Gnarles Barkley - Crazy

This is just an amazing video to a very cool song. And as suju pointed out, this reminds us of the pictue of black and white paint I took back in pune.

High angle shots in cartoons

Hi, I was gonna do a high angle shot panel in my storyboard for animation portfolio. And so I set out to start looking for reference. But, unfortunately, I couldn't find any. So if any of you know a tv show or a movie in which at some particular scene, high angle shot is used, or maybe even bird's eye view for a character, let me know. I will update this blog entry as I find more reference for this too.

Even wikipedia would be a good place to add a list of movies that use high angle shots. I got this idea because someone's already doing this in the low-angle wiki.

Here is one drawing I did a long time ago while traveling on the go train.

Lookin down by ~yashrg on deviantART

Police Brutality is not any better in the west than it is in India.

This cop is abusing a 14 year old boy. The kid is just being defensive because he is scared and the cop manhandles him and pushes him to the ground. This is SO wrong! I'm glad he was suspended, but not as happy as I would have been if he was fired!

the stick is always right eh?

When we were beginning to learn to do longer poses and measure our drawings, at the workshop, we were told to ALWAYS USE THE STICK. Measuring was a pain in the ass for me so I would avoid it. And everyone would go, the stick is always right.

well, slowly i grew more comfortable with using it. But it wasn't all hearts and roses. I was still ending up with longer legs and wide torsos. And everyone would always give me shit about it. I'd just accept that maybe I didn't measure it right. But today, I could finally prove my point. As I was drawing our model natalie, sonya came up to me, and told me the legs are too long. I said, well, I've measured the start and end of the thighs against the height of the torso and it's right. She took the stick, measured it herself and just kept telling me it should be shorter. But when I insisted on her to observe properly, she came to the conclusion that it was the head that was screwed up.

later, when gerard was looking at it, even he said the leg was too long.. And sonya started saying in a very sarcastic voice, so the stick was right, and sonya was wrong eh? I said, well yeah, the stick is always right.. It was all over a weird perspective or seating position.. Pissed me off so much.. anyways.. Gotta get back to drawing.

Funny video from America's funniest video

http://abc.go.com/primetime/afv/index?

this is from ABC's website. apparently you can't directly link to the video or embed it. so go search for what does mom and grandma do. ;)

101 Dalmatians

I am not sure if the name of the movie was spelled that way...with an 'a' instead of 'o' in dalmations, but the spell checker says dalmatians is the right spelling. Anyways, you can all go ahead and say 'God! yash, you are so stupid.' So as soon as you're done with it, lets move on. Yesterday, as I was working on my room drawing, Mickey was watching like parts and clips from old disney classics. Animated movies like The great mouse detective and 101 Dalmatians. I was pretty intrigued and very distracted... but I think it was a good thing.

Because in the night, after I had done dinner and was too lazy to draw, we decided to watch a movie, and I suggested lets continue watching that movie. And I was so impressed that I decided to blog my thoughts about it. Plus, its a nice change from blogging about Taare zameen par. But before I get going about the animated 101 dalmatians, I'd like to tell you about a funny incident that happened a few years go when the live action 101 dalmatians movie was released. I was in seoni, during the summer vacations and we decided to get a movie to watch. I think it was me and harsh who went, and got 101 dalmations. When we got back home, we told nikita we were gonna watch 101 dalmatians and asked her to call ruchi didi while we set up the video cd player and stuff downstairs.

She went and told ruchi didi but when they came downstairs, ruchi didi looked really confused. She asked me 'what movie did you get?' I looked at her confused and said '101 dalmatians, you know, like the breed of dog...' She laughed and said "Nikita told me you guys got 101 dimensions. And I was not really sure what its about.. Because I started thinking dimensions like 2D or 3D? But there are only 3 dimensions.. what does the title mean? maybe dimensions like measurements?" And even I started laughing... much to the embarassment of nikita. I'm pretty sure that now she can look back and laugh at it.. like I can laugh at 'kisne roba mera tobat'

The animated feature was much different than the live action movie. I really liked how the dog refers to the human as his pet. Which I think is pretty appropriate. I bet this point has been made a lot of times... Humans picking up the dog's business, humans feeding the dogs, washing them, grooming them... doesn't sound like we're the masters... LOL. Anyways... I really liked the seargent and captain and kernel characters too. The scene where the puppies are walking over ice, is pure genius! The way they are slipping and skidding on the ice is so natural and believable. Plus, all the puppies have a different action. It doesn't look like they cut corners and repeated the same action or animation at places. They look SO SUPER CUTE! I wish I could pull off something like that someday.

