Blog Sketch #218

While The Lady Is Away

I play video games. So this week's distraction has been "Mass Effect", which is a sprawling space saga of a game. Here's a sketch of my character, Commander Filip Shepard.

Daily Sketch #159

New Page Cookin'

After taking a whole bunch of reference pics, I've started on the next and final batch of page for Dead Inspector #1. Hopefully I can punch these out relatively quickly and then JC and I will be looking for a home for DI. Here's an early look at a page in progress.

Also we found our drummer last night for Rock Band. By virtue of being the only friend that's tried it out and made it through an entire song, Stacy D is now our drummer. I'm sure she'll regret being good at it soon enough.

Daily Sketch #155

I Have the POWER!

World meet generic super-hero guy charging into the fray. He's yelling some sort of battle cry no doubt. Very fierce.

D and I opened up Rock Band last night and set up our band, the Cheeky Monkeez. My alter ego Stefan Kielbasa and her's (Patty Scraps) rocked hard for a good portion of the evening. My rendition of Bon Jovi's "Dead or Alive" was particularly haunting. No really, it would haunt your dreams. The game's customizability and fun quotient are way up there and I think this is going to be a kick ass party game. Now if we can just find someone who can master the drums. That drum kit is tough!

Daily Sketch #147

I'm a Bad Kid

Last night despite fighting off a cold (and/or sinus infection), a long day, and my better judgement I ended up popping in "Hitman: Blood Money" into the 360 at around 9:30 last night. My plan was to unwind for 30 minutes of game time before going to bed. There was nothing on TV and I had the itch to play. Two hours later I finally shut it off.

So I'm a bit tired today.

But I beat the damn level. Take that porno king and embarrassing senator's son. You got yours.

Daily Sketch #140

I Know Kung Fu

Well actually, I know Kenpo, but this guy probably knows kung fu. Just working out some character design ideas for my old man character I posted about yesterday.

Happy Holidays, by the way one and all! We're headed out over the weekend to visit Danielle's parents for almost a week so it's pretty unlikely I'll have regular posts next week. Everyone deserves a vacation, right?

I'll be celebrating my birthday tonight with my local B-more friends. It's gonna be a rockin' evening filled with pizza, beer, and my favorite party game - Guitar Hero. We'll be rockin' out into the wee hours of the morning.

Daily Sketch #133

Kii-aaa!


Jump spinning crescant kick, my friends. Watch out. This guy knows karate.
Just a quick warmup sketch for fun. Did some jump kicks in training last weekend and it inspired the drawing.


I've been re-reading Ex Machina Volume 1 by Brian K Vaughn (or BKV as he's now more frequently referred to) and Tony Harris. The first time I read it a couple years ago I wasn't that impressed. It was okay I thought, but nothing spectacular. I'm about half way through the first volume again and I gotta say, I may have been wrong. The first issue was a pretty spectacular setup by BKV and despite not really having any action the story moves along at a quick pace. And Tony's art is always exceptional. Maybe it's just that I've read Runaways and Dr Strange: The Oath recently, but BKV is quickly moving up my chart. I know, I'm only 3 years behind. But hey, better late than never. I guess I have to get Y: The Last Man next...


The X-Box 360 is returning home today from its trip to the doctor. Unfortunately I have a lunch meeting and I have no doubt that the UPS man will wait until I leave the house to attempt his delivery. He's crafty that way.

Daily Sketch #122

Dwarven Viking



Inspired a bit by Kenneth Rocafort's sketchbook this weekend and a bit by the incredibly cheesy but bloody "Pathfinder" I watched on the flight back to Baltimore, here's a double dose of dwarven viking warrior (to make up for my lack of sketch yesterday). I like the profile shot better than than the full figure.

In other news it looks like my X-Box 360 has the red light of death flashing and games are freezing inexplicably. Here's hoping Xbox Customer Service can help me out...

