Minty Lewis

Melánie Scott "Minty" Jay (née Lewis) (born December 11, 1978) is a writer, storyboard artist and voice actress for Regular Show, voicing Eileen. Her middle name was her great-grandmother's maiden name. Her grandmother's maiden name was Bottom. She was also born one month overdue.

Born in Falls Church, Virginia and raised in McLean, her parents are Bob and Judy. She attended Langley High before attending and eventually graduating in 2000 from Wesleyan University in Connecticut, majoring in Anthropology. She later moved to Boston, Massachusetts. After living there for two years, she briefly moved back to Virginia before moving to San Francisco, California, and finally settled a year later in Berkeley, before moving to Burbank after several years living in Berkeley. Other locations Lewis has lived in include New York and even Sweden.

Following college, she worked in the documentary filmmaking world by ordering tapes and transcribing footage. After doing this job for a couple of years she decided to start taking classes in drawing and graphic design while still living in Boston. At around the same time, her then-boyfriend was working on a comic to be published by Small Press Expo, and encouraged Lewis to submit something as well. It was the first comic she had ever drawn and, much to her surprise, it was accepted.

It was here that she had discovered comics were a good fit for her. She would self-publish her mini-comic, entitled P.S. Comics No. 1 for Small Press Expo, and has continued this practice since. Reviewer John Porcellino enjoys Lewis' smart yet subtle sense of humor: "Minty's comix are smart without hitting you over the head - they have this great offhand subtlety to them that I love - and they're always laugh-out-loud funny. I always come away from them feeling like my perspective has been altered a bit, and that's a good thing ain't it?" Another reviewer, Paul Constant, noted that while her comics can be amateurish and may not be suitable for new comic readers, he still recommends it to those that can see past past those criticisms: "Some of Lewis' strips are a little amateurish, but they've still got a lot of charm. And the way they avoid mawkish sentimentality should really be a cause for celebration: Some of these terrier strips are really fucking poignant. I wouldn't recommend this for someone just getting into comics, but if you have a wide range of tastes and you're looking for something different, this is the book for you." Jeremy Nisen of Osmosis Online praised Lewis for her award-winning P.S. Comics No. 3: "I feel like I owe a big favor to comic creator/cartoonist Minty Lewis. Because after 20+ years of reading comics from all types of genres, publishers, and creators, it was her P.S. Comics 3, which I picked up at the Alternative Press Expo in 2007, that left me gobsmacked with pure, unadulterated joy and mirth. It was a reminder of everything cool and special that comics could be. See, I’d just read about the office-based misadventures of some rather melodramatic, pathetic anthropomorphic fruit. And fruit with eyes and hands and stuff is funny.”

For her work in comics, Lewis has also won an Ignatz Award, an award created to recognize achievements in comics, winning the category of "Outstanding Minicomic" with her comic P.S. Comics No. 3 in 2007. Five years later, she would serve as a juror at the 2012 Ignatz Awards. Lewis will write issue #13 of the Regular Show comic series in July 2014, returning to her comic-making roots. The comic is about the character she voices on Regular Show, Eileen, being recruited to help Mordecai and Rigby decorate the park for the annual park party, but many things go awry: A small fire occurs, three children go missing and a blimp crashes. Things get even worse and all this occurs before the party even starts. She was also the senior designer for VIZ Media.

Eventually, Calvin Wong gave Regular Show creator J.G. Quintel a comic of hers and Quintel hired her. Originally, Lewis was only hired to be a storyboard artist, but Quintel thought her voice was the perfect fit for a character Lewis pitched and created, Eileen: "...Minty’s voice, just her natural voice, was so perfect for that character! She [wrote] one of the very early episodes with Eileen in it and she had some really funny jokes in the way she pitched it. [It was] just the way her voice sounded – she [had] to be that character! We even tried an actor, but it just wasn’t playing funny. [So] we were like, OK, let’s see if Minty wants to do it. She said yes and it really worked out. It’s a great character and [Minty’s voice] totally fits that character’s personality."



In addition to her work on Regular Show and her comics, she has been married to fellow artist Damien Jay since late August 2008. Together they have a daughter, named Sally, who was born on January 26, 2011. Lewis is also the youngest of four children, having two sisters and one brother, named Elaine, Meredith and Cam, respectively. Lewis also has a sister-in-law and niece from her brother. Along with her husband and daughter, she also owns one dog and one cat. One of her sisters has a son, who is a cancer survivor, making her his aunt. Other nephews include Graham, Oscar, Cooper and a step-nephew, Eston. She is also a vegetarian.

