Comic Art

Here are two drawings I did in a sequential art class (Sequential art is about comics) in Fall 2007. I learned a lot about perspective, drawings humans for comics and creating environments. It was really a cool experience. Drawings for comics is so much fun and demanding of course.

The first one, everything is from imagination.
The second, the location is from a place near river street in Savannah, but characters are drawn from imagination.

The great fun about these both two was the story. The primary goal of Comics is the story. And that's why I really love the sequential art, because you are telling a story through series of drawings. And yeah my professor had worked in DC comics and I think Marvel comics as well for a long time. He did spider man comics and many more. Check his blog here and scroll through to see his amazing artwork Tom Lyle

Color Theory

First work is done with Acrylic Gouache and this how it was done. First we had to find a piece of cloth with some pattern. Then trace the design on 11x11" square of bristol board. And take a small square of the same cloth glue it to the traced design where it belongs. And then expand the design by matching the cloth colors and painting the remaining design (If you see a little closely and you can see the glued square) . For painting remaining design, area remaining after gluing the square, was divided into different sections and each section was painted with different color processes. One was inverted colors of original colors, one was compliment of original colors, those are the two that i can remember :) And I think there were 4 or 5 sections total including the original colors.

The second work was for color theory class. We had to create a motif and from that create a pattern. Then took selected colors and paint the whole pattern. I used Acrylic paint on a canvas paper. Thanks to my professor who helped me see that we can create very different and creative designs using the same motif. This is I think the first time I have used such bold and bright colors. I wanted to get out of my confort zone of using mild colors. So this assignment was a great learning experience. (The photograph of this one looks a little dull compared to original work, sorry about that)

Kids: Drawing & Imagination

This is an excerpt from Mark Kennedy's post on his blog:

"if I remember correctly, it said that most kids stop drawing around age seven because that's the age when teachers and parents start to tell kids "you're drawing that cat wrong, cats don't have seven legs" and so drawing stops being fun and starts being a chore, which makes kids give it up completely. And why not give it up? Schools and parents rarely seem to put much importance on art or learning to draw, those are always the first school programs cut when budgets shrink (it seems to me, anyway) and so very few people keep drawing throughout their lives."

A very good lesson for parents. I have to keep this in mind because I will become a parent one day and I won't want my kids to go away from creativity and imagination.

Old work: Design

Ink on Smooth Bristol (2007)

Acrylic Gouache on Smooth Bristol (2007)

Old work: Drawings

Some of the frames from movie "The Hero". Really liked the cinematography in this movie.

If you haven't seen me then you will need the drawing on top right corner to identify me.

A storyboard frame for my idea about houses on tree trunk. I had a lot of ideas about this but could not flesh them out properly in time. For example I was thinking that the top is the main floor of the house so to go up and down there will be a mechanical system (based on weight shift) acting as a lift.

Power of storytelling and sand animation

I like sand animation because it has a spontaneous feel to it and also because it's a play with light and shadow. So the medium itself is quite intriguing. But if a strong storytelling is combined with this medium it can create a deep effect. Here is one story after watching which I felt story impact strongly. I think it has a graphical novel kind of feel but still a lot different because of the medium and the way it's done with transitions. I think it's brilliant!

Animated SAND-Movie by Thomas Lidy, 2006. University of applied Art Vienna

Critiquing own animation?

I am taking 3D character animation class and I am learning a very important part of the process, which is critiques. And more important part I think is to critique our own work. While animating we look at the same work again and again for a long time and this creates a pitfall where you either cannot see your mistakes or you stop liking it as much as you liked when you had started. That's what happens with me generally.

When I come up with some really nice poses I get attached to them and I only see good side of the poses. So when i am told to change few things in the poses I like, it is difficult to think that changing them would improve my animation. I have learned that while critiquing my own work if I become unbiased and try to see what is not working first then it helps me understand why I need to change poses. After that it is also a good idea to see what works or which part helps in telling the story so when you make changes you keep good stuff and throw bad stuff out. I am still getting into this process. I think this method might work for me.

A beautiful short: Leo's Song

Power of storytelling! This reminds us again that we really don't need fancy animation or highly complex rendering to tell the story.

Story of a little crane

From all animation work I have done, this one I like the most.

