Illustration Teardowns: Marcus Allen Miller
A homage to Marcus Allen Miller with some thoughts on what makes his illustrations so good.
In the spirit of UX Teardowns, I’ll be looking at illustrators that catch my eye, and try to analyze what makes their work so compelling. Please note that all illustrations hereinafter, unless stated otherwise, are the express work of the artist I’m reviewing; I do not take any credit for their works! Also, I will try to be careful to post links back to the artist’s site — so if you click their image it will link through.
According to his bio, Marcus Allen Miller has a BFA Illustration, from Art Center College of Design, Pasadena Ca., and still resides in SoCal. Let’s take a look…
Observations
Here are some noteworthy characteristics I noticed in the illustration work:
- His lines seem to always have a “rhyme and reason” as he makes a judicious use of grid design, but, then goes and purposely “breaks the grid” to give the work an interesting flare (can you find places where he breaks the grid in his work?)
- I’m not sure if there are other illustrators that do this, but, I noticed his line work often has one end thinner than the other; I suppose you could say it’s a triangular shape. But again, it’s taking what might be cliche, and just tweaking it a bit to add interest and something a bit less expected.
- A coworker I showed his illustrations to thought it looked a bit like “stock illustration”, which I found interesting—I could see what they meant, but, I wondered if that was because of how prolific the artist is (so we feel like we’ve “seen it somewhere”), or, was it’s because we’ve actually seen works from folks trying to hijack his style for reusable royalty free stock? I do feel bad even bringing this observation up, because his work is so amazing, but it IS interesting to me, and, I wonder what others think?
- He uses silhouette regularly for his figures (much like the last illustrator I reviewed, Karolis Strautniekas). Also similar to Karolis, he uses textures extensively. But I’d say it’s quite often done more within a clipping mask of the shape at hand then those of Karolis. I could be wrong, but that’s my initial perception so I’ll go with it!
- Another signature thing he does is to use what looks to be some sort of light parchment-like paper in his background. I’ve personally used these sorts of paper more for texture using Multiply or Overlay blending modes atop whatever background I’ve used. It creates a great texture. But, he’s straight up using the paper as a background—smart, and quite identifiable.
- Maybe it’s a bit obvious, but, to the last point, notice how much of that paper you see? Negative space FTW!
- Some, but not all of his work has an isometric feel to it, and, some uses the standard 30° or 45° diagonal, but, look again…he sometimes uses other degrees! My take away, was that, as long as you have some sort of grid foundation, you can “play” with these a bit to add interest.
Of all the above observations, the one I’m most excited to act on and experiment with personally, is the use of diagonals that fall outside of typical isometric degrees, and throwing down quick grids that “just feel right” as I illustrate something with a cut away feel to it. The key there, to my mind, is to let such a thing inspire and inform you, but, not to literally clone all aspects of the artist’s work. I mean, no one can fault you for borrowing the idea of some interesting diagonal lines, right!? But, it would suck if you went and did a piece with say: light parchment background, silhouetted black figures, textures, and similar diagonals, and grabbed his color palettes to boot! Please don’t 😐
Wrap up
His work really lends itself to a wide array of practical applications, especially in the technical and business genres—can’t you just see these illustrations for tech articles, business articles, eBooks, editorial reviews, etc., etc.? I can. From my experience, keeping something commercial, but still visually interesting is super duper challenging—it’s actually much easier, at least conceptually, to make a beautiful landscape watercolor painting with gorgeous colors, that simply misses the mark for a particular commercial setting, then to craft a work that’s still aesthetically pleasing, but, which also has the technical illustrative elements needed to make it appropriate for the subject matter—jm2c ;)
As usual, I must disclaimer that I’m likely missing some other key characteristics in his illustration work. But that’s where you come in. What do you think about Mr. Miller’s work?
Next in series: Soulful Isometrics. Previous in series: Karolis Strautniekas
Also, you may like one of my other illustration teardowns.
Rob Levin is a freelance illustrator. Portfolio: https://roblevin.myportfolio.com/ For illustration work enquiries, collaboration, or to say hi: roblevinillustration@gmail.com.
Also, you may like to read more of the illustration teardowns articles.