Following the birth of her daughter, she decided to take a hiatus from storyboarding to care for her, while still voicing Eileen in the meantime. Three seasons later, she made a surprise return to storyboarding with the season 5 episode, "Benson's Car", and has resumed her dual roles as storyboard artist and voice actress.

Voice Credits
When asked how it was like to be the voice of Eileen, Lewis describes: "Well, getting to be the voice of Eileen was pretty crazy." J.G. Quintel continues with: "Oh, that's [Lewis' voice] so awkward. But, that was just her voice, that's just how [pitching Eileen's quotes] she did it. We were like, 'You wanna be Eileen? You gotta be Eileen.'" A more thorough explanation of how Lewis became Eileen can be viewed above.

Because Lewis is not a working a voice actress, she rarely voice acts on other shows. She did, however, provide the voice of Miss Waddles in It's A Toy's Lyfe, which aired on Channel 101, and provided the voice of Erin the caterpillar in the Adventure Time episode "Food Chain."

This section may be incomplete

Season 2

 * "Brain Eraser" - Eileen
 * "A Bunch of Baby Ducks" - Eileen
 * "Skunked" - Eileen

Season 3

 * "Camping Can Be Cool" - Eileen
 * "Cruisin'" - Eileen, Girl #2
 * "Butt Dial" - Eileen
 * "Access Denied" - Eileen

Season 4

 * "Terror Tales of the Park II" - Eileen
 * "Bald Spot" - Eileen, Girl 3
 * "One Pull Up" - Eileen
 * "TGI Tuesday" - Eileen
 * "The Longest Weekend" - Eileen
 * "Ace Balthazar Lives" - Eileen
 * "Carter and Briggs" - Eileen
 * "Family BBQ" - Eileen

Season 5

 * "Tants" - Eileen
 * "New Year's Kiss" - Eileen
 * "Portable Toilet" - Eileen
 * "Return of Mordecai and the Rigbys" - Eileen
 * "Video 101" - Eileen
 * "Play Date" - Eileen, Cerberus Mom 2

Boarded Episodes


Lewis began storyboarding on Regular Show in the summer of 2010, during production of season 2. She storyboarded her episodes with Kat Morris, becoming the first official all-female storyboarding team, with the episode "But I Have a Receipt". Morris previously worked on "Brain Eraser" with Shion Takeuchi, but Takeuchi was uncredited. Together, they would write four episodes before Lewis took a hiatus from storyboarding to raise her then-newborn daughter.

When asked who her favorite character to write for is, Morris added Eileen as a favorite and loved the way Lewis wrote the character: "...I'm also really attached to Eileen because Minty Lewis and I worked hard to make her kind of a weirdo. Minty was a lot better at writing her, but I feel like I have to carry the torch and keep Eileen quirky."

Three seasons later, Lewis made history: becoming the first storyboard artist on the show to stop actively storyboarding but later returning. As former partner Morris had left the show the season before, Lewis was in need of a new partner. She was paired up with Calvin Wong, the person that helped hire her in the first place. They started on the episode "Benson's Car". She has recently changed storyboarding partners, as her current partner is Ryan Pequin. A full list of Minty's written episodes is listed below.

Season 2

 * "But I Have a Receipt" (with Kat Morris)
 * "Do Me a Solid" (with Kat Morris)
 * "The Night Owl" (with Kat Morris)
 * "A Bunch of Baby Ducks" (with Kat Morris)

Season 5

 * "Benson's Car" (with Calvin Wong)
 * "Wall Buddy" (with Calvin Wong)
 * "Survival Skills"
 * "The Heart of a Stuntman" (with Calvin Wong)
 * "Skips' Story" (with Calvin Wong)
 * "Return of Mordecai and the Rigbys" (with Calvin Wong)
 * "Catching the Wave" (with Calvin Wong)

Links

 * Minty Lewis' official website
 * Minty Lewis' Disqus
 * Minty Lewis' Etsy
 * Minty Lewis' Facebook
 * Minty Lewis' Flickr
 * Minty Lewis' Google+
 * Minty Lewis' Instagram
 * Minty Lewis' LiveJournal
 * Minty Lewis' Twitter
 * Minty Lewis' Twtrland
 * Minty Lewis' YouTube