Bill Paxton Has a Posse

William "Bill" Paxton
May 17, 1955 – February 25, 2017
Bill Paxton has a posse. At 61.

Game over, man. Game over in peace.

Adventures in Jennysitting

Made this for my friend Jenny who's sick with the flu this week.

I asked her to name:

1. One of her favorite Disney characters
2. Another Disney character
3. A favorite Disney World ride
4. A favorite film from her childhood

She chose Rapunzel, Dory, The Haunted Mansion and "Adventures in Babysitting".

Sketch Night, Society of Illustrators

Been meaning to attend a sketch night at the Society of Illustrators on the Upper East Side ever since I visited the place with my mom and sis last spring. (It's hard to do it when I'm on a job because they begin at 6:30pm; it's hard to get anywhere by 6:30pm when I'm working, let alone a place on the Upper East Side.)

Finally did it last night. It was a "Sherlock Holmes" theme night. The models were in costume (the male model wore tattered suits: I reckon you don't actually need a full suit if you're just posing). I arrived about 6:15pm and a fair number of people had already settled in and secured prime real estate. I was encouraged seeing there were at least TWO other people using their iPad Pros as sketchbooks.

So... I've been doing more drawing since I got my iPad this past autumn, but the last time I sketched a live model was probably back in high school Art Class.

You have to... work FAST.

They started out with a bunch of 2 minute poses and I could barely get anything down. They gradually get up to 10 minute poses.

As the night wore on, I started to get a better system down. Then it became more about focusing on specific aspects.

Here's a progression of my sketches over the course of the evening:


It was interesting and frustrating. The woman was empirically attractive and yet when I tried to render her face onto the page, she would come out... distorted.


I know, I know. It's a skill you build, "practice", etceteras. I just thought I'd be better out of the gate.

I'll probably try a few more sketch nights since I have no life.

Valentine's Day 2017

(I drew this.)

Now and Forever

Won a "Broadway lottery" ticket to see the revival of CATS on Broadway last night, after a big snowfall.

It was $40 vs the $57 it would have cost without the lottery. Thought it'd still be a deal because the seats would be front center... but no, they were the $57 section. And that $57 section was half-empty: and this old lady usher wouldn't let any of the audience members move to better seats even though those seats were vacant. Us lottery winners did have good mezzanine seats, though. And we were just surrounded by empty seats.


If you're not familiar, this new version of CATS uses all real cats for extra authenticity. And while that sounds great politically, the show ends up taking 5 hours as a team of cat-wranglers breathlessly try to get all the cats to hit their marks throughout all the numbers. (It involves a combination of laser pointers and shaking bags of treats.)

Pew Pew Pew!!!

I made this for a Photoshop Battle. It looks crazy but it actually didn't take me that long, due to the magic of After Effects. Well, technically I spent a lot of time cutting out the "Pew Pew" girl a number of years ago for another GIF.

This took me a bit longer to create and got barely any love from the internet:


This got even less notice:


I was particularly proud of this, which didn't get too much attention:


Of all of these, this one probably took the longest, and I'm not thrilled with the final execution. The internet didn't care too much about it, either:


Have I mentioned that I'm between jobs? Don't worry, though. I'm building quite a portfolio to submit to some *very* respectable GIF factories in the tri-state area.

Oh, this one got a little more attention, and I like how it came out:


I call him "Frogger the Hutt".