You've Got a Friend

McFly - You've Got A Friend

I dont have words. Thanks to my Sweetie for sending this. Thanks to McFly for making this.

Digital Puppetry Possibilities

Last quarter I did a research paper on making 3D animation more intuitive. One of the ideas I represented was related to 3D input devices replacing mouse with more efficient device(s). While researching I had found a project which was about creating a 3D mouse from traditional mouse mechanism. Here is the link to it. Neil Fraser: Hardware 3D mouse. I found this inspiring. It led me thinking into digital puppet moving which will move the character in the 3D software. Though that idea is exciting it has its own challenges. And I think there has been a lot of work done on this (esp I think ILM has used similar system on movie like Jurassic park). And motion capture can be considered a kind of digital puppetry. However what I am thinking is to make 3D animating process easier while still keeping it hand made and not automated. So the idea is to have a physical puppet which is linked to main rigging controls of the character so that the posing process becomes faster and importantly intuitive.

I was reading Keith Lango's blog where I found this article aobut Machin-X blog. I visited that blog and I was amazed at the work that was shown there. It's again inspiring to do something about physical input system to make 3D animation more intuitive. However the biggest challenge would be to make it affordable to every desktop animator.

Here is Machine-X blog.

An error in the Perfectionist's work?

I love ratatouille so much that I keep watching its 9 minute trailer over and over. I love scrubbing through every single frame to see the animation and learn from it. And I have watched this many many times, but today suddenly I found an error! When the hand accidentally grabs Ramy, fingers intersect the geometry of the mouse and it is quite noticeable. I am not sure if they corrected this in the final release or not since this is a 9 minute trailer which was released long time before film was released. But it was a little shocking for me to see this in the work of who I believe to be the perfectionist.

The Animals Save the Planet

Ardaman has done it again. Clearly it's one of the studios whose all animations I love. Click the image to go the website to enjoy the magic of Ardaman.

Invaluable Notes: Randy Pausch's Lecture

Notes from Randy Pausch's Lecture, Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams (link)

"wait long enough and people will surprise and impress you. When you are pissed off at somebody and you are angry at them, you just haven't given them enough time. Give them a little more time and they will almost always impress you."

How many times we respond instantly within ourselves to other people's behavior. We become angry inside instantly hearing things we don't like, we feel connected instantly if we hear something good from them. People say first impression lasts long, and that's the problem. If a person is mature and patient he/she would not create any impression from any instantaneous reactions. But if the person is not mature and patient he/she may conclude something totally opposite of the other person. Instantaneous reactions are bad, especially when you are not conscious about them.

Irony

One of my best friends called today and It was a great joy to talk to him after a long time. We always talk about life and goals and how can we get there. I wish I could write so many things from the conversation (I will as I organize them in words :)

After posting Invaluable Notes I just remembered what my friend had said to me. It is irony that I listened to the same thing in our talk and also in the video I was watching.

My friend said, he loves Mario games. Because it is just like how life is and what we should be doing. Keep jumping and keep moving. I totally agree with him. It's a very simple thing, life throws challenges, we face problems and all we have to do is deal with them, fight back and keep moving. From what Andrew Stanton said as I have quoted in previous post,

The key is momentum.

Invaluable Notes

This comes from the panel discussion "Pixar - A Human Story of Computer Animation" (link).

This was mentioned when somebody asked a question to Brad Bird and Andrew Stanton about story development process.

Following is a part of an example Brad Bird was giving to explain the story process. I am putting that simply in two lines, the essence.

Artist: "I just don't know what to do!"
Director: "Well just do something, so we can change it."

"The key thing is the momentum. In my mind creative project is a shark and do not let it die. Just go forward and use that time to make as many mistakes as you can. If you wait till you have the answers, you will probably first not have the answer and you have wasted all the time to find the real answer."
- Andrew

Second Walk Cycle

He is happy, so am I :) I loved animating this. And I love this character too. Thanks to Ramtin Ahmadi! Link to the rig

Cars

So much fun!!! There are lots of things that can be done with this assignment.

Here is what we had to do for each car:
1. stops screeching
2. runs out of gas
3. jumping
4. collides with the wall

3D Bouncing Ball

It's totally fun!!!