I know a couple friends who haven't seen it, and because mickey gave me the movie, I can show it to them too. Everyone must watch it! Oh! And before I close, I'd like to say I did look into the spelling of dalmatians, and the correct spelling IS the one with 'a'. That's because the breed of dog is believed to have originated in 'Dalmatia' in the 18th century. Hmm... I'd never even heard of a country by that name... 

Upbeat music playlist

I tend to get very sleepy and drowsy as I am working in the late hours of the night. I don't like to go downstairs and make myself a cup of coffee, because, I don't particularly like hot coffee... not unless I'm really cold. And I'm really spoilt when it comes to cold coffee.... hehe. Love that Iced cap from timmys or any cold coffee from cafe coffee day. So I decide to use upbeat music to keep me alert!

But sorting through my vast library of songs and picking out the few lively songs will take a really long time. So I decided to try out some automatic BPM calculation softwares. First was Beatunes, which I've already posted about, over here. In a nutshell, that software is bull. So I decided to try out Tangerine! Tangerine! is meant to assist you make playlists for your workouts and stuff... It looks really really slick. And I used Tangerine! to compare Beatunes performance, and declared that Beatunes had a lot of flaws. Well, turns out, Tangerine! has a bunch of flaws too!

Today, I analyzed my music library and noticed that the upbeat song 'fast and furious tokyo drift' was given BPM of only 63! WHAT!??? That puts it behind the nice mellow slow song 'Suno Na' from Jhankaar beats. My hopes of getting a nice upbeat playlist were shattered, AGAIN! I went online, and certain websites list the tempo of Tokyo drift song to be 129 which would definitely be more accurate. So I am going to be manually entering the BPM for a bunch of tracks, despite having used Tangerine! Fix this stupid software you guys!

solomon island story is fake?

After that awful movie review to close the last year, I am really happy that this year is starting off with a movie such as Taare Zameen Par. I actually watched it before 31st, but this is what's going to impact the rest of my year. The movies that are gonna come next are gonna be invariably compared to this one. And the opinion of that movie is gonna be affected by the same thing. 

This movie is brilliant in every way! Remember I was pissed about the child actor performance in the last movie? In this one, within 10 minutes of the movie, I was like "give this kid every friggin award in the world!" Darsheel kinda looks like my cousin sagar... ahem... yeah, I had to mention that. His is the part that could make or break the movie. And for that, i must congratulate the person in charge of the casting. But I can't say I'm equally happy about his brother. LOL. I started hating his guts the moment he comes in the house saying "sab subjects mein FIRST MOM!.." ("I'm first in every subject! mom!") Or maybe its just my eternal hatred for geeks! Or bullys... the kid who gets into a fight with Ishaan.. He keeps repeating the same thing... Ah! who cares. he was there for hardly a minute. 

I could really relate to the story and the character. Infact, I couldn't have stopped laughing if my dad accidentally hit mom while threatening me. That scene was Hilarious! The immediate laugh was perfectly timed. But wait, there's a moment... if you have the movie, watch the scene before he swings... The mom looks at his hand for a split second with a scared look. Hilarious I say! I used to just sit with my glass of milk for really really long and just not drink it. I would be getting ready for school, put on one sock, and just forget everything and sit with the other in my hand until mom prompts "Kiska intezaar kar raha hai? Kya soch raha hai? Moja pehnu ke nahi pehnu?"(What are you contemplating? 'whether to wear the sock or not' ? ) I was always and I stress ALWAYS, looking outside the classroom. LOL...Doing animal noises... ahem.. lets not get into how bad a student I really was.

The special effects meant to show the things he imagines like in the song Lage raho and Bheja Kum are really amazing. Even the animation in the title and when he's doing the math test are really well done. I wasn't really expecting to see those things in the movie. They were a pleasant surprise. The alphabet spider that he smashes leaves behind white goo like a real one would. The animation is very lively and expressive. Which is also because of the awesome voiceover by Darsheel. 

The teachers are really well portrayed. They are very believable. Infact, so believable, that I could even name what film teachers look like which real teacher I've had. The habits, the traits of the teachers' personalities are not just stereotypical, but real. Even the parents, and their mentality of saying whatever the teachers say too far is sadly, true. If only parents would not start yelling "so you're saying my child is a RETARD!" at every little thing, the situation would be much better off....for everyone. Even my dad would threaten me that he'd send me to a boarding school if I didn't study/behave.... Oh! there I go again, comparing myself to the movie... I think that's because a big part of the movie plays on making you feel the kid's plight, making you feel as if you're in his place, see the things going on from his perspective... And it wouldn't have been this way had it not been for the amazing direction.

