Yet another personal website!

[Melvian]

I've just officially launched my website! Right now it's just two animations with extensive behind-the-scenes details and a piece about preconceptions I had to unlearn as I started to pick up art and animation. But soon there will be more animations, some programming projects, character designs, long-form writings on animation theory, maybe even some typefaces??

https://melvian.xyz/updates/2024-01-24_launch/

[lime360]

very cool and minimalistic

[Paprika]

Very sweet ! It's interesting to see something sober like that ! Ni distracting pictures or moving parts ! I wish you all the best for your website, keep going !

[Lyonid]

I love your animations! They're so cute and smooth! I am very interested in what you may post in the future. Your writing on art is very compelling and comes very close to what I perceive as the current form of art we encounter in online discourse. To this day I struggle to find my core identity as an artist, and I think that's neat! It's what motivates me to try silly things and fail miserably.

[Melvian]

very cool and minimalistic

Thanks!

Very sweet ! It's interesting to see something sober like that ! Ni distracting pictures or moving parts ! I wish you all the best for your website, keep going !

Thank you! To be honest, I do kinda like the craziness of some people's personal websites (and I have a soft spot for early 2010s skeuomorphism), but this much more minimalist approach just feels right for me personally.

I love your animations! They're so cute and smooth! I am very interested in what you may post in the future. Your writing on art is very compelling and comes very close to what I perceive as the current form of art we encounter in online discourse. To this day I struggle to find my core identity as an artist, and I think that's neat! It's what motivates me to try silly things and fail miserably.

Thank you, I'm glad you enjoy both my animations and my writing!

What if trying silly things is your core identity? When people think of "distinct styles" they think of literal aesthetic decisions or specific subjects that are shared among an artist's work but I personally believe it's much more powerful to define a style based on the process and the way an artist approaches their work. Often times those key aesthetic decisions happen because of an artist's process or beliefs anyway. Trying silly things is a process, and further more the way you do that is going to be different from everyone else!

Also, I suspect all of us are bad at understanding our own styles. I haven't seen this tested in art, although that would be super cool to test, but I have definitely seen this in typeface design. For example:

James Edmondson tried making a plain sans-serif typeface that he thought wasn't his style at all, but his friends totally thought it was: https://ohnotype.co/blog/the-process-of-degular

Kris Sowersby did the same thing too and even marketed the resulting typeface as "They have a deliberate aesthetic of not being designed by anyone in particular." Bethany Heck disagrees.

Also see an interview of his:

I’ve talked with other type designers about their hand. I’m entirely unaware of mine but Christian [Schwartz] reckons he can spot it a mile off. Conversely, I can see his, as well as Chester’s [Jenkins]. But now that Paul Barnes and Christian collaborate [as Commercial Type] it’s harder to tell, they seem to cancel certain parts out. Hoefler & Frere-Jones are similar in that way.

[BlazingCobaltX]

I'm in love with that font!! It's so slick.

[Inlusione]

Your font style and page structure is looking amazing, I love it! Also, you did an amazing job with the animations, they're sooo smooth 

[starbreaker]

I've just officially launched my website! Right now it's just two animations with extensive behind-the-scenes details and a piece about preconceptions I had to unlearn as I started to pick up art and animation. But soon there will be more animations, some programming projects, character designs, long-form writings on animation theory, maybe even some typefaces??

https://melvian.xyz/updates/2024-01-24_launch/

This looks good so far.

[Kolo]

I love your site, but I also really love your green dragon mascot! Super charming character, and the animation of them reading on the homepage is lovely!

I thought your post on art misconceptions was also a very fascinating read. How long have you been drawing for? What inspired the design of the dragon mascot?

[Melvian]

I'm in love with that font!! It's so slick.

Thanks! I hope the font isn't too distracting from the content, but that depends on how much you nerd out about fonts!

Your font style and page structure is looking amazing, I love it! Also, you did an amazing job with the animations, they're sooo smooth 

Thank you, I'm glad you enjoy them.

This looks good so far.

Thanks! I hope my writing is OK!

I love your site, but I also really love your green dragon mascot! Super charming character, and the animation of them reading on the homepage is lovely!

I thought your post on art misconceptions was also a very fascinating read.

Thank you! I'm glad you liked my writing on art misconceptions. It's one of those pieces where I can't quite tell if I'm contributing something meaningful or if I'm just stating stuff that everyone already knew. But if it wasn't obvious to me, then that certainly means it's not obvious to someone else too.

How long have you been drawing for?

Like many other people, I drew a lot as a kid. But I stopped drawing before middle school and never had a reason to get into character art. That wouldn't happen until mid 2021. I also wouldn't draw my prototype "modern" OC until 2022. So especially compared to most artists, I'm a bit of a n00b. Indeed, many of my fellow artists are massively better and infinitely more experienced than I am, especially with things like gesture drawing and being able to draw things quickly and do them well.

What inspired the design of the dragon mascot?

Basically, visual fragments of multiple characters that have been living in my head since I was a young kid. I think the design as a whole mostly took shape in my head in around 2018? But at that time he was small and as a character he was totally different. In 2021 I had the idea to actually draw him and make him the centerpiece of my next identity, which was how I got into art. I finally did the first sketches in December 2023 (a v1 sketch and then a v2 re-sketch with improved proportions) before working on the wave animation literally through New Year's Day.

The key design element I was most worried about for a variety of reasons was the head shape. I wanted that shape because I hardly ever see that kind of a shape in a dragon, and it just made sense in my mind. I was scared particularly because it's anatomically unconventional and I wasn't sure that I'd be able to pull it off well. In fact, I was mentally preparing to compromise by going for something closer to a traditional snout-based head. But the first sketch, although extremely rough in proportions, showed me that I didn't have to.

[rhenn]

Nice site! I like the simplistic design, it makes everything easy to take in.

I also appreciate the breakdown you did on your animation; I didn't think the hatch was made in blender! Always cool to see people mixing 2D and 3D animation :D

[Melvian]

Nice site! I like the simplistic design, it makes everything easy to take in.

I also appreciate the breakdown you did on your animation; I didn't think the hatch was made in blender! Always cool to see people mixing 2D and 3D animation :D

Thank you! The breakdowns take quite a bit of work to put together but I think talking about the process behind making this stuff is important for those wanting to get into animation.

I really think 2D and 3D work best when they work together. 2D is great for characters and 3D is great for giving a scene perspective and depth (compositions that are all 2D tend to look flat to me).