behind her, is startled by him at first, but quickly becomes irritated for invading her personal space after she gets up to investigate him. He's promptly punted from the shot. Mia, for the record, is the main character for my Senior Thesis film, "Caravan" which is currenctly in production. This was my first shot at animating Mia in order to further get to know her character.

It is wholly worth noting that Caravan is teh second short film I have had a part in this year. The first was "Code Monkey," which I digitally rendered 30 backgrounds for. The film is now complete, and I'm absolutely thrilled with how it has turned out. When I get the permissionfrom the short's director, I'll post some of those backgrounds here as well.

♥Mel

Scotty Gets Punchy: Tied-down Animation

One of our more, shall we say, "repeat-offender pain in the butt" assignments this semester was for the class to create multiple 30-second animated commercials. Given how ungodly busy CCS students are at any given moment, the assignment and how it was run ended up being a total snafu (as I knew it would from the get go.) I'm tremendously glad it is over. That said, here's the tie-down animation for one of the commercials' characters, Scotty. Scotty is a very angry 10-year-old boy. In this particular scene, his imaginary friend Samson swoops down, lands on his head and flies off. Scotty attemps to punch him but misses. Samson animation was by Kate Burck - if/when I get the two composited together from her, I'll post that here as well.

♥Mel

Caravan: Secondary Cast & Mia Key Test

Hello everyone! Here's some of the latest progress work on Caravan. Up top is the character line-up for secondary and background characters in the story, and below is a quick first jab at roughing out movement for Mia Talbert in keys. Our current assignment in Tech 3 has us having a character react to our classmate's plastic pig "MacGyver" which is required to come into the shot from the top left corner, and leave through the top right. This is my initial pose reel for the assignment - clearly lacking mister piggie himself just yet. Needless to say though, Mia doesn't notice him until he hits the ground behind her, is startled by him at first, but quickly becomes irritated for invading her personal space after she gets up to investigate him. He's promptly punted from the shot. This key test will eventually be animated in full: I'll post the finished result once it's completed.

♥Mel

Caravan Main Character Lineup & Sketches

More initial concept work for my senior thesis film project, Caravan. Thanks for viewing! There will definitely be more to come.

♥Mel

"TKP" Concept Art

Update: I received comments from a couple of people telling me that they were unable to full view these images - sure enough, the HTML was quirked beyond repair. You should be able to view them now, however. Thanks! ♥

My latest portfolio pieces, created for the first half of the semester for my "Advanced Environments and Characters" class. Below is concept art for my original personal project, "TKP." All images and characters are copyright 2009 of Mel Miller, and are part of a pitch for an in-depth animated or graphic novel series.

Environment: Trias

Character: Anathema

Character: Damien

Character: Bellicose

♥Mel

Caravan: First Completed Concept Piece

Long time no see! Over a month, in fact. I must apologize for the slow-going updating here the past couple of weeks. Between two jobs and 15 credit hours of classes each week, this semester has quiet feverishly eaten me alive. The closer I near to spring break, though, the more updates will be coming. I've got animation and concept work alike to share with you all, and although in all actuality my spring break will hardly be a "break" (I've got a large project for my current traditional animation class, backgrounds to render for my other half's senior thesis film, as well as concept art to do for a thesis of my own) I am very much looking forward to getting the opportunity to sit back and post it all.

That said, have some concept art! As a Junior, I'm currently in the midst of building the groundwork for what will be my senior film production throughout the following school year. So far, the story, characters and underlying motivation for my project have come with surprising grace, and I'm incredibly excited for the project as it stands, so early in its creation.

Thus far titled "Caravan," the film is projected to follow a young girl's efforts, be it physical or psychological, to escape the cycle of abuse that had permeated her family for generations. Above is my first fully rendered piece of concept art for "Caravan," sporting the story's main characters, Mia and Kelsey.

More to come! I hope you all are doing well.
♥Mel

Grimm and Cravencro

In spite of all of the rush and scuffle of the Christmas and New Years holidays, I was determined to at least get one decent piece done for my own amusement before classes started back up - thankfully, I did indeed manage! This is actually an older piece of linework of Grimm and Cravencro I'd drawn in 2007 that I have since been wanting to color at length but have not had the time. I'm rather glad I waited, however - I definitely would not have gotten results I'd have been so pleased with had I colored it when it was drawn a couple of years back.

The far background is a photo I snapped myself. Texture credits go to CGtextures.com. Also used were a couple of grass brushes provided by DeviantArt's ~anaRasha-stock and ~LightArtist.

♥Mel

Artemis Moon

Another assignment from my Figure Illustration 1 course this semester - finally scanned in! (It's too beg for an average scanner, at about 14x17 inches) This particular assignment had three main requirements. 1) it had to depict a Greek myth of our choice. 2) it had to be done traditionally, preferably in part with acrylics, and 3) while photo realism was not required, we did absolutely have to use photographic reference.

I also apparently have something for moons in the backgrounds of images for this class. This was the first of two. No idea why.

At any rate, the lovely *Tasastock of Deviantart was gracious enough to allow me to use one of her images ([link]) as reference for Artemis here - my Greek Goddess of choice - Goddess of the Hunt. Do check out her wonderful stock gallery if you get the chance!

Acrylics, Prismacolor Colored Pencils, Illustration board.

Cheers,
♥Mel

Figure Drawings Gallore

So ends this semester, and my Figure Illustration 1 class with the tremendously awesome mister Chuck Gillies. Below is a handful of scans from my newsprint pad from in-class life drawings, ranging from portraits to figures to random odd doodles.
This image is so completely typical of my life drawing books. I just cannot seem to take the thing TOO seriously, henceforth the presence of little cartoon doodles. Above is Harry sporting what usually would be a star-stamped hat, and, for whatever odd reason, my boyfriend and I as cats. I believe at one point in the sketchbook, a particularly frail model of ours was wearing a pie for a hat.
I am so glad I caught this image. Rich has an absolutely fantastic smile, but one, sadly, that is rarely seen due to the seriousness and intensity of such drawing classes, and the length of many of the poses. One of the many perks of having a class with Chuck, however, is his great humor, and frequent entertaining stories. Rich was smirking amidst one of them at one point in the same moments that I was caricaturing his face. The above image was the result, and it is one of my favorites from the semester because of it.
More drawings still! Rick in a Greek warriors' outfit, a montage of Ron, as well as a trio of portraits, including classmate Lindsey, my buddy Calvin, and our model Harry (and my inherent incapability to adhere to seriousness therein) once again.

Cheers!
-Mel