@mellific / mellific.tumblr.com
i started 2017 with the extremely ambitious resolution to do tiny daily comics and failed in dramatic, spectacular, entirely predictable fashion. but! i still enjoy some of these quite a bit!
i want to give it another shot next year–the loose, fast scribbling + trying to find something funny/document-able about each day was a really good exercise–but i need to work out a schedule that i can actually stick to
my piece for the @swimonzine! you can get the pdf with over a hundred cool sharks for $1+ here
bull sharks can live in salt and freshwater (growing up in mangroves & salt marshes then migrating upriver or to the ocean), a cool fact i briefly attempted to work into the illustration before giving up and just dumping some weird old tech in there
my sf zine fest haul* (*did not have a chance to even do a little loop around the floor lskdfjskl), PENCILGUY from the best maker-of-fellows in the business @sleepnoises & this needlefelted FISH OF MY HEART from @amserpand
Is there a place I can buy your zines online?
hey!! lskdjfds so i got like 70% of the way through setting up an online store and then got distracted / now need all my stock for conventions BUT I DO REALLY WANT TO uh, like, let people who do not live in the pnw get zines! if they want them! so..... i'm thinking like. nov/dec of this year (after portland zine symposium)?
tl;dr Watch This Space i WILL get my act together and offer some stuff online, hopefully soon
FASCINATE, a new minicomic that i will have at SF ZINE FEST this sunday (9/3)! come to table 38 and pick it up along with uhh slkfjsd books that will hopefully have arrived at my house before friday! i guess!!
it's time for the FALL/WINTER 2023 (zinefest) COLLECTION -- catch me around the pnw at SF Zine Fest, Olympia Zine Fest, and Portland Zine Symposium!
Perhaps Asher was learning to read their unhappiness too, because she said, “I promised to get you all through here, and I meant it.” “Not all of us,” said Cascabela. They stood a little ahead, and they didn’t look back as they spoke, but it was clear they meant to be heard. Their carapace was a black bulk wreathed in smoke from the flame that burned in their palm. They looked unhelpfully like an allegory.
friends i read in one sitting & truly can't recommend enough The Iron Children -- it's an INCREDIBLE ensemble cast at odds with one another in an impossible situation (war) now forced to work together in a smaller impossible situation (manager quit one day into your internship and handed the entire project to the intern). It's about loyalty and duty, cyborgs, religious ethics…… really really character-driven science fiction at its best!!
i love these STUPID SAD CYBORGS so MUCH please read this book
small note that the iron children is now also available as an audiobook in all the usual places one gets audiobooks
hey everyone i'm BACK with a new and updated cat commission format! here is the deal:
essentially what you're signing up for is "probably a cat picture one to twelve months from now" at pwyw rates! $20 per would be lovely but slkfdslkj these are going to happen so far out so please pay whatever circumstances permit at the time
a little drawing i made for a risograph workshop! loosely referenced from this cat photo by Kutygin Eduard which i love very much
where/how did you learn how to draw cats? i LOVEEE your style
ahhh thank you so much!!! my method which i DO recommend was to get in deep parasocial relationships with all my friends' cats and do nonstop fanart.... here's a bunch from last year:
you can kind of see i'm still figuring out shapes.... sldkfjs also IN BETWEEN the b/w batch and the current batch (several months?) i fully forgot how to draw cats and did a few iterations on the very first cat drawing to decide how i wanted them to look:
also a huge fan of (as with basically any art i do!) looking at how other people draw/simplify the subject and trying out pieces of it for size!! (like, "oh this artist i like does cat faces in THIS way, can i apply that to this photo ref") uh and i definitely use reference heavily, the poses are pretty directly pulled from the photos folks sent in!
i know sometimes anatomy study (skeleton, musculature, etc) is recommended & i FULLY believe this would be helpful in understanding poses and drawing cats without photo ref but i'm.... distractible & easily bored.... slkfjds so i have a lot more fun approaching from a "how do i stylize THIS specific photo" angle
batch of cat commissions!!!! everyone's creatures are really really incredible
hello friends i'm opening some Very Specific commissions... just a couple slots to test the waters, but--i love drawing cats!! fill out this form and i will draw your cat for 20 USD!
