Kelly Leigh Miller's Cloud Puppy Embraces Comics, Cosplay, and More with Adorable Style

We talk to Kelly Leigh Miller all about her new Cloud Puppy graphic novel, comics, cosplay, conventions, and more!

By Matthew Aguilar

What do you get when you combine the world of comics, cosplay, and conventions with a lovable lead who is part puppy and part cloud? Turns out it's the delightful adventures of Cloud Puppy by Kelly Leigh Miller, and the adorable half puppy half cloud lead is likely to become a favorite of yours as well once you get to know her. The story brings a host of other charming characters into the fold as well, including Cloud's friend Berry Rose, and the duo is actually the focus of the first story, which puts a spotlight on what it means to be friends who want to dress as the same character at a convention. ComicBook had a chance to speak with Miller all about the new story, what and who inspired the character, and what the future might hold for the series.

Cloud Puppy Inspirations

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(Photo: Kelly Leigh Miller)

Cloud Puppy weaves in a variety of geek themes throughout the book, including comics, cosplay, comic conventions, and more, but it all started with Cloud Puppy's initial design, which just felt special. "I actually started with the character designs first. At the time, I was loosely studying Japanese mascots like Sanrio, Tamagotchi, all of those. And I'm a huge Tamagotchi collector and stuff, and I was looking at all of those character designs, and trying to figure out what drew me to those. And I was like, 'I'm going to create a bunch of my own creatures.' and the creature for Cloud Puppy, I just kept drawing her," Miller said.

"I was like, 'This has to be something.' And I really just sent the drawing to my agent, and I'm like, 'Is this something? I don't even know. What do you think?' And she was just like, 'Do you have a story for this? Because I want to pitch it almost immediately.' And then I had a lot of ideas, but a lot of them kept coming back to nerdy, geeky themes and stuff," Miller said. "We were like, "Well, what if we took this approach, since a lot of my ideas fall into this category?" And I was able to grab a bunch, look at some of the other character designs I had, and figure out, 'Okay. Out of these characters that I drew, who would maybe be her friends?' And that's where it all started."

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(Photo: Kelly Leigh Miller)

Not much changed from that initial concept, which remains largely intact in the final story. That said, one big change was just the volume shift from a 30 to 40 page picture book to a 160 page graphic novel. "I got my start in picture books, and for me, the length difference between up to 40 page picture book, 32 to 40 pages, and then going from that to 160 pages was a pretty big jump. So that was I would say probably planning around the amount of pages that I had to do was a little bit of a learning curve, which I think it's just brand new for me, but I feel like I had a lot of fun doing it," Miller said.

Family, Fun, and Costumes

Another element that stands out (aside from the gorgeous artwork mind you) is how the family factors into the story and how supportive they are overall. Far more often you see parents and extended family as a hurdle or challenge to the main character, but here that is very much not the case, and that's by design. "Yeah. I wanted to have the parents be very supportive of all the kids' interests, and whether some understand it, or don't understand it, they're just really into the fact that they love this thing, and they want to be part of the thing that they love," Miller said.

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(Photo: Kelly Leigh Miller)

As anyone who has attended a convention knows, you'll see no shortage of amazing costumes as you walk the show floor. That's true of this convention as well, and Miller reveals that she based some of the looks on actual cosplays that she's seen. "I think some of the costumes, if I remember when I was designing just the background, mostly background characters, some of them were inspired by actual cosplays that I've seen, but I don't know if I kept the colors the same as the characters they were inspired by. I think I might've changed them just so it wasn't as obvious, but there definitely were a few that were inspired by costumes I'd seen in the past," Miller said.

As for what's next, Miller would love to return to this world, and the good news is we already have one more book to look forward to in Cloud Puppy Game On. The new book will hit on March 4th, 2025, and Miller sees lots of opportunities for new stories in this delightful world.

"Oh. Definitely. I'd love to, but yeah. It's actually since I think I can say this much, since it does have the number one on the side, but there are going to be more books in the series. So the adventure continues eventually," Miller said.

Cloud Puppy is now available in book stores everywhere, and you can order the book from Amazon right here.

Let us know what you think of Cloud Puppy, and you can talk all things comics and graphic novels with me on Threads and Twitter @mattaguilarcb!

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