Drawing the body, and specifically the face, is difficult. It’s something I always wished I was better at and am in awe when I see people who can do it well. Break it down into pieces, though, and it’s a bit more manageable and not so daunting. This is a collection of sketches from a few years ago that I think turned out pretty well.

Here’s something I was working on during a break at work. It sat in my notebook for a couple of months before I decided to post it. I think I was hoping to “finish” it at some point, but then I realized that it’s just going to sit there, so I may as well post it. A little bit “Terminator”, some C-3PO from “The Phantom Menace”, and a dash of “Robocop”.

Here’s an illustration I came up with a few years ago. We were shooting a Flapping Crane sketch, and had taken a musical diversion, as we were known to do from time to time. (As a side note, GarageBand is the greatest tool ever created for a bunch of hack and not-so-hack musicians to mess around with.) Amongst the many nonsensical phrases that were thrown out while coming up with lyrics, “wrestle that shark” was one of them. I pretty quickly went to the visual of a lucha libre wrestler (think Jack Black in “Nacho Libre”), and then this final illustration is what I ended up with a few days later.

Incidentally, the shark has shown up in a couple of places since then.

• First, the phrase was originally used in the song mentioned earlier, which went into a sketch called “Rum Ade”.
• Then the illustration showed up on the label for a cleaning product in the sketch “Shark Hamburger Cleaning Spray”.
• It also became the name and logo for a philosophy podcast by Flapping Crane member Joe Lillibridge.

As you may or may not know, I am in a sketch comedy group called Flapping Crane. We haven’t been too active the past couple of years, but every so often there are rumblings of activity. Just the other day we finally put up the new version of the website that was in development hell for a couple of years. I did the original design, fellow Flapping Craner Alex Kretchmer did a slight overhaul more recently, and then Joe Lillibridge (also in Flapping Crane a web developer) applied some YUI and Javascript voodoo to make it live. We’ve built up quite a catalog of sketches, and it’s fun to browse through them all. Ah, the memories. There are veiled threats to get the band back together and shoot more, so we’ll see — there may be some new videos posted soon.

Grab a sandwich and watch some sketch comedy at flappingcrane.com (Not all SFW).