The imaginative Miller brothers continue to produce colorful characters and engaging stories for all to read.

For Auburn’s ultra-talented co-authors, illustrators and animators, their creativity is boundless, their craft challenging.

Chris and Allan Miller continue to share some of their secrets with children, with their special Pixar-like touch. The brothers make it a point to visit many schools throughout the year, promoting the power and importance of reading, writing and storytelling.

They came home last week, returning to Valley Christian School, which they attended as kids. Their message to students was simple.

“Hopefully we can inspire them to be writers, showing them how easy it is to be readers and writers,” Chris said after conducting a workshop on how stories are formulated and shaped. “The more you read words and see how pictures are painted with words, the more it will become easier for you to do as well.

“You can pick up on different styles that writers have. That’s how we ended up by reading a lot.”

The Millers pursued their dreams of bringing their faith-based and adventurous stories to life. Today, their stories can be found in books, on the Internet and in videos.

It seems they always have a project in the works, something new and attractive for young, inquisitive kids to grab onto.

“It only takes one book to capture a kid, and then it unlocks the whole world,” Allan said. “That’s exciting to see. That’s the biggest accomplishment we ever can get is when we hear of a kid who got introduced to reading through our book.”

The Millers are a great team. One compliments the other. Their success can be traced to their faith, family and mutual understanding and respect for each other’s work.

Chris is outspoken and comes up with big ideas, applying a painter’s broad stroke to a project. Allan delves more into specifics, delivering a painter’s detailed stroke to the work.

Collectively, they have found some magic.

“The coolest thing about it is we always worked well together,” Chris said. “We’ve always been creative, and to have a friendship like that growing up is special.”

They grew up in Auburn and graduated from the Seattle Art Institute with degrees in computer animation. It didn’t take long for them to establish their own home-based studio, complete with the latest computer tools to launch and design a website, produce books and stories.

Good stories are the foundation

For the Millers, the journey begins with writing good stories, extending the tale to illustrations.

Business soon picked up. The brothers began to expand ideas as clientele grew.

They have collaborated with many well-known partners, including Warner Press.

Among their early works was the Christian book series, “Heroes of Promise,” a retelling of Biblical stories that takes place in the Wild West replete with allegorical characters – such as “Gid the Kid” and “Ten-Gallon Sam” – and positive themes.

Their extensive work includes the popular “Hunter Brown” novel series.

One opportunity often leads to another as the Millers apply their touch to picture and storybooks to fantasy fiction young adult novels. They also are called upon to do screenplay adaptations and are exploring ways to reach kids with unique interactive story games.

They plan to provide storylines to Lance Priebe and Club Penguin Entertainment, which produces a massive multiplayer online role-playing game involving a virtual world of online activities.

The Millers will continue to produce rich and rewarding messages as the medium continues to evolve.

The important thing for those stories are meaningful and moving, qualities to lure young minds willing to learn, dream and grow.

One fifth-grader at Valley Christian School came away inspired by the Miller’s storytelling ways.

“We learned that every book is pretty much similar,” he said. “They were awesome.”