And excitingly enough I found out last night that my sister Anna will appear on an upcoming episode of MTV's "Made". Pretty damn cool! I'll let folks know once I know the air date.

Daily Sketch #109

David at the Grave

Spent the morning working on an actual page from "Dead Inspector" so I thought I'd share part of it as an under-drawing.

In other news, Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock has an awesome-ness level of "very frickin' high". The wireless guitar controller rocks and they really amped up the graphics in this new installment. Lots of little gameplay tweaks too that make things a little bit more visually stimulating and entertaining. So far the song selection looks great and the career co-op mode means D and I can play together. Plus X-Box Live capabilities (oooohhhh). The only real downside - an increased price tag of $100 for the game and controller. Now when are they going to give us X-Box-ers the 80s edition?

Daily Sketch #87

Ashley is Worried

Ashley from "Dead Inspector" is a bit concerned. I'm not sure why, but it's probably that dangerous line of work her boyfriend David is in. Just a quick warm up sketch done on backing board this morning.

In other news, I bought two things during a trip to Best Buy yesterday - a webcam & headset and a copy of Halo 3. First, the webcam. It's a sweet Logitech notebook pro webcam which came with a carrying case and a headset. Pretty easy to set up and it worked well with Yahoo Messenger (supposedly works with AOL and Windows as well but I haven't tried it). The pictures below were taken with the webcam. But they really had me at their "easy to open" packaging. I HATE those plastic electronics packages where you need a circular saw and blowtorch to get the product out. This one just had a label which said "pull at this corner" and when you did it snapped that corner open easily. Genius!

Halo 3 - I enjoyed Halo and Halo 2. Halo 2 dominated many a week night for me and my roommate at the time. Halo forged and nearly ruined friendships during long night frag parties. But my time for video games is limited these days and I've yet to finish the last three games I got so originally I wasn't going to buy Halo 3. But then the talk started. Talk of how awesome it was going to be and X-Box Live get togethers. And dammit I don't want to be left out. So I went out at lunch during the launch day and picked up a copy. The funny thing is there was no huge line or shortage at my local Best Buy. A nice big display up at the front of store, but plenty of copies available. I got the special edition, not because of the extra "bonus" materials but because of the disc that promised to help set up my X-Box with my new HDTV for optimal performance. Which it did. Apparently I had my X-Box set up on the normal TV settings. That alone was worth the money spent because now my graphics look UNREAL. I put in about an hour on the game last night (a sign of maturity that I can pull away from a game in favor of sleep) and so far the graphics and interaction live up to the hype. They are stunning. I haven't noticed any big improvements in the game play itself, but it was a nearly perfect 1st person shooter in that respect to begin with. Some new weapons which are cool, but it's the graphics and story telling where the biggest leap happened. If anyone wants to hook up on XBox Live my handle is "Frutti Di Beppo". That's right. Respect!

Daily Sketch #52

The Darkness video game


I had a chance to finally play The Darkness video game (the first game with my name in the credits) this weekend and enjoyed it quite a bit. The story is compelling and Starbreeze did an awesome job establishing mood and setting. I'm not terribly far into it yet, but I'm enjoying it. One of the cooler little tidbits in the game is when you utilize your "creeping dark" ability to scout ahead, you can actually turn back and look at Jackie (you play most of the game in first person mode). When he's using this power, Jackie kneels over and is shadowed with Darkness tentacles coming out of his trenchcoat. It's an incredibly cool visual. I tried to capture the basic gesture in today's sketch.

I watched two movies this weekend - Pulse and The Devil Wears Prada. The Pulse turned out to actually be a pretty decent concept and theme - that the technology we use to make communication easier actually pulls us further apart. Pretty ironic from a guy posting on a blog. The Devil Wears Prada was a D pick, but I have to say I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would. It was funny and interesting and Meryl Streep was great.
And check out my buddy Jim Demonakos' blog for his recap of his trip to Washington, DC which includes my drawing of him (his drawing of me is posted a few posts back).