{"id":946,"date":"2021-07-31T01:27:55","date_gmt":"2021-07-31T00:27:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/participatoryworlds.org\/research\/press_start\/?page_id=946"},"modified":"2021-09-06T01:02:02","modified_gmt":"2021-09-06T00:02:02","slug":"meganmiller","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/participatoryworlds.org\/research\/press_start\/artists\/meganmiller\/","title":{"rendered":"Megan Miller"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Megan Miller<\/h1>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Megan Miller is a New York Times<\/em> bestselling author and graphic artist from the USA. Born in Talara, Peru, and raised in Surrey, England, she has moved across the globe until finally settling in New Mexico, USA. She is an active gamer and plays Minecraft<\/em> regularly. In 2014, she was approached by a book packager, Hollan Publishing, to write Minecraft<\/em> guides. As her relationship with the company developed, she started to create cover art for other Minecraft<\/em> books using 3D animation software. They loved the images, which led to the idea of creating graphic novels, the first of which was published in 2015. Among her works can be cited Quest for the Golden Apple<\/em><\/a> (2015) and THE S.Q.U.I.D. SQUAD<\/em> series, which includes titles such as The Legend of the Coral Caves<\/em><\/a> (2020), Zombies vs. Turtles<\/em><\/a> (2021) and Game of the Guardians<\/em><\/a> (2020). All of her graphic novels are adventure stories for kids set in Minecraft<\/em>-inspired worlds, with the intention of creating appealing accounts for 7\u201311-year-olds to draw them into the amazing world of reading and \u2018occasionally bring up \u201cfood for thought\u201d topics in an open and non-patronizing or authoritative way, and hopefully a laugh or too. I also hope to satisfy or interest kids in the aesthetic experience of graphic novels, if I can\u2019. Additionally, she recognises that engagement with gamic creation is helping with improving her storytelling and artistic skills.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Interestingly, she is one of the few artists who have been able to publish gamics commercially, which has mainly been possible due to Mojang\u2019s (the game developer) flexible approach to derivative content. As a result, Megan states that \u2018a remarkable achievement is simply having the opportunity and experience of creating graphic novels that are sold in bookstores and being paid for it. Still can\u2019t believe it!\u2019. The creative process she follows involves the employment of a variety of software at different stages:<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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I use Photoshop, Illustrator, Minecraft, the \u2018World Edit mod\u2019 for Minecraft, Mine-imator, and occasionally Blender to create resources: schematics, textures, skins. I primarily use Mine-imator to set up the 3D scene and export the image as PNGs. I may use Photoshop to add effects to the image. In writing I use Evernote, Scrivener, and Word to outline and write the text. I send the images and the text along with a layout guide (what the panel layout is for each page) to the publisher, and it\u2019s the publisher\u2019s production artist who creates the final pages.<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
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Megan Miller<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
Gamic creator<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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