Life Drawing: Rockstar

I've been helping out on a short film in my spare time this week, but I promised myself I'd post a couple times a week, so here's a stitched-together scan of a drawing I did at one of the life drawing sessions held at work a while back. I wasn't able to finish the rendering, but I liked the pose and how it started out:

New Animation Reels

I uploaded three new demo reels to YouTube. Each contains a different slice of my body of work. They are broken down into the Main Demo Reel, a Keyframe Only Demo Reel, and a Mocap Only Demo Reel. For shot breakdowns, visit my portfolio site. YouTube videos always exceed the width of my Blogger column, so the best way to view them is off the link to the YouTube site itself.l There's lots of little details in them, so make sure your resolution is set to 720p.

Main Animation Reel (best of keyframe & mocap) YouTube Link


Keyframe Only YouTube Link


Mocap Only YouTube Link

Animation Exercise: "Excuse Me"

A little keyframing piece I've been doing to mix it up from all the mocap at work. The final version with a higher-quality image is available to view on my portfolio website on either the Main Reel or Keyframe Reel videos. I animated it on the free "Norman Rig," and the sound clip is from Blazing Saddles.

Comics I Like: Sarah Silverman

Although I haven't seen her live, I've known Sarah Silverman's work since the early 90s when I first started loving stand-up comedy. She's huge now, and has carved out a very memorable niche for herself. This caricature still falls short for me in terms of finding a good harmony between exaggerated and realistic, but it was good practice nonetheless. In some ways I think the original drawing flows better than the final Photoshopped piece, though:

Comics I Like: Doug Stanhope

When I was first lent a Doug Stanhope CD, he was described to me as a comic with "good bar stories." It's no wonder: his delivery style is profane and crude, and he loves questioning societal conventions from the ground up. Many of his filthy and hilarious stories are from his time traveling out on the road. I was able to see him, inebriated and shaggy-haired, at a packed dive bar in Ocean Beach a few years back and his rants absolutely slayed. If you like blue comedy, he's one of the best out there.

For the caricature, I decided to make him a sunburnt, annoyed hitchhiker alone on an Arizona highway, complete with a cigarette and a beer, and wearing the "Libertarian" baseball jersey he wore for a special he put on in New York when he ran for president in 2008.

Here he is delivering the famous "Aristocrats" joke for Penn Jilette and Paul Provenza's movie (NSFW!):

As a guest on the excellent Charlie Brooker's "Screenwipe":

The Latest Red Dead Redemption News

Just wanted to post some RDR items, the first of which being that the new Legends and Killers downloadable content will be available online August 10th, and it includes models of characters from Red Dead Revolver, the "spiritual predecessor" to Red Dead Redemption.
-Check out screens here and the video at GameTrailers.com:

Video Games | Red Dead Redemption | Exclusive Legends and Killers DLC Trailer

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

-The second news item is that a team of young Dutchmen just broke the official world record for uninterrupted game playing. Which game sustained their fanatic attention for 50+ hours? Red Dead Redemption, of course.

-There's a great behind-the-scenes video of how the RDR soundtrack was created that you can check out here:


-A recent write-up of the biggest games of the year in the New York Times.

-Up next, a great webcomic about a fan's experiences in RDR over at 24 Hours Marston. (Press "Next" to start the comic sequence)

-And finally, LEGO Red Dead! 1 2

Comics I Like: Adam Carolla

I distinctly remember the first time I encountered the comedic stylings of Adam Carolla. My friend Carlton and I were doing homework together at his house, and he had MTV's "LoveLine" on. I had never seen it before and wasn't paying much attention at first, but he kept distracting me by making me laugh from his wiseass remarks and eventually I just put my books aside and enjoyed the show. Since that show, I've seen or heard Carolla for probably hundreds of hours on television, radio, film, and now his podcast with partners-in-crime "Bald Bryan" Bishop and Teresa Strasser. For the drawing I kept the style a little less cartoony than normal and colored the scanned drawings in Photoshop. I used the smudge tool to help soften up the rough graphite lines and help smooth out the tone variations in the skin.

9/19 update: I did another pass on this picture to punch it up a bit, added a text border with all the in-jokes I could fit, then printed out some copies and gave them to the Ace Man himself when I saw him over the weekend at a live show in North Hollywood. Here's the new version:

Here's a shot of the two of us after the show (I wore my Red Dead shirt because I wanted to speak with him about the game (He's mentioned it every so often over the last few months on his podcast: