Day 3 - PJH - Kapil Dev's in coll!

30th Nov 2011

Phew.. that was the most jobless and tiring day together! I basically wasted the whole day, (almost), playing adventure world and refreshing the page again and again when my energy got over, waiting for it to refill. (It's a really nice game with great colours and design! Love it. Go zynga!)

Later I went to the canteen (all together I went there 5 times between 10 am and 7pm). Now you might wonder how I'm so jobless so suddenly. Well, basically I am going through the i-hardly-care-phase which happens just before the juries. I'm not tense, infact on the contrary, I really stop caring about all the incomplete work. mind you this happens only at saturation point, and I'd already hit it. I was sick of Maya. And to top it, I hated it. Hated every bit of it.

En went to sleep at 5pm in the old studio and I decided to dig up Red (our plant)'s soil to keep it loose. After it was all loose it felt like meditation to touch it. And we din do gestures, or play frisbee. People don't have time for fun now. Why? Because they're preparing for their juries 1 week prior, something they should have done ages back. My poor friend Alok is having a hard time with modelling. He's on the verge of commiting suicide - and before I got there I had to do something. ANYthing. That's one of the reasons Project JH happened, and happened now, that.

Before I was to leave for hostel en was at the peak of a swing. So I decided to stay and start his rigging for him. Din wanna leave him grumpy. Then I had the worst food EVER ordered from Aswad. Salty uncooked noodles with no vegies and no chicken. The chicken lollypops were like rocks on sticks. Guhh! So after 2 bites I couldn't take it and threw them out. No wonder it was just 50 bucks.

Anisha called, and then Akar. This was just before I left, at 10pm! They urgently needed a caricature done, and they decided to ask me! The amazing cricketer Kapil Dev! He was gonna come to coll. today so they wanted to give him something. I was overexcited. Kapil Dev! Recieving my caricature of him! I could probably get a photo and a signature! Here was the catch - 9:30 am sharp with the dean! and it was to be kept a secret (for some reason)!
Anything to dump maya and do some 2D stuff!! That too with color. Little did I know that I was expecting so much from myself that I took a whole 6 hrs to finish it. 6 HOURS! It's 6 am right now, and I'm finally going to bed. I'm pretty happy with the results, and I hope you all like it too!

Day 2 - PJH - Food study

29th Nov 2011

So I was DYING, literally DYING to go home. So much that I was browsing food and recipes online to make when I get home. And I decided to torture myself and use dry pastels to get the likeliness of the color and lighting of the photograph. I normally suck at dry pastels, which is why I chose the medium. Realised that trying to paint food is a great way to learn color, texture and light! Here's the delicious mouth watering snap:

Day 1 - PJH - Earphone study

28th Nov 2011

My earphones. I tried to see the basic shapes and render it according to the multiple light sources on the lab's ceiling. Turned out okay.

Project JH!

This guy, Jonathan Hardesty , is truly an inspiration. Thanks En for sending me the link on facebook.
I'm overwhelmed so what I'm talking about may not be of perfect sense to anyone reading, so go ahead and read this post:
http://blog.fjasmin.net/2010/12/question-is-how-much-do-you-wanna-try.html


After that, go ahead and see the original thread by Jonathan Hardesty posted on conceptart.org.
Lately I've seen a lot of brilliant work from brilliant people. Another guy named James Benson made some kickass 3D animation. Click HERE to see it. I was so thrilled I had to email him and tell him what an inspiration he was! He's self taught for 8 months and he's already working and the creepiest and most scary part of it is that he's just 22! That's just 2 yrs older! And he's achieved SO much. One day I hope to get somewhere like these indiviuals. All my career role models are online, and here I am, working on my courses, complaining sometimes, when I really.can't.complain!


I've decided on two things:
1) Like Jonathan I am gonna make atleast 1 sketch and 1 painting a day. I will scan it and regularly put it up here, no matter HOW bad it is. There will be a daily post, a daily thread, telling myself how much I've improved. I dunno about forums as such, although it would be great to get feedback.
2) Animation is a part of my life. No matter what kind of blog this is (it started as my 'doodle' blog), I will freely post my thoughts on animation and on my dreams here, whether anyone finds it worky or not. I will also not care about the fact that I'm writing on a keyboard instead of a pen (something I often think of) :P! My mind wanders over a lot of things and I don't always put them down, but I will now, I will out here.

