BackTaback

NEW BLOG LOCATION!!

2010-09-25T11:54:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone! I know, I know - "Where's this guy been?" John Lennon was right when he said "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." While I was getting my legs over at Family Guy, I began a couple/few projects I'm currently working on - and well, blog posting kinda fell off the radar. Which is totally hypocritical of me because I follow well over a hundred blogs myself.

Anyhow, I hope to keep it up again after this hiatus, but at a new web address - due to email such & such issues. The NEW BLOG ADDRESS IS http://joshuatabackart.blogspot.com/ not much different from the old one. Please come on over and follow me there or put me into your google reader which is how I follow all my blogs now, along with all the other world events such as Foreign affairs, the Health Care Crisis and people falling down while skateboarding.

Thank you all for being interested and I hope to see you over at the NEW BLOG!

---Josh

http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/571.html

Our Friend Hurley

2010-03-13T13:38:00.000-08:00

Hey folks. Sorry there have been no posts in a long time. I have been busy finding my legs over on Family Guy as a storyboard revisionist. It's been about a month or so now. Everybody is great there and I'm having a good time. The commute leaves something to be desired, an extra 30 min each way. I'm starting to get some extra energy back to work on more personal things. I did a couple cards for people, I'll post them soon, and I've been working on a 5 page comic book. I'll post some of that soon too when I think it's presentable enough. Anyhow I drew this picture of Jorge Garcia who plays the role of Hurley on LOST on a doodle break the other day. I have been rewatching season 5 on DVD while I work. You get a whole different perspective knowing what we know now. I'd like to do more LOST drawings, but the clock and calendar don't seem to provide me the ability, at least for now. This drawing was done in Storyboard Pro. I'm not a huge fan of this program to draw in, but for storyboarding it's great.

Thanks for checking in and I'll do my best to make a point to keep up the posts. Also, find me on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/people/Joshua-Taback/100000700395308. I plan on updating that page as well, like the blog, when I create a time machine of course.

Here's to a GREAT 2010!!!

2010-01-08T00:01:00.000-08:00

Happy Holidays!

2009-12-25T09:09:00.000-08:00

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

Panda Punch

2009-12-07T20:07:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-01T01:54:00.000-08:00

He's Batman

2009-11-23T23:25:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-23T16:34:00.000-08:00

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

GAMING BART

2009-11-13T11:36:00.000-08:00

Animation Reel 2009

2009-11-12T23:49:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-06T18:59:00.000-08:00

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

2009-10-26T22:18:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-26T22:11:00.001-07:00

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

2009-10-13T10:40:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-05T17:53:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-01T17:34:00.000-07:00

SKETCHES SEPT 23 2009

2009-09-25T17:52:00.001-07:00

Getting even

2009-09-22T23:41:00.000-07:00

I'm wondering if this joke is obvious enough.

Lizard walk 1 ruff ruff

2009-09-13T20:47:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-11T02:15:00.001-07:00

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

2009-09-10T11:32:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-08T23:11:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-20T18:06:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-04T23:47:00.001-07:00

toon raccoon

2009-08-03T22:35:00.000-07:00

Faces 7/22/09

2009-07-23T11:49:00.001-07:00

Carter and Quintin

2009-07-21T23:40:00.001-07:00

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

2009-07-05T16:19:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-04T13:29:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-21T22:52:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-17T22:03:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-12T08:32:00.000-07:00

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

Oldies

2009-05-28T16:39:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-26T11:17:00.000-07:00

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.

Old West Guy

2009-05-22T12:21:00.000-07:00

I did this sketch in my sketchbook last month and have been wanting to expand on it...

So I did. I referenced some pictures from the film 3:10 To Yuma (the recent version) for the gun and clothing. I read in an interview with artist Ben Balistreri on the Character Design Blog

http://ben-balistreri-interview.blogspot.com/

how he finds visual research so important so as not to fall back on cliches or what we think things may be like. I also find it inspires more ideas to come up.

JAKO

2009-02-09T10:39:00.000-08:00

Here's a drawing I did of our cat Jako for my girlfriend Trayce. It was 100% done on the Cintiq tablet. I had a few photos of him, made a "model" construction of his head, finding the spacial relations of his features and then drew it in photoshop. I played around with the opacity on different layers for the color. I really enjoyed doing this. Working in color flowed out of me much more using the Cintiq. I also purchased a thinner stylus pen to work with. The grip pen the tablet cam with I find too think and cumbersome, and it cramped up my hand. I ended up buying the Wacom CLASSIC PEN. much lighter and more like a real pen/pencil.

Elvis-like bounty hunter

2009-01-30T13:52:00.001-08:00

This guys ended up looking like an Elvis-like bounty hunter type of guy.

Shoreline

2009-01-29T23:25:00.001-08:00

Gonef Comic Cover

2009-01-29T23:07:00.000-08:00

This was the cover to a comic that a writer friend and I started a while back. The 1st drawing was on a tiny post it, I enlarged it from there.

I have model sheets for all these guys, maybe I'll post them soon.

Greeting Card

2009-01-29T22:47:00.000-08:00

This is a generic greeting card I did for myself a while back. I Remember I was on hiatus at the time so I was pretty relaxed. I think the picture captures that pretty well.

Figure Drawings Sept 2008

2009-01-23T20:25:00.000-08:00

Faces & Limbs

2009-01-23T07:18:00.000-08:00

With sketches like this I usually don't have anything in mind. I just start throwing down shapes and see how they turn into faces. Coming from animation I also like to give the expression as much life as possible. The older fellow at the bottom ended up looking like actor Thomas Mitchell to me (Uncle Billy from It's A Wonderful Life.)

The arm and leg sketches are just me playing with straits against curves and opposing curves.

Card Game Pencil Test

2009-01-20T19:48:00.000-08:00

An old Pencil Test with some old characters. Some stuff is really rough, I hope you can tell what's going on. Enjoy!!!

2008-12-05T11:58:00.000-08:00

A sketch of a character that myself and a friend were working on.

2008-12-03T14:58:00.000-08:00

This is a character I'm working on for a project with a friend. It's about the 3rd drawing I've actually done of him. The 1st two were on a napkin. I might use him do do some animation tests if I ever have the time.

Because You're Stupid

2008-11-05T23:15:00.001-08:00

I'm trying to find the best size (dpi &/or inches) to post my pictures at. any suggestions would be greatly appreciated

Because You're Stupid

2008-11-03T21:42:00.000-08:00

2008-10-28T18:22:00.001-07:00

(More Cintique drawings)
Guess who?

Thie Cintique

2008-10-28T14:19:00.000-07:00

These are some drawing I did testing out the Cintique tablet. We have started to draw digitally at work. Not sure what I think of it yet, but here are some samples....