Rarakie and Ossy

The final results of Gabrielle's commission of she and her fiance's lovely characters Ossy and Rarakie, sharing a cute n' cuddly moment in the jungle treetops. I really enjoy how this one turned out - colors especially. I made a special point this time around to allow the characters' colors themselves dictate the tones for the world around them.

-Mel

Jorzan and The Viscount

Story time! So, a couple of months ago, a lovely gal named Andrea commissioned me to illustrate she and her other half, Lochlan's, schnazzy gangster RPG characters as a surprise for Lochlan's birthday present. The illustration was great fun to do, and to my excitement, the gift's recipient loved the final piece. So much so, in fact that Lochlan approached me not long after with the request to create a similar illustration for his brother of their RPG characters fro Christmas. Now that the holiday has come and gone,I can share the results with everyone. Above is Jorzan, (Whose outfit was loosely inspired by this awesome painting of Stephen Colbert by request) The Viscount, and the Viscount's feisty familiar, Cholmondeley (pronounced CHUM-lee.) I had a particularly great amount of fun rendering Chum and the boys' curly hair on this one. Thanks again, Lochlan!

-Mel

Thugs for Jugs

 Recently, my long-time-buddy Candice asked me to help her create the event poster for the breast cancer awareness fundraiser her medieval re-enactment group is holding in 2012. My portion of the poster was the character logo art, designed to loosely mimic 13th century illumination artwork. The simple finished graphic is above, and the colors (As well as a requested gray-scale version) are below.

-Mel

ARMSboarding (Part 1)

Hi everyone! I hope you all have been having a safe and happy holiday season. News on the art front: Storyboards for the newly minted script for The ARMSmasters Project's Stage Zero are underway! Here's a glimpse at the first couple of boards for my designated scene. More will be coming soon.

-Mel

ARMSmasters Townsfolk Ideation

Our weekly Sketchbook Jam tonight finally loosened me out of an art block following a studio-based freelance compositing blitzkrieg I took part in this past week - It's great to get back into the swing of drawing after such a focused stint in the digital realm. I ended up producing a couple of "Towns Folk" character ideas for the ARMSmasters pilot currently in production. I'll design more soon, I think, after I make a proper dent in my storyboard sequences for the same project.

I had a go at various classes and types of characters to start, a rather horrible, fashionably stunted Noblewoman, a middle class pain-in-the-ass punk teenager (Tried to consider what general style the "cool kids" may wear in this world, and pushed her clothes similar to Collette's for this reason) a middle-aged middle-class fellow amidst his trip to the market, and a poor, lower-class beggar. These were a great deal of fun to doodle.

More soon,

Mel

Additional Life Drawing

It just dawned on my that I hadn't yet posted the updated life drawing I recently made available on my website's recent content overhaul. So, here we go! All of these were sketches based on stock photos, taken both my myself and other folks.

Cheers,
Mel

Rara & Ossy Flats

A quick little update for you - Here's the flat-colors stage for Gabrielle's commission. Hopefully I'll have the opportunity to move on to painting tonight - I'm quite enjoying these colors!

Cheers,

Mel

Holy LineArt, Batman!

Hi all! Here's  lineart I completed for two of three images today (The third of which is a commissioned gift, which I won't be able to share until it reaches its recipient.) Above is a new promo-poster-in-progress for the ArMSmasters Project, which is yet another collaboration between myself and the project's creator, Mike Winn - He sketched the image, I'm cleaning up and coloring it. In the foreground is the show's leading man, Riot, while, clockwise from top left is Aeslyn, Tyr, Kongou, Inari, Rune, and Colette. It's great to see the whole gang together in a poster, since the recent finalization of their designs!

And here is the line art for Gabrielle's commission, of she and her fiance's characters Rara and Ossy. Both these pieces and my gift-commission will be moving on into color stages this evening. Should be fun!

Thanks for viewing,

Mel

The Littlest Angel Storyboards

As promised, here's a selection of my storyboarding work from The Littlest Angel, a 3D animated holiday feature recently released on DVD. I had an absolutely wonderful time working on this show - storyboarding is wonderfully fun to me, and the opportunity to do so on a Michigan-based production was quite the thrill.

These boards, as well as five additional sets from the film are now up and viewable on my website. Check it out at www.melmillerart.com/gallery under the newly updated Storyboads section. Also of interest - now that The ARMSmasters Project's production is in full tilt, I'll be boarding for its newly minted script - something I'm very much looking forward to, as that project - a comic book/manga style adventure, will help show how diverse my storyboarding style can be. Looking forward to it!

-Mel

Jump Magic Jump

A wonderfully fun Labyrinth-themed commission, based on this promotional image of David Bowie/Jareth  by request. I had a blast with this.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

-Mel

Code Monkey Backgrounds

With the launch of his brand new website, my fiance Niles has also posted his 2009 thesis film, an animated music video for Jonathan Coulton's "Code Monkey" online for folks to watch and enjoy. This film was the first of many (and many more to come) creative collaborative efforts between Niles and I. In this case, I had the opportunity to assist with coloring all of the backgrounds that Niles drew for the short. Below are a couple of my favorites from the set.

Do check out the film, enjoy - and for more of Niles' awesome work, check out his new site at www.artoftheniles.com!

Cheers,

Mel

The Littlest Angel on DVD

Great news, everyone! The film I had the wonderful opportunity to be a lead storyboard artist on, The Littlest Angel, is now on DVD! This movie was wonderful to work on. It's an adorable holiday film for the little ones - a cute, kiddo-friendly Christmas movie with a great message. Do check it out!

I'll be posting some of the storyboards I contributed to the film soon. For now, below is the official trailer, as well as a couple of stills from shots that I boarded. You can also check out a number of clips from the movie over at ToonZone - I boarded the first half of "Halo" and the entirety of "Escape." It's a thrill to see them both completed!

Storyboards soon!

-Mel

Vito's Pizza Ads Online

Well, this was a cool discovery. Back in 2009, I helped polish up the backgrounds for two TV commercial spots for Vito's Pizza, which were created by Thunderbean Animation. Receiving rough watercolor paintings, I pulled the backgrounds into Photoshop and digitally enhanced them - gave them deeper warmth, greater depth contrast and definition, while still maintaining the charm and integrity of the original painted pieces. A lovely fellow CCS alumni, Alex Chapman, who worked on the spots as well (Check out her work, she's awesome!) has posted the spots online, giving me the ability to share them with you now.

Cheers,

Mel

A Cacophony of Colorful Blokes

 Hi all! Just wanted to add a quick new post to share some art updates. Above are four more finalized ArMSmasters Project designs, in a series of additional collaborations between Mike Winn (Line art) and myself (Colors.) While below is a completed model sheet commission for Collin, wherein I helped him begin to establish his new character's design, as well as a digital quick-doodle of an additional in-development ARMSmasters character, Deacon.

 More soon. Thanks for viewing, as always :)

-Mel

Devil's Night Color Process

I've had some folks asking me about how I color digitally as of late, so, I thought I'd put together something explaining the process of one of my most recent images, a commission for ~shaylinn "Devil's Night Discovery."

The original image can be found here.

If there's anything else folks would like to see the process of with my work, let me know in comments. I'll do my best to put something together as I get the chance to do so.

Cheers,

Mel