In Celebration of the Year's "End"

I know, corny. Still, here are a few of my favorite recent "rear view" life drawing sketches. Enjoy!




Happy New Year!

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Moe's Monsters

These are some Monster characters that my Wife designed for an idea that we had for the Moe's "Burritos for Life" video contest.
She drew them on a napkin while we were eating and talking about the idea. I took that napkin drawing and redrew them in Flash. I kept them as close to the original doodle as I could. Every time I strayed or tried to improve it somehow, they didn't look as good.

Can't improve on perfection.

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Original Doodle for 9/27 Flash Rendering

Well, here it is. I said I would post it later, and if you've been following this Blog at all, that typically meant never. Heh.

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Gus Gracey

My new favorite "Hitchhiking Ghost", Gus Gracey.

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Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party 2006

Wow! That about sums it up completely. We had the most awesome time down in Disneyworld at the Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party on Monday night, October 2nd. There were five of us travelling together for a week at Disney. My Wife Liz and I, my co-worker Darrell and his Wife Regina, and another co-worker Detag.

The Wife and I usually go every year in early October to celebrate our Wedding Anniversary (October 7th) and it usually coincides with the Halloween festivities at the Magic Kingdom. Plus it also happened to be Detag's birthday on the 2nd. So, for the Halloween party on Monday night, the three of us guys were going as the Hitchhiking Ghosts from the Haunted Mansion, and Liz as the Bride. We knew were going to look great, but we had no idea how much we were going to totally ROCK THE HOUSE DOWN!

This is a photo of us that I found online at Flickr.com the first night when we got home from our trip.

We took the Disney bus to the Magic Kingdom from our hotel. The bus was empty except for the driver, who's jaw practically dropped when we got on. We exited the bus and made our way to the front gates and were stopped for a few photo requests (A sign of things to come!) We got to the front gate of the Magic Kingdom around 9:30 pm as it took a good 2 hours to do our makeup and get dressed. As we are going through the turnstiles, the Cast Mambers working there are applauding us! We get in, get our wristbands and start making our way up Main Street to the Mansion in Liberty Square. As we passed City Hall, a Guest Relations manager came out and complemented us very highly on our costumes, and started following us a bit, writing on some paper. He presented us with a free Fastpass to get on any ride without waiting in line and a voucher for 5 free Haunted Mansion Pins. (Again, a sign of things to come!) It worked out great that the "Hallowishes" Fireworks had just started because everyone was watching the fireworks as we were walking up Main Street from behind them. If more people had seen us walking up Main Street, I don't think we would have ever made it to the Mansion.

We made it as far as the Liberty Tree in Liberty Square when we got stopped again for photos. This time they didn't just want photos of us, they wanted photos with us!

After that stop, we finally made it to the Mansion, and after compliments from the Maids and Butlers, we were able to ride. It was so fantastic. We each got into Doom Buggies individually, in the proper order. Darrell as "Phineas" followed by Detag as "Ezra" and me as "Gus", then Liz as the "Bride" along with Gina, who acted as our handler for the evening. She kept water and took photos and was our liason with the Mansion Cast Members.

By the time we were exiting the ride, word had spread amongst all the Mansion Cast Members to get a look at us. We stopped near the ride exit, and that's when everyone wanted to get pictures with us. Parents and kids, Mansion Maids and Butlers... it was insanely cool! There was a line for cryin' out loud! Later, we were taken to some backstage VIP areas of the Mansion and were given lots of insider info about its creation and inner workings. A Cast Member named Nicole was pretty much responsible for all of the wonderful treatment we received that night.

We really made their night for them since Pirates Of The Caribbean is so huge this year, it seemed that every other person there that night was dressed as a Pirate. For us to show up, not only dressed as some of their Haunted Mansion characters, but to go to such extremes and really do them well, so well that we had lines of people waiting to get their pictures with us, and much better than even their own Hitchhikers that appear in the "Boo To You" Parade, we really put some of the spotlight back on to the Mansion, at least for a few hours. I'm glad we could make their night more special because they really made ours fantastic! We actually got to take the final ride of the evening on the Haunted Mansion and took one great big group photo with the four of us and just about every Mansion Cast Member.

