Happy Holidays!

I hope you all have a great Holiday and New Year. Thanks for following!!!

Panda Punch

Just watched Kung Fu Panda. Even though I'm a traditionalist, I think it's one of the best animated movies of all time. It has a great design sense that is consistent, great story with a lot of heart and good life lessons, it's funny and the performances the animators gave are stupendous, the subtleties in the voices actors readings are translated beautifully. Some of the best acting in animation ever.

I wanted to do some actiony storyboard type stuff for my portfolio, so I whipped this up.

P.S. subtleties is spelled right, I checked.

P.P.S. actiony is not a real word, I know.

GREEN LANTERN

He's Batman

Here's a storyboard sample I whipped up tonight. Not sure if the hand in the 2nd panel is too big. I was trying to exaggerate the perspective but I thing the frame might be too wide to do it as much as I did. Any thoughts? (Click on the image to see larger)

Storyboard Samples

Just posted Storyboard samples from a submission test I just took. You can CLICK HERE to see the storyboards.

GAMING BART

Animation Reel 2009

I finally got around to assembling together a reel. Still needs some work but it's essentially there. I"m going to put my energy into producing more work to put on it. To see a larger version got to http://web.me.com/joshuataback/PORTFOLIO_SITE/ANIMATION.html

Disco Stu & Marge

Some old Simpsons animation I'm putting together for my reel. It was quite a process to get it from old xeroxes to photoshop to final cut pro. But I think I have a good system down. If anyone is trying to do the same thing contact me and I'll let you know the steps.

I suggest playing something funky while watching.

Here are some drawings from the scenes.

PORTFOLIO Oct 2009

Two posts in one day! Holy Cow! Well, not a cow, a tiger. Here's a drawing from my newly organized PORTFOLIO. A lot of what is on here is in it, but if you're curious go to www.joshuataback.com to take a look.

Moe Skip

Here's an old pencil test I dug up from a couple years back. I can't remember if it made the show or not, but I thought the gag was really funny and I had fun doing it.

Green Lantern sketches

I'm still chugging along on the comic book. Not really ready to post anything from that yet. Here's a couple doodles for a few weeks back.

ANTARCTICA LAB

I thought I'd start warming up by sketching from the National Geographic Photo Of The Day to get me going. I'm planning on doing this regularly, we'll see what happens.

CLARK GABLE

SKETCHES SEPT 23 2009

Getting even

I'm wondering if this joke is obvious enough.

Lizard walk 1 ruff ruff

This Lizard Creature is going to turn up a lot in the comic I'm working on. I thought I would do some animating to get the feel for it so I have some freedom to play with fluid poses. I need to still tweak a few things, but it's basically there.

Tie Guy

Been working hard on Carter expressions, but they're not ready to post yet. But here's a sketch from a few months back that was sitting in my "Sketches to post" folder.

Hand Drawn Baby

Super excited for Disney's next HAND DRAWN flick to come out. Take a look here and PLEASE take a look in the theaters when it's out.

Comic Frame & Model Sheet

Been drawing a lot instead of posting. Soon I'll post a bunch of stuff I've been accumulating. Here's a rough (or as we say in the business ruff) frame from the comic my buddy Chris Mich and I are working on. Also I got a construction model sheet to where I am happy enough to work with it.

Contemplative Carter

I've been gearing up to work on a five page (or so) Comic book teaser with my friend Chris Mich.  I animated Carter (this guy above) saying a line from a movie clip that I got from the 11 Second Club website.  I was going to try and get it done for the website's August competition, but I feel it's time to start in on the comic.  The animation I did helped me practice drawing him, and I'll definitely finish it up.  I find animating to be the best way to really feel out a character.  You can do a bunch of different drawings to get a feel, but to consistently draw the character many times and matching it up to previous drawings, you find so many nuances that you would probably not come across if you just did separate sketches.  

Gucskar

toon raccoon

Faces 7/22/09

Carter and Quintin

Here are some studies of a couple characters I'm working on. There's a comic book in the works, more on that later.

Trayceface

This started out as a little cartoony sketch of my lovely girlfriend Trayce. I haven't done much with color in a while and I learned about a couple new techniques in photoshop, so I was itching to to do something. I'm not crazy about how the cleaned up pencil lines came out. It was a small drawing and that's probably why the imperfections show up as they do, and a harder lead may have helped too. But maybe that's part of it's charm. I'm going to pick up some pens and try my hand at inking again, something else I haven't done in a long time. I also could have kept tweaking the color more and more, adding more variations, but I really feel like getting to drawing today. So this is how it is. I may revisit it later.

The Notes of Carter Rankine

I've been working on some characters from a story that my friend Chris Mich is writing. It's called The Notes of Carter Rankine: Pernico's Plan, and is about a time traveling, soldier-ish scientist. Chris and I went to college together at The University of the Arts, where he majored in film and myself in animation. The summer before freshman year we called each other to "meet" over the phone and spent 2 hours talking about Star Wars and Indiana Jones. I guess this summer marks our 19 year friendship. Over the years we've written some scripts together and I've always enjoyed drawing things that springboard from our brainstorming sessions. I hope to post more from his Carter Rankine story as time goes on. Click on his name above to see what the "Michman" is all about.

Conan of Late Nite

Some more caricatures, keeping in mind what I read over at Tom Richmond's tutorials. I remember when Conan first got his last show back when I was in college. He seems to be doing alright with his new gig. Man that hair! What a trademark!

Let sleeping cats lie

Practically whenever I sit at the computer, like I am now, our cat Jako jumps up on the shelf behind me and meows for me to pet him, like he just did. Here's a few sketches I did of him sleeping on the couch not meowing. I don't know where his other paw was (maybe between two pillows).

Scribble Guy

This started as a quick nonsense scribble. I then looked for a face in there and came up with this guy.

Oldies

I drew these guys while on the couch watching TV.  The guy with the Yarmulke was out of my head and the bald guy was from a 1 second glance of a guy on commercial.  It might have been that guy from America's Top Model.

McShane

Here's a caricature or actor Ian McShane from HBO's Deadwood.  It's not very exaggerated, I just started practicing after reading Tom Richmond's Tutorials  on his blog.  It's a great blog and is a great tutorial.

Here's a few more studies I did, more playing around with different styles more than trying to capture a likeness.