>> COMMISSION FORM HERE <<
Hi I was just wondering what programs you use for your art? I love it and how clean you line work is
ahh thanks so much!! i use photoshop CS6 and basically exclusively the stumpy pencil v2 brush for lines (~8px brush at 70% minimum diameter for a 300dpi image)
for additional riveting detail keeping the minimum diameter high is how i get the even/thin lines look i like.... and i have recently been messing around with dropping the brush size, i feel like it looks good digitally but prints out thicker than i want slkdfs
Perhaps Asher was learning to read their unhappiness too, because she said, “I promised to get you all through here, and I meant it.” “Not all of us,” said Cascabela. They stood a little ahead, and they didn’t look back as they spoke, but it was clear they meant to be heard. Their carapace was a black bulk wreathed in smoke from the flame that burned in their palm. They looked unhelpfully like an allegory.
friends i read in one sitting & truly can't recommend enough The Iron Children -- it's an INCREDIBLE ensemble cast at odds with one another in an impossible situation (war) now forced to work together in a smaller impossible situation (manager quit one day into your internship and handed the entire project to the intern). It's about loyalty and duty, cyborgs, religious ethics…… really really character-driven science fiction at its best!!
i love these STUPID SAD CYBORGS so MUCH please read this book
Hello! I absolutely adored N2, is there anywhere I online that I can get a physical copy?
hello hello, i'm so glad to hear you enjoyed it, i'm going to be putting spare copies online after this cycle of conventions!! which arrrrre sakuracon this weekend and alaska robotics minicon mid-may, so i'd expect books in the shop in early/mid june!
stealth bonus creatures! i've been calling these ones water, ground, and grass type, and they are hercules beetles 💪
made some beetle packs for pals & have handed off the LAST one so now i can talk about them!!! the first friends i tested these on were like "aw cute!" and then "wait did you draw this packaging by hand" and then "..... you OWN a printer"
and then i did not take this good advice and made like thirty more packs. fun to pretend to be a photocopy machine for a bit!
i think it's a little hard to tell because of "no color" and "sketchy manual reproduction" but the design was REALLY explicitly based off these old pokemon booster packs... briefly tried doing a veggie-with-legs but it was totally unreadable
and then after i thought of the card pack theming i was like, well, there should be a surprise inside!! so i made three more beetles & put a random one in each pack..... and, also,, labelled them just in case
and that was, a bunch of my december!!
stealth bonus creatures! i've been calling these ones water, ground, and grass type, and they are hercules beetles 💪
compelled to keep the year-in-review streak alive but the 12-square grid hasn't represented anything useful since... 2016 so we're breaking form! also i simply didn't make enough art to fill 12 squares
first complete inktober! things that helped: making up my own challenge... putting stupid joke beetles late in the month that i was excited to show friends (making direct eye contact with the neopets beetle hahaha), having friends BE kind & excited about beetles!
shortbox comic: really good practical lesson in "if you do something a lot, consistently, you... improve..." this is not really the comic i set out to make (i did.... so much reading on the teleology of natural systems & not even a little bit made it into the actual comic slkdjf) but it DOES have fun borders, which was the other goal. overall, think the art came out nice and the writing could've used some more baking!
I SPY zine: a little collaborative zine of illustrated I SPY drawings that, imo, turned out really, really nice. free in PDF form! it was always meant to be digital but we formatted for print just in case and then i printed some copies (since it was already formatted!) and god this one is nice to hold in your hands.
and then i did a lot of little doodles of friends' cats which was very very fun. i love drawing cats and looking at photos of your cats!
it was a good year! two conventions, a handful of ttrpg commissions, really, i cannot emphasize enough, so may cats... i do miss making quick one-off comics and also doing, like, any illustrations at all, so those are the goals for next year
You ever consider making pins?
hello hello! i HAVE i was just looking at these silly bird mockups i made way back when:
or else fish would be a good time i think... mainly however i am very flaky and bad with followthrough so anything requiring me to manually ship things is kind of a dicey venture. this is vague and noncommittal--pins sound VERY fun, i have no concrete plans atm but sometimes do get kneecapped by Planning Inspiration!