Jeff Lange DVD Productions was there to catch our visit to the Mansion. Could we be showing up on his "Trick or Treat 3" DVD?

Well, we are still recovering from the best trip I have ever had to Disney. Many more pictures to come. Heck, I might have to start a separate blog just for the Hitchhikers!

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Flash Rendering

I sketched this out on a piece of note paper this morning and rendered it in Flash. I'll scan and post the original sketch later.

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Flash Sketches

Here's a couple of sketches I did in Flash at work the other day.

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New Sketches

Here's a couple of recent sketches. Both are the result of "I need to draw more, fer cryin' out loud!" So, here's the start of that, and whatdayaknow, you're here to witness it.

I usually start drawing without any idea of what I'm doing, what the pose will be, anything. And these sketches are no exception. I'll be doing more thumbnails for future drawings (hopefully), but these turned out pretty O.K.

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The Adult Swim Panel at Dragon*Con

I forgot how much I hate Dragon*Con! Haha!

My buddy Adam over at GalacticHunter.com posted a photo of the Adult Swim panel in their Dragon*Con Gallery.

Saturday's Adult Swim Panel - The view from the front row.

I'm second from the left in the picture. The other guy in the back row with me there is Brian "Detag" DeTagyos, also an animator on Birdman. The 3 guys in front are Jay Edwards, Dave Willis, and Dana Snyder, the creators of "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" and the voice of Master Shake. We kinda lost space at the table because Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer from the "Venture Brothers" showed up and I didn't know they were going to be there. I knew immediately where most of the audience questions were going! Hell, I'm all fanboy myself over those guys. The Venture Brothers ROCKS!! I did get to talk to them a bit before the panel started.

Doc Hammer and Jackson Publick.
That's part of my face in the upper right, and that's my Wife, Liz's hair and wrist behind Doc.

Funny story... before the panel started I'm in a backstage area, sort of a "Green Room" and we could see the video feed from the main auditorium. So I get a call from Adam letting me know that he's right up front for the talk. So I glance up at the video and I see the back of a head that conspicuously looks like Adam's with a phone to his ear. So I'm telling him "I can see you! I can the see the back of your head!" So he starts looking around and I'm trying to get him to stand up and wave to the camera. It was bizarre... I guess you had to be there.... hehe!

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Disneyland 2006

Here we are out in Anaheim, CA visiting Disneyland! Just landed yesterday afternoon, got to the Hotel, got something to eat, hit the local Target for some necessities, and got down to the park at around 7pm to at least get some Disney fun going on our first day.


We decided to hit California Adventure since we only had about 2 hours before that park closed, and we figured that was about all we would need.




More to come later...

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The Uncle Floyd Show

My lovely Wife, Liz, surprised me to no end on my recent birthday not only with a "Fudgie The Whale" Ice Cream Cake from the Carvel Ice Cream store, but with an awesome gift. A DVD of "The Best of the Uncle Floyd Show". Uncle Floyd was a big part of my teenage years in New Jersey. The show typically started out with Floyd and his puppet pal, Oogie, doing an opening monologue. Check out Oogie in action below:

Castmember Mugsy recollects: "For twenty-five years the Uncle Floyd Show has been entertaining the masses and eradicating the blues, if only for a half hour a day, five days a week, 52 weeks a year. In a place in people's hearts not unlike Johnny Carson, Floyd was welcomed into millions of homes each night. Leading a weird bunch of misfits and even stranger puppet pals, the Floyd program was definitely an exception. It was a show that brought people together when everything else in the world was driving them apart. It was a show that parents could watch with children, husbands with wives. Teenagers would watch in one house and senior citizens in another. A show you might talk about the next day in school or work. Where the signs of status and success meant getting a picture on the wall or even Viewer of The Week!"

Mugsy sadly passed away after battling lung cancer in October 2005.

Floyd is a phenomenal piano player. He would play old-time Dixieland and Vaudeville favorites, songs that you typically had never heard before, but you loved all the same. In 1999, Floyd set the Guinness World Record for Continuous Piano Playing where under the watchful eyes of the Guinness judges, he played he piano for 24 hours and 15 minutes!