One thing that bugged me was the story of solomon islands. I paused the movie where he mentioned that, and went googling for that. I tried every possible search term. Even researched over dyslexia. But nothing! Its not so much that they lied in the movie... Its that if someone were to tell me something like that, I would not immediately believe it or even consider his point.. I would ask for proof that this thing is real. I would not fall for it like Ishaan's dad did. But I say, it is possible that the trees die out from the 'bad sound/noise'. (The movie mentions that to clear a land for farming, the tribals would just gather around a tree/forest and curse it, say bad demeaning words to it and eventually, the tree would wither away) I had learned in moral science (those not familiar with the indian education system will find this weird) class that, plants that are exposed to sweet music grow better than the plants that are kept in silence. I even remember that little illustration in the book of a flower gyrating to music playing on a walkman... So I guess the opposite would work too...

The other problem I had with the movie was I wished it didn't end. I wanted it to go on and on. I was enjoying it SO much that I didn't want to go back to my boring lonely pathetic life. But there are many other real reasons to keep the movie going.... We didn't really see Ishaan's progress in tests, exams, and his graduation from being a sad loner to a friendly outgoing kid. I didn't think Amir Khan got enough credit for what he did. There could have been more instances of the dad or mom talking to Amir khan, and...I don't know... talk about dyslexia or something... like say... Ishaan's progress! I wonder what kind of parents are they who never come up to check on the condition of their kid throughout the semester.. only come at the end! Plus, the movie wasn't 3 hour long.. which usually is the length of hindi movies.... hehe..

Anyways, I feel everyone should watch this movie. If you can't understand hindi, get it with SUBTITLES! Don't get a dubbed version. Because the original voice and the emotion in the voice is really crucial, and the dubbed voice may not be able to carry that across. On a lighter note, I feel that now on, every kid will start trying to take advantage of this knowledge of a 'learning disability'... Kids will just start saying "teacher the words are dancing" or start writing invertes S and expect to be let go. Yeah.. kinda like that episode of south park... LOL. Anyways. Have a positive outlook and always look up in the new year!

I am SO going to regret these two hours of my life!

Today, I downloaded and started to watch 'my friend Ganesh' the movie. 3 minutes into it, I realized I couldn't sit through it! I knew I was gonna regret the next two hours of my life I was to spend watching this dumb Indian live action-animated indian movie. I don't think anyone over the age of 6 years could enjoy this movie. ok, at least humor me here. I remember when I was 7, I was in he 2nd grade and wasn't entertained by such mediocrity. But if today's kids in school are into this, I really doubt India's future. LOL ok, ok, just kidding...

I did spot the imac computer in their home ;) nice! Ok, back to the topic - the movie! The moment she entered, I knew the 'gangu tai' character was gonna be a very silly, slapstick one. And how dumb do the parents have to be to send their kid to the school with the gawar 'bai'! The stupid sequence in the kid's school was SO lame! I would rather watch tom and jerry or looney toones. Also, out of almost a billion people, they couldn't find ONE other decent actor? Wait... do they even need to act? Kids tease other kids naturally right? I guess I'm just pissed that harry potter guys have the best child actors, but we don't. Anyone else WITH me here?

The advisor who comes into his office with the proposal, WHAT THE HELL IS UP WITH HIS ACCENT? I've been in mumbai, and I NEVER met anyone who speaks like that! Now, the story -  When I saw it was raining, I figured  story would go something like the kids get trapped in traffic due to the heavy rain, like the flash flood that happened in mumbai a couple years go. And then it would be his journey back home filled with adventures and trials and tribulations, and he makes new friends (including ganesh) and end of story! I would have LOVED THAT! because its more fast paced, more EXCITING, and would obviously make more sense than him going out and putting a rat in a bucket! with water!....Ok, even if he makes little holes for the water to get out, the mouse is TRAPPED!

Now lets get to the animation part. And that's about all I want to deal with. You know... there's only so much beating one little movie can take. haha...Now, in the title sequence itself, Ganesh stood out as the worst animated character! maybe even worst drawn... But the mouse was REALLY good. probably because they've had a lot of reference mouse animation to look at in the past. haha! The lipsync is SUPER AWFUL! I'd say tenali raman, a TV show had better lipsync than this. But because obviously, it was dubbed into multiple languages, your milage may vary depending on which version you saw. Ok, forget the dialogs... even the loud evil laugh wasn't very convincing. Not talking about exaggerating it to very cartoony levels for a human character, but I know humans can have more powerful laugh than what was in the movie. I just think the animators got LAZY!

