New Studio

 

First and foremost, my apologies for the slow-down on posting in recent weeks. In the span of two and a half months, I got married, searched for, bought, and moved into a new house, on top of working full-time throughout. Things are finally settling back into a sane pace again, however, so here! Have a post!

After a couple of weeks of finagling, I finally have my husband and I’s new studio space set up in full. Photos are as follows:

1. My main work corner - Desk, printer/scanner, light table, TARDIS and all.
2. My Desk.
3. My Hubby’s desk.
4. The Wall-O-Nerd.
5. A close up of the Wall-O-Nerd. Play “Spot The Fandom!"
6. Yes, our desks are within smooching distance. VERY NECESSARY.
7. Art Supplies, as guarded by The Judge.
8. And a close-up of the light table and its surrounding nerdfoolery.

Nerd Alert: Mario Wedding Cake!

My wonderful other half and nerdy partner in crime, Niles and I recently got married, and, being both artists and gamers, we couldn’t resist coming up with a fun design for our wedding cake. Above is both the design he and I created, and the wonderful final product, created by Ann Arbor Michigan’s Cake Nouveau. We couldn’t have been happier with the results!

The Designers’ Pages: Niles and Mel B!
And Cake Nouveau can be found here!

Cheers,
Mel B!

Javadoodle on Facebook

Hope to see you there!

Cheers,
Mel B!

"For Cardassia!" Painting Process on Ziyal

I have a spankin’ new Facebook gallery page for Javadoodle! to celebrate, here’s a compilation of the live stream session I did earlier this year om “For Cardassia!” while working towards teaching myself how to better paint in Photoshop, sped up to a much more viewable pace and length. Music has been provided under creative commons by the talented Mr. Kevin Macleod. You can find his work at http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Kevin_MacLeod/ I will try to do more of these paint sessions in the future, as time permits. Thanks for viewing!

Reich

Another commission completed for the lovely Ren52. Eight down, one to go! This time, it's her original character, Reich.

Cheers,
-Mel

Cardassians and Doodles and Pizza oh my

 

In the sparse instances where time permits, I've been pushing to try and improve my digital coloring  (Slowly but surely, it's coming along nicely.) I also re-watched Star Trek:Deep Space Nine recently, and in combining these two efforts, fan-art was bound to happen. Above are a series of portraits of DS9 Cardassian characters - one of my favorite species from Trek in general. Clockwise from the top left: Dukat, Damar, Garak, and Ziyal. These proved a great practice exercise - I've included the rough and tie-down sketches and final line work here as well. 

Above is a recent page from my sketchbook - all my own character design musings, apart from the pair in the top left corner. Just one of those silly things I had to get out of my system. For reasons.

And then you have... Pizza. So fairly recently, the DS9 fandom on Tumblr exploded with a delightful bought of silliness called "Deep Dish Nine." DD9 in an alternate-universe scenario wherein the DS9 characters (All human) run competing pizza delivery joints, Deep Dish Nine vs. Dominion Pizza. The plotbunnies and speculation that sprouted from the idea were so genuinely goofy and funny and often downright delightful (Right up my ally, given I'm incapable of taking any fandom too seriously) I couldn't resist divvying up a couple of sketch contributions when one of my afternoons produced a couple of hours down-time. Pictured in each doodle are: (Top) Pizza!AU Ziyal, Dukat, Kira, and both Dax's (Middle) Garak and Weyoun and (Bottom) Damar and Dukat.

Nerdlady out,

-Mel

Piquid Walk-Through

 One of my original characters, Piquid, from sketch to final cell-style color.

-Mel

Reich for Ren52 Progress

On to my next commission for Renee. Here's some progress on artwork of her character, Reich.

Thanks for viewing,

-Mel

Charity and the Boys Final Poster

After many moons pecking away at all of these amidst studio work, The full color poster for ~ren52 is complete. Thanks for everything, Ren! Characters are the sole property of Renee Atkinson.

-Mel

Happy VDay Mister B

Happy Valentines Day to my wonderful hubby! ♥

Space-Lizard Doodles

I've been on a terrifically huge Star Trek: Deep Space Nine kick lately. One of my all-time favorite species designs from the show has always been the Cardassians, so unsurprisingly, they've been cropping up in my sketchbook here and there. Above is some first attempts as drawing Gul Dukat (Who is every bit as challenging to draw as on might suspect) and a random OC who's been floating about in my brain as of late. (One of a solid twenty OC's at this point, because I seem incapable of being a fan of anything without countless character ideas spawning from it and renting out space in my brain. Pesky character-bunnies.)

-Mel

Art Blog on Tumblr

I completely forgot to mention it here, but I now have an art blog on Tumblr! Due to sheer ease of use/ability to update/ease for other folks to re-blog the images if they so choose, my Art Tumblr has been getting a fair bit of mileage over the past few months. So if you're on Tumblr, please feel free to check out Javadoodle! I'd love to see you there.

Cheers,

Mel

Aeslyn 2013 Model Sheet

So, I am heinously behind on updating this art blog - for that I do apologize. 2012 was a very busy year professionally, and left little time for personal work as a result. Granted, 2013 is already (blessedly) shaping up to be just as busy. However, I am going to make a concerted effort to update my Blogger account here more often this year.

So to start with a  slew of "catch-up" updates, here's a fresh new model sheet for Aeslyn from The ARMSmasters Project. Its original sketch and tie-down was done by ~mikewinn. Clean-up and Color by me.

Thanks for sticking with me :)

-Mel

Kick off!

Get More: NFL Rush Zone: Season of the Guardians Episodes,NFL Rush Zone: Season of the Guardians,NFL Rush Zone: Season of the Guardians Games

The show I’ve had a blast working on for the past year released its Super Bowl special this weekend, and it’s now online! Check it out :) And have fun today, sports fans!

Cheers,
Mel

Vothan and Paz

Happy New Year, folks! Here's to a productive 2013!

Here's the next duo of headshots for Renee. 5 down, 2 to go, and we'll have the completed poster.

Cheers,
Mel