I might add that Hugo was a staple on the Floyd Show long before Pee-Wee Herman added "Hugo" to his act. In fact, watching Pee-Wee's original HBO special will remind you quite a bit of the Uncle Floyd Show for some strange reason.

Another of Mugsy's hilarious puppet creations is "Cuppy", a headless baby doll with a paper coffee cup for a head. Click on the clip below to see "Cuppy" in action:

Go find out for yourselves how ingenious and hilarious this local, no-budget television show was.

Thanks, Liz, for bringing Uncle Floyd back to me!

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Life Drawing - Full 2 hour session

Thursday night Life Drawing typically follows the same schedule each week. 30 minutes of 1 minute poses, 30 minutes of 2 minute poses. 15 minute break. 45 minutes of 10, 15, and 20 minute poses. Here is a complete session from 10/20/2005.For my Life Drawing posts from now on, I'm going to attempt to keep things chronological. For myself mostly. I'd like to see if I've made any progress. Har-har!

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Harvey Birdman: Attorney At Law

This is a great scene from the Birdman episode called "Harvey's Civvy". Harvey gets hit with a class action lawsuit from former villians that he's maimed or injured in the process of capturing them in his past life as a Superhero. A subplot involved Judge Mentok The Mindtaker, and Prosecuting Attorney, Shado The Brain Thief in a battle of mind control. Here Mentok takes control of the Bailiff, making him dance around the courtroom. The Bailiff's atomic wedgie is courtesy of Shado from the scene just prior. All this to the tune of "Dueling Banjos".

Have I mentioned that Birdman is a dream show on which to work?

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Walt Surveys His Kingdom

This is one of my all time favorite photographs of Walt Disney. Here he is at Disneyland, surveying this amazing creation of his. Early in the morning, pavement still wet from the morning cleaning. No one around. Just the man and his ideas come to life. Awesome.


In October of 2003, my Wife and I took our first ever trip to Disneyland in Anaheim, California. It was my first ever trip to California, period. I had just started my tenure on "Birdman" five months prior and was still freelance. The Job/Money situation was still very much up in the air, so we figured "let's get while the gettin' is good, and go out to Disneyland, at least once in our lives." We went with the expectation that we would never be able to get back there ever again. This would be our one and only shot. We went for 7 days and did nothing else in Califiornia but visit Disneyland, 7 days in a row. It was PHENOMENAL! We went to the Golden Horseshoe everyday for lunch. The performers started to recognize us after a few days and would mention us here and there during their acts. We rode our favorite rides over and over. Each evening we would grab some ice cream and sit on Main Street as if we owned the joint.



So, in the tradition of Walt's photo, here I am, wearing my Cartoon Network shirt, surveying the kingdom that I, along with my Wife, owned for 7 days in the Fall of 2003.

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Harvey Birdman: Attorney At Law

Probably one of the best things I get to do as an Animator on a show like Birdman is take a crack at animating a classic Hanna Barbera character, in this case Riccochet Rabbit, and really pay tribute to the cartoons I grew up with and loved as a kid. We have access to all the old wonderful model sheets. We are able to study video and frame grabs of the old shows and base our animation on what the past masters did, but also add our own touches and flair to make the new animation our own. Birdman is an animator's dream job. I've been able to animate Riccochet Rabbit, Shaggy, Speed Buggy, The Galaxy Trio, Morroco Mole, Quick Draw McGraw and Baba Looey among others!

FYI: Riccochet Rabbit appeared in the Birdman episode "X Gets The Crest" and was voiced by Mark Hamill, which added more to my fanboy lunacy since I'm also a big Star Wars fan.

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Life Drawing

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Harvey Birdman: Attorney At Law

This still is from a shot that I did for the Birdman episode "Evolutionary War". Harvey defends Captain Caveman's Son, Cavey, Jr. when the local schools ban books that include evolution, therefore threatening Cavey's very existence. Harvey himself wonders about his own place in the evolutionary chain since he is a man, but has wings. This scene is the signature scene of the episode which is a musical number remenicient of "Beauty and the Beast." I got to record a commentary track, along with the rest of the Production Crew for this episode on the Birdman Volume 2 DVD, due out sometime this fall.

