The Merry Melony Production Blog

More experiments in color/shading styles. I think this was pretty successful despite the ugly palette. I’d like to do a series of color scripts soon to find some palettes that work for different environments.

# digital painting

# comic

Work in progress. Still rough colors and finishing linework.

This is my 2nd “panel exploration”, an exercise at how the final product might look, including panel design and text design coming soon.

Hey guys! Sorry it’s been so long since I’ve updated. Between Hatefarm, my girlfriend, and work (we recently started production on our first CG animated feature film, Turkeys, set for release in 2014), I haven’t had much time for Melony. I’m still stuck on the medium I want to do this in — I know branching storylines is too big of a project for me, but I really want to maintain some level of interactivity, and so I’m considering maybe turning this into a game of sorts. I don’t know! Much to think about. But on the other side of things I know where the story needs to go and there is a lot of concept art I can move forward with. Here is some environment design with a little foreshadowing of a new character. I want to clean this up further and color it because I think it’s a pretty solid foundation. Hopefully it won’t be long before my next update.

Work in progress. I found myself unhappy with the comic book coloring style — flat colors and lots of use of black… I’m just not very good at it. I’m experimenting with a new painting style that is relatively quick and maintains a sense of “painterliness”…something I’ve never been terribly good at in the past. Going to color this and give it the full treatment as if it was an actual final panel and we’ll see how it looks. This piece will also serve as some environment design (there is a lot cropped out) and a look at one of the Rabbit’s forms. Should be fun!

Our heroine, Melony! Learned a lot from doing this. Made a few mistakes in shading, linework, and perspective that I hopefully won’t make again. Overall I hope the shading will be a little bit more simplified than this in production images. Up next, expression sheet!

More progress…already wishing I had done some things differently but this is it…time for some forward momentum!

Back from Vacation and time to do some “final” art, starting with Melony. I may make minor adjustments to this, but probably not, as I need to quit dicking around and move forward. My time in Florida lead me to some good storywriting, but overall left me with a sense of Holy-Shit-This-Is-Going-To-Take-Way-Longer-Than-I-Anticipated. That said, the overall story arc(s) are complete, though only as rough ideas. Melony’s character bio is nailed down, and soon her look design will be as well. A fully detailed and colored turnaround is next, and then a new expression sheet! Excite!

A friend asked me what kind of reference I look at when drawing modelsheets and expression sheets, so I thought I’d post some of my favorites here. Good reference is always a must…I have many of these pasted up around my workspace. Even the great Glen Keane believes in learning to draw through “osmosis” and having inspiring works posted around you at all times. If you’re ever stuck, just search “your favorite cartoon character here” and “modelsheet” or “turnaround” in google!

http://images5.fanpop.com/image/photos/27000000/Walt-Disney-Model-Sheets-Belle-walt-disney-characters-27056648-1466-1200.jpg

http://www.traditionalanimation.com/wp-content/gallery/the-road-to-el-dorado/roadmodelsheet2.jpg

http://meridiandream.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/chel2.jpg

http://dreamworks.animationarchive.net/Feature%20Films/The%20Road%20To%20El%20Dorado/Model%20Sheets/miguel1.jpg

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_oR7sYJzWZ1k/TNoEqWhWNSI/AAAAAAAAAcQ/ZqFcAA12Q3M/s1600/flynnFacial_02a.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_oR7sYJzWZ1k/TNoCH1vTP6I/AAAAAAAAAcI/wHIoK8ZwMZI/s1600/rapunzelFACE.jpg

http://animationarchive.net/Feature%20Films/Beauty%20and%20the%20Beast/Model%20Sheets/BELLE05.jpg

http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5121/5316619470_bc56e2be71_z.jpg

http://images5.fanpop.com/image/photos/27000000/Walt-Disney-Model-Sheets-Princess-Ariel-walt-disney-characters-27044368-1200-1172.jpg

http://animationarchive.net/Feature%20Films/The%20Little%20Mermaid/Model%20Sheets/ARIEL05.jpg

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_oR7sYJzWZ1k/TNoB5KB9JFI/AAAAAAAAAcE/4xgSX-_NriQ/s1600/rapunzelFACE_2.jpg

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_ryh07DcsWoM/TN-YqAc8qtI/AAAAAAAAA78/5OTv1cWJxrc/s1600/Rapunzel_Baby.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_oR7sYJzWZ1k/TNoC4gKmxxI/AAAAAAAAAcM/UAUNbDs8PEo/s1600/rapunzelMISC_001.jpg

Scream!!! Just as expected, that was really hard. Hopefully I’ll do it better next time.

Phew! I made some seriously badass progress on story and character development today. More on that later. For now, let’s take a look back at some more old artwork from Merry Melony Episode 2 (animated). The story is being very nearly completely rewritten. A lot of the same atmosphere, themes and environments remain, but the character arcs and actual plot is very different. The male character pictured above is almost surely not going to exist any longer. The younger sister however has become a very important part of the story and we’ll be seeing more of her. I will be redesigning her and giving her the full visual development treatment I gave Melony in the coming weeks.

Stay tuned! I have more old images to post and more old animations, too! Reblog this and please tell any of your friends who might be interested about this blog. Lastly I am always open to feedback and will try to answer any questions. Thanks guys!

With the look and Melony’s design somewhat locked down, I figured I’d quit stalling and produce something pseudo final. So here is a promo-poster-title-thing, to be used for all sorts of stuff.

Unhappy with my previous tests, I knew I needed to take a few steps back. I went to the comic store this weekend and, get this — actually got some comic books! It was pretty difficult finding the only 4 comics in the store that weren’t super hero comics (bleh) but I found a few with some interesting styles.

First, abstraction of shape with black shadow is something I am beginning to love. It fits the mood of the Melony story and looks way cooler. I have a lot to learn in how to do this effectively. Varying line thickness and quality to give a more traditional inked look on my Intuos 4 is difficult, but pays off. Cross hatching and tiny little scratch marks are just something I love to do instinctually, so I’m happy to find a way to get that in there. I hope to find more Photoshop brushes soon that can help with this.

Going overboard with painting realistic lighting hasn’t been doing it for me. It pulls the reboot even further away from the look of the original animation (if it ain’t broke don’t fix it) and it’s just hard. You can see the hesitation in my color choices. It’s easy to bring things into muddy territory, lose vibrance and appeal, and make Melony kind of ugly.

I like the idea of occasionally having randomly detailed panels, ala Ren and Stimpy or The Maxx. There are no set boundaries with the look of this comic from scene to scene. However, I would like to nail down what the comic looks like most of the time. And this is the closest concept art yet.