Naruto

I was so addicted to this series that I would sleep few hours less to watch it. This is one more Ninja series with so much fun and cool fights. It revolves around main characters in the series, but mainly Naruto Uzumaki. He is the hyperactive knucklehead ninja of the hidden leaf village. At times he can be funny and sometimes annoying, he can be stupid and sometimes heroic, he can be smart in battles and sometimes just dumb. But he possesses a good kind heart inside him. Even if he is the main hero of Naruto series, he is a common kid (except that he has a nine tail fox inside him). He lived a very sad childhood, being rejected by people and no good friends except iruka sensei, his teacher in high school. I think Naruto is a really inspirational character not because he is the hero, but because of his characteristics. A normal kid pushing himself more and more to achieve his goals to prove that he can do it. He does not give up even if he falls. He is eager to learn new techniques and works harder than a donkey. He protects his friends no matter what. One more similar and very inspirational character would be Rock Lee, a guy who does not have any natural talent for ninjutsu, gengutsu or any other kind of non-contact fight techniques. So he keeps himself pushing in taijutsu which is hand to hand combat style. And he pushes himself to the extremes. And he becomes inspiration for Naruto as well.

All the characters are well defined and you don't find it difficult to understand after sometime. All the plots are exciting and adventurous and not to mention funny as hell. I love the way expressions are animated in this series, like sometiems face completely distorts or simplifies to the least details but retains the funny expression. Sometimes jaw just becomes so flat and eyes just become weired. It makes the whole scene really funny along with those funny sounds. I like the way Sakura's internel feelings are shown in form of animation of only outline coming out from inside as if her second personality is speaking. And all the fights are animated really really well. I think they are not easy if you consider all different kinds of fighting techniques, styles used in fights and also dynamic angles to show them. I am really impressed by those animations.

I have finished 157 episodes so far and now all episodes are fillers until 201 (or the Shippuden series starts).

Logic vs Creativity (Left vs Right Brain)

One fundamental question that has been raised many times is can creativity be learned or practiced? Even I had this question and doubt since long time. I was worried after my first CEED result if I am creative enough or not. If I am not, I cannot move into animation or any creative field. Even today I struggle to find creative ideas, but now I understand where do they come from and I know that I can be creative, in fact anyone can be creative.

I got a kick on this thought when we were doing thumbnail studies for color theory assignment. What we had to do was to design a single motif which eventually would create a pattern. I started off with excitement since I had so many ideas, but I got only few thumbnails on my page. I was worried and thinking what to do. Our professor told us that while exploring ideas do not think of how a motif would look in the pattern or how it would fit in the pattern, whatever comes to the mind just translate it into a thumbnail. And later on after exploring ideas we can see if a particular motif will work or not and may be modify later. At once it clicked to me that what I was doing was wrong, I was going into more of logical aspects of ideas like how details will look and how they will connect and how can I literally translate my idea of fish in the net. I was more focused on details and not the whole idea. Whatever new ideas came were rejected by left brain in doing more of analysis or logical explanation. So I realized that I was not letting my right side of the brain take control.

Left and right sides of the brain have individual and separate functions. They each process different kinds of information and outputs different kinds of results. This link shows which side of the brain handles what. So simple fact is that a person who uses left side of the brain more tends to be more logical and technical, while the person using the right side of the brain more tends to be more creative and artistic. All the intuitive and random ideas come from the right side of the brain. Many times even if we get some really good ideas they do not come out because of the interference of the left side of the brain. So for people who wants to be more creative has to make their right side of the brain function more efficiently and be careful in not to let left side of the brain interfere. The book "Drawing on right side of the brain" by Betty Edwards is based on the same theory and in a way she revolutionized the way people learn drawing with this book.

So the trick is to do exercises that make your right side of the brain more active. The above book itself has many good exercises (which I have not done, but I know it has). One basic exercise I know of is to draw something without looking at it. The first drawing always comes out very ugly and you may hardly recognize it sometimes, but with practice you can get unbelievable results. Well sounds like there is a really simple solution to be more creative right? Well in my experience it's really difficult, because of the human nature and because left brain always keep coming if you already have that dominant. For me since I am coming from a computer engineering background and being a person who likes to invent algorithms, it's a really a tough job. But sometimes it really helps and it works as well. It's just that you have to be aware of it when left brain starts interfering. So whenever next time you are looking for ideas, first stop your left brain and just draw thumbnails of anything that pops in your mind. Later on you do all the analysis of ideas to see which works and which does not. So here are the steps to do something creative (IMO):
1. Explore ideas(Let the right side of the brain rock) (DONT think if a idea will work or not)
2. After gathering ideas analyze them and discuss them.
3. Find best 3 ideas out of them and compare them (more detailed analysis)
4. Select the best idea and modify if required.
5. Move to the first execution step.

For art analysis would be in terms of design principles like composition, shapes and forms, rhythm etc.

Cooking Spree

I am becoming so passionate about cooking. I love it not just for the sake of eating, but it's somehow a creative process and I love anything I find to engage creatively. It's kind of a mixture of science and art. You have to know how things cook like what item boils what time or which one will cook faster, how the quantity will affect the cooking. And you have to be creative and artistic in mixing spices and other items to come up with different tests.

My recent and most tasty adventure was cooking Ragda Pattise. It took me really long (2.5+ hrs), but was worthy. I learned a lot of things as well. Here is the pic :)

Some more items from past, I have not taken pictures of many new items I had tried. I wish I had taken bharva bhindi's picture, my fav :)

More character scribbles

Just felt like drawing some funny faces. The second character in the top image is probably going to be one of the characters I want to use for animation.

More

Digital scribbles

I was just practicing drawing with my old tablet. I wish I could work with colors better.