Simplicity Example: POCOYO

If you haven't already checked this, you should do it now.
http://www.pocoyo.com/

You can watch a lot of videos on youtube. Here is one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjkBxBkXJww

You really don't need complex characters to create compelling animation. Be simple, do more.

First Character Animation

This was an assignment for my Animation-I class. We had to start from one attitude and go to second attitude in 4 seconds. I went for curious to shocked/scared. I worked on it for continuously two nights without much sleep, so I fell sick after working on this assignment. I redid a lot of drawings to get better and conveying poses and to get timing right. I learned a lot of things in this assignment, especially timing. I still wish I could rework on few areas especially when the bean bag jumps.

2D Flag Animation

I kind of enjoyed the assignment, but I did not do well. The middle part is kind of boring with the same size waves in the flag. That takes away the believability of the material. But anyway here it is.

New 3D character (Almost there)

We are creating a 3d character in one of the animation classes. The same character we are going to rig and animate in the end. I dragged the modeling part a lot to make it as good as possible within given time. But I am happy with what I have so far. I wish I could do better with his hair. But never mind considering the time we have. I still have to texture his short.

Invaluable Notes

This comes from a guy who has been in Animation industry for quite a long time and writes regularly about storyboarding, film making and art on his Blog. One of the greatest resource for knowledge. Here is one of the most important note I read on his Blog. Oh his name is Mark Kennedy.

This is so true!

"Simplicity is a wonderful thing and I believe simplicity lies at the heart of making something appealing. The ironic thing is how hard it is to be simple. We resist it because it seems too easy, that nobody will like our work unless we smother it in layers of complexity, and that way if it's bad, at least nobody will be able to tell because they won't be able to penetrate all of our layers of complexity!"

excerpt from his post Splashing Around.

Invaluable Notes

I have decided to post some thoughts and notes I read/hear which I feel are invaluable and will help me improve myself a lot. Hopefully it will also help other people.

I was watching Ratatouille bonus features. There was an interview with an American chef Thomas Keller. Following is a paraphrase of what he said in one of the scenes.

"It is not about the perfection, it is about the quest for perfection."

So true and ironic.

Character Design for a Project

For the 3d-character setup project we had to design a character for following projects. This is what I came up with. I had some other designs too and it was confusing. But finally I decided to go with this. I may model and rig other characters later on. The hair in the side view is not drawn well, I had a hard time visualizing it. I am currently working on modeling of this character. I will post some 3d work once I have progressed well.

Back to Cooking

After I watched Ratatouille, I got my spirit for cooking back. I was thinking to make "bhaji" (an Indian dish with mashed veggies) for some time. So finally just yesterday I cooked it. It might not be the tasty one you find in famous food places in India, but it was tasty for me :)

First Animatic

This is an animatic I made for my Motion Studies class at SCAD. We were given different scenarios in the story and we had to create an animatic for that story. This did not come out as good as I had wished. Especially in the beginning size of the character is changing weirdly. And the end is almost abrupt. I could have added more details in the end. Rendering is not good in some frames too. But yeah i had enjoyed the assignment.

Can you guess what could be the story scenario? :) Thanks for watching.

Ratatouille

I wanted to watch this movie on DVD since I missed it in the theaters. Fortunately our college organized the show for this movie in the college's theater yesterday. So I could watch this movie in theater. I was expecting high quality visuals and a quality story from this movie. And I was not disappointed. From the first scene of the movie I was so impressed by the feel of the visuals and the details. It was realistic but not photo-realistic. I liked that a lot. The whole environment of the city was very immersive for the story. Apart from that I enjoyed this movie so much because I love cooking. And it was amazing watching all the different kinds of ingredients and different items being cooked. I loved the humor so much. I was laughing throughout the movie. Even subtle movements had so much humor.

It was kind of difficult for me to decide what to enjoy in the movie. Being a cooking lover I was lost in the kitchen world and I was also impressed with animations. At the end of the movie I felt like cooking something new. In a way I was happy that I saw this movie since I got my interest back in cooking. I was getting lazy at cooking in my break time. But that passion is back for cooking. Also it was good to see one of the best animations to make my inner desires of animation making come out more. Thanks to Pixar for making such a great movie.