So just 40 minutes into the movie, I say I can't take it anymore. utter rubbish! TRASH!

nightmares won't even let me sleep for two hours!

Wow! What a dream! I wish life doesn't end up being like that for me. That'd be really scary. I don't think i'd be able to deal with it. I was panicking even now! I woke up sweating.. And now i'm afraid to go back to sleep.

By 6pm today, I was feeling pretty drained out as I didn't get much sleep the last two days. I was working late on class assignments- art history presentation and typography project. So I made the really tough decision of not going to extra life drawing. And by 8 o clock, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't stay awake any longer. I got in my bed with my jeans and t shirt on and was out cold in a second! I even left the lights on.

And now's when the dream starts. First thing I remember is me being at this Huge party. A lot of people are there. And surprisingly, I know almost all of them, and they know me. Could be like a party of all the people I ever knew or met in my entire lifetime. Like my classmates from nursery to my cousins' friends I've met. It was like a big catch up with old people thing.. But on a much larger scale as opposed to a high school reunion or somethin. It was like something was gonna happen to me in the near future and I won't be able to.. Communicate or stay in touch or something.

Next thing I know is I'm running around the house, getting/collecting little things.. Kind of like I'm packing to go somewhere. I am with chitrang talking away, and even he is running around.. Cleaning up and helping me out I guess. Then there's this really annoyed disgruntled pissed off teenager who comes in the house and starts throwing things around, messing everything up. He's about 16 or 17 I figure and like all of them at that age, is really loud and short tempered. He gets into an argument with lavi a.k.a. Chitrang. I look at him and I'm trying to remember who he is, because his face looks very familiar. After trying really hard, I say prateek? And he makes a weird face at me and says, "No! Ishu!" and leaves.

I am shocked! I remember seeing him when he was very little. Not even 11 I'd say.. And now I see him once for few minutes after so many years, and I'm about to leave again! I start talking to chitrang about it. I'm so sad that there's so much I've missed out on and am going to miss everything for next three years..(I really don't know that the three years are for) I'm sacred of being like that because my state of happiness relies a lot on how people I know are doing. One Case in point: the times when pranav's health had been deteriorating..

just then, I woke up. It was almost 11 pm. I'd been sleeping for only two hours. I was sweating and was pretty wet. I remembered I had to talk to dad, so i tried signing into google but the internet wasn't working. So I decided to just go back to bed. But now, sleep was like electricity in maharashtra- gone! So i figured i'd sit and contemplate the nightmare I just had.

Right off the bat, the thing that Really intrigues me is, "how the hell did my brain say ishu when i was totally clueless about who he was. He didn't even look anything like chitrang's younger brother! And why that name? Couldn't the brain think of some other person.. In particular, someone who i've seen is 16 or 17..can't consciously think of any names myself right now. Harsh is turning 18 in december, then Suraj. But anyways.. Did the brain know how I was gonna react when I found out that it was him?are the dreams a predetermined story or are they ad-libed as they go?

Maybe one side of the brain is actually me, and the other side of the brain is controlling the dialogue of the others around me or simulating the environments and the set up.. Hmm.. Gotta look into that! Interestingly, now that I think about the party and me going away thing could be that I've gotten into animation, and I was in india for the summer and am going to go back now. Or that I didn't get in, and my parents have shunned me and everyone is giving me a party before I become a homeless guy that noone will ever care about. But lets not get ahead of ourselves here.

beautiful short that never got released

I found this video on the federator studios blog, and it said that this short was made in disney to be part of the fantasia 2006 movie which was abandoned. And the short never made it to the theaters and wasn't submitted for the oscars.

This reminds me a lot of india and sankrant. the kite flying festical/day we celebrate there. And it really touched me. I hope you'll like it too.

Canadian Idiot -Weird Al

This is a really hilarious spoof of american idiot, based totally on canadian stereotypes. I think I've been long enough in this country to be able to understand the humor and laugh at this. but if you don't think this is funny, you need to meet some of my canadian friends.

Thank you by dido

Here is the song, finally. after the youtube video was deleted and everything.

Chandni raatein was by distant voices

I WAS one of the many people who believe that chandni raatein remix was done by bally sagoo. But this video ripped from telly is the proof that this remix is actually by a duo called distant voices. I have read about them and the song in various newspapers and blogs. so I want people to stop tagging this song with bally sagoo and then scrobbling it on last.fm!