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Life Drawing

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Duckie

My Wife collects rubber ducks, and for a while there, we had quite a few filling up the bathtub. She's since moved on to other collecting interests, but still has all of her duckies packed away in the basement. A few of the favorites are still lurking around the house. I still buy her new ones now and again.

I drew this duckie for her.

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THE RETURN - A Beatles Tribute Band

The Return are a FANTASTIC Beatles Tribute Band from Griffin, GA. They play the early Beatles hits, up through the1965 years, thereabouts. They have the accents, the suits, and especially the instruments. My Wife and I stumbled across them at a free concert they were giving at a local shopping mall in Georgia. We were there shopping and on our way out to the car, we heard this fabulous Beatles music drifting through the warm Summer air. Being huge Beatles Fans, we were absolutely hooked and have since gone on to see them play live about about 5 times now, with the most recent show on June 1, 2006 at Screen On The Green, where they played live before a showing of "A Hard Days Night" outdoors on the big screen.


As a dopey fan, I decided to present them with a drawing of themselves in the style of the old Beatles cartoon show from the 60's. They liked it so much, they had T-Shirts made, and are now selling them at their shows. The finished art is presented above, although they had to make a 3-color version for the final shirt. Below is my original doodle.

Check out The Return at www.thereturnonline.com

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Personalized Paw Island Sketches 2

Another "Paw Island" personalized sketch. This one is of Allie the Kitten and her Teddy Mouse, Colby.

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Personalized Paw Island Sketches

From 1999 to 2001, I worked for a start-up children's entertainment company called "Paw Island". Our main focus was on books and on our website, where we had activities, games, cartoons and music based on our core group of characters.

In 2001, we had the idea of offering personalized original sketches (by me) for a fee where I would draw a child's favorite character in either a situation of my choosing, or partaking in whatever the child's hobby or favorite past-time was.

We never got past the 12 test sketches I did, which were all personalized to folks around the old office. Anyway, here's one of those sketches, and I'll be posting the rest in the coming weeks.

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Life Drawing

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Harvey Birdman: Attorney At Law

As Lead Animator on Harvey Birdman, I sometimes get to choose which scenes I'd like to animate. This one looked good in the animatic, so I requested it right away... HA!

This scene is from the Birdman episode Birdgirl of Guantanamole. This episode won Best Animated TV Show for Adults at the 2005 Ottawa International Animation Festival. We are particularly proud of this honor since Adult Swim shows aren't typically recognized for their animation artistry, but for their writing. Birdman is a hilarious show... some of the best writing on Adult Swim, and I think we've proven that the animation is pretty darn good, too.

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Carousel of Creeps

This is a fantastic idea that my Wife, Liz, came up with that we've been knocking around for a while now trying to figure out what to do with. I think it would make a fantastic Children's Book. She has come up with all these awesome designs for nightmarish carousel horses, with a poem that goes along with each one. Pictured is my rendering of one my favorite designs of hers.

This one is called "Head Hunter" and here's the poem that goes along with the image: "You might take a ride on Head Hunter instead, She's always in search of that one... perfect... head."

You can see more of Liz's work over at Puppatoons. She's awesome.

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2-Minute Gesture Drawings

These are some 2 minute gesture drawings. I normally don't draw this small on a single page, but after looking through my sketchbooks for drawings to display here, these were some of my favorites. I'm going to have to start drawing smaller from now on.

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Thursday Night Life Drawing Sponsored by ASIFA-Atlanta

Every Thursday night, I attend a Life Drawing class sponsored by ASIFA-Atlanta, the local chapter of the International Animation Society here in Atlanta. $5 for 2 hours is a bargain. It's the most non-work related drawing I do on a regular basis so I thought it would be a good place to start posting some of my artwork.

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Welcome

My name is Steve and I am currently Lead Animator on "Harvey Birdman: Attorney At Law" on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. Not sure what I'll be doing here on this blog, but you'll be the first to know.

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