Ian Miller

As of late the artist I've been most inspired by directly for his technical abilities in his animation process is Ian Miller. One of my favourite online animators that I've come across since beginning this animation project.

Mak's Parasite is a short narrative about this gross junky who has a gigantic tape worm swimming inside him and the 2 and a half minute animation is about him ferociously trying to lure it out of his body by any means.

This animation had me spell bound because the style of drawing is the most over-the-top I've ever seen. The visuals are grotesque to say the least and the story is a disgusting one to add to that. I love the drawing the most because of the way he fluidly transforms the character, Mak, into this horrible saggy piece of meat. Miller clearly wanted his character to be as malleable as possible and you get a strong feeling of what his body is like through the way the skin sags, the bones stretch and stress and through his expressions which have all been stretched to the peak of their tensions.

This malleable feature that Miller has created is something I want my character to be. I want to make sure each expression that my character produces is stretched to its absolute maximum it can be pulled.

For this I need to explore form, mass and texture so that I get a better understanding of the flesh that I want to create. So far I'm just drawing one frame after another for what I think is meant to be the following frame to make this animation. Miller's work reminded me of that.

This 1 minute animation is called 'Cheap Joke'. Similar to the previous animation the characters expression has been pushed to its absolute extreme limit. This character is laughing at a joke is companion behind him has just said and he cant hold in his laughter.

I love the way Miller has pushed the boundaries of this characters physical abilities, especially when it comes down to something as mundane as laughing. To me this is a feature that stands to me as a technical ability that'll be worth doing for my animation. The principal here as well is a very attractive thing to me: overreacting to something as menial and mundane as a joke.

It suits my theme of overreacting to menial and mundane things around us.