Life studies for the Calendar of Tales

Here's a batch of life studies I did for the soldier dude in my crazy January illustration for Neil Gaiman's Calendar of Tales project... (The second illustration here.) Mostly I was trying to sort out the hands and foreshortening and lighting, since you can't see most of the figure in the final. (And, yeah, that's basically me in a leather jacket trying to look badass with a deadly remote control.)

Oh, and while I was doing these a bird landed on the fire escape outside, so of course I had to stop and doodle the bird in the margin...