Lets see how this works out. I'm gonna call this - project JH (for my inspiration). Well. I'll start today. It's 10:37, so I'll scan whatever I make by tomorrow.

--

"The only difference between successful people and
unsuccessful people is extraordinary determination."

-- Mary Kay Ash

Gaumuk, Mt. Abu

When we went to Gaumuk (a scenic point in Mt. Abu), it overlooks a lake and its on the top of a mountain. We had nothing much to do but sit, chat, and watch other tourists. So I took my sketchbook out and sketched this.
The day I drew them I wanted to paint them but I didn't have my materials there.. So I painted them digitally last night. Here's the outcome!



Frankly I'm pretty happy with it, but I wanna learn some more of those texture brushes everyone talks about! Enjoy.

DAC November Entry

DAC (Design a character)'s November shape challenge. The above are the shapes. And I made this outta them. Still have to learn a lot about colours, and I'm finding it extremely difficult to detail out anything! I like loose big patches of color, but I wanna break from it and detail the finer things!

Quick Sketch

Had been thinking of coloring this doodle of a scared girl since very long. Finally finished it. My lighting isn't that great yet, and I didn't even correct the drawing, (you'll notice the problems with it if you flip horizontally). Well anyway, here she is!



Yes, I admit!!! I like red heads!!!

Recent Doodles on the new sketchbook

Some stuff I've been sketching in my new bechain nagri sketchbook that looks so good I don't even feel like using it.. Anyway - here they are.

Helicop Dance

We took about 16 hours at a stretch to make this...
It was an interesting assignment! We had to collect some junk that was smaller than our fists, and then make characters out of it. They had to be unique and nonsensical! This was my second attempt at model animation, and its the best I could do with the given time.

The most interesting part was creating music with junk as well! We made instruments and used vocals like acapella - something I'd never explored before. Was a wonderful experience. No need to download anymore!

The last step was storyboarding, creating an animatic, a dope sheet, setting up a green/blue screen and animating it with a synch to the music. And this was the final product! It's not smooth and perfect, but I learnt more about thinking out of the box and about rhythm. :)

Thanks to my batchmate Alok and my junior-friends for helping in with the music!



This is the basic animatics made to show the movement of Helicop. Now all though it looks pretty okay I couldn't manage to put some of the shots in the final video - like the turn around. The camera shook and it looked like an earquake in the picture! Will take better precautions next time. Instead I replaced the bad footage with extra shots like the foo tapping and the closeup of the head.

I learnt how to keep it as basic and readable as possible. Had to add more frames in the end to sync it with our final edited track of 10 seconds.

Mt. Abu sketches

I had a wonderful time at Mt. Abu, at Tapan's place. It was really a well-lit diwali! We went to his school, to Nakki lake, Bikaner Palace, Trevor's Tank, Gurushikhar, Dilwara Jain Temple, Gaumuk and Shiv Temple. We went to the tibetan market and shopped on the last day! There was crowd everywhere, mostly Gujjus.

Luckily I got to sketch at some of the places we visited. Here is some of the stuff outta my sketchbook.






Here's a comic strip I came up with with Dwaj - Tapan's younger cousin in std. 8. He loves Osama - he's obsessed with drawing him. There were a lot of cows in Abu and we had just come back from Chitrakatha '11 - COWfest.. So I made the trip's theme - Osama VS. Cow! Here's the truth.



The last few drawings are for a shortfilm concept I'm working on about a girl who travels and visits her friends over the country and is made to eat by all the moms and aunties.

Sickness

Well, that's what happens when I'm sick.. I try to work even more so that when I get SICKer the work doesn't pile up. People often see tissues and napkins crumpled at my desk and get disgusted seeing my using empty tea cups to cough in.. :P!

Plant a tree!

In one day a human being breathes oxygen equivalent to three cylinders. Each oxygen cylinder on an average costs Rs 700, so in a day one uses Oxygen worth Rs 2100 and for a full year it is Rs 7,66,500. If we consider an average life span of 65 years; the costs of oxygen we use become a staggering sum of Rs 500,00,000. All this oxygen is derived free of cost from the surrounding trees. Very few people look at trees as a resource and there is rampant tree cutting going on everywhere which should stop. PLEASE PLANT A TREE!