My name is Derek Friesenborg. I’m the co-creator and director of the animated short “Two-Headed Cop”. I live and work in Santa Monica, Ca.

This is me here, rocking the head-gear/sleeveless half-shirt/mirror-shades combo:

Here is a more recent picture of me, performing my Best Man duties at a friend’s wedding in Big Sur:

That high kick is currently my only power move.

I grew up in suburban Maryland and briefly lived in Waterloo, Belgium, where I graduated high school. I was definitely an artsy type growing up – I even had a consuming interest in special effects make-up for a few adolescent years - so when it came time for college I angled hard for art school, and was lucky to find myself attending the Rhode Island School of Design where I majored in illustration, with a focus in animation.

An early, early drawing in pastel:

I had a bit of a fascination with the macabre at a young age.

This is a more recent drawing I did, this time of my grandmother:

After college I came to Los Angeles to find work as an animator, and after a few crappy jobs (see the “History” post) I worked at Activision, Disney, Digital Domain, Nickelodeon, a few smaller freelance jobs, then Sony Imageworks. I was at Imageworks for almost nine years, starting on the first Harry Potter movie and leaving after Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, with about fifteen projects in between.

Here’s some of my animation work:

For the next year or two, my major focus is to complete “Two-Headed Cop”, a project that has been in existence in one form or another for almost twenty years now. I’m very excited to see it finally becoming a reality.