Chaddi pehen ke phool khila hai

I was just watching the japanese anime tv show based on the jungle book, that used to be telecasted on the indian channel doordarshan in the early 1990s. And besides being really nostalgic, I was also going 'man! I've heard those voices at a lot of other places for sure.' But the first actor I could recognize was nana patekar as sher khan. I confirmed that by going online and searching for sher khan jungle book nana patekar on google. But I wasn't satisfied there. I wanted to know about the other voice actors too.

I googled the names in the end credits, and was led to the IMDB pages of those actors....most of the actors. You also have to consider that those people might not be spelling their names in the same way I decided to spell them in english, because the names in the credits are in hindi/devnagri script. So here's the list, of all the people I could find, the same order as in the credits.

Deepa Sahi - IMDB

Virendra Saxena - Veerendra saxena IMDB

Uday Sabnis - IMDB page

Vinod Kulkarni - only two movies...

Sonu didi on stage

The new youtube interface is kinda screwing a lot of things up. Emailing video to friends is one of them. That's why, I am unable to email this to only my relatives. So I'm posting it on my blog. add me as friend on youtube to see private videos.

Macbook Destruction

I really sympathize with this dude's situation. I've had such experiences with cheaper and lamer products brands/companies, but I really wouldn't expect that from apple. So I am pretty agitated myself, and I wouldn't want that kind of thing to happen to anybody.

Prison break loopholes part 1

Oh yeah, even THAT show has a whole bunch of stuff I can't digest. I have been watching episodes of season one back to back since last few days, and I have been growing overly pissed with some stupidities that I noticed which till haven't been explained! In the episode where the agents try to get LJ and end up killing his parents, Lincon junior takes a picture of agent kellerman when he's pointing the gun at him. And that picture is very conveniently forgotten. The moment I saw the director reveal that he had the picture on his cellphone, I was saying to myself, "wow! Now he can email the picture to his friends, the lawyers, news channels, newspapers and finally get this agent off the streets!" But that never happened. I just can't live with the fact that he's a teenager who owns a cameraphone and doesn't know how to send picture messages and email the picture.

Then an episode later, in number nine, we catch up with LJ and we see him emailing the picture to his own email address. Why not email it to the attorneys? the newspapers? his friends? (well, I guess they didn't want to hire more actors to play LJ's friends) Another thing, if they can tap into his phone, listen to his phone conversations, track his exact location, why can't they intercept his text messages? Someone needs to a little thinking before they make these shows. 

Then at the junkyard, when agent kellerman is pointing the gun at Linc, he just stands there with his finger on the trigger, but doesn't pull it. He had enough time to get rid of him. And someone care to tell me why is he scared of the cops? He's an agent and can go and bend the law any way he likes. He could justify that by saying "he was making a run for it!" 

And as a last note, I'd like to respond to karthikeyan's blog post title, is breaking out of a prison really that easy? Well, its NOT! that's why they haven't gotten out yet! Lets see what happens in the following episodes.

Surf's up review

I believe I'm taking a big risk by posting this review here, as my art of cinema teacher is strictly against plagiarism and if she ends up searching my submission on the internet, and finding this, I'm gona have to explain to her that the blog is mine in the first place. LOL. But, it was just such a great movie, that I can't help myself. So here goes!

The CG animated movie surf's up, is a mocumentary. Probably the first ever animated one. The film crew follows the journey of Shiverpool resident penguin Cody maverick(voiced by Shia Lebouf...hope I spelled it right) from his home, to the town of pen-gu and through the 'Big Z memorial surfing contest'. They take interviews with other people like his mother and his brother, some elders of shiverpool, kids on the beach and so on. And as obvious, the camera crew follows all the other characters involved capturing all kinds of antics.

The Movie starts off with a old film footage(obviously staged... need I remind you this is a FAKE documentary?) of the surfing legend, big Z(voiced by Jeff bridges) during his heydays.

damn! this post has been in the drafts for so long.. I don't even remember the art of cinema class.. and I am not in a mood to finish the article off now.. still, I'm just gonna publish it.

RTFS adventure game review

My friend recently released his flash made game, rayman the fan series adventure. He emailed me the swf file, as I'm on a mac and can't use exe files.. but for you on pc, here is the download link. Now I was gonna email him back with what I thought were the plus and minus points of the game, when I thought I could act all professional and do an unofficial official review kinda thing on my blog. Okay, so without trying to sound any more fancy, here goes.

The game starts with a silhouette of rayman on the screen, and even though its just black, you can clearly tell that he's running. That, though it has nothing to do with the game, I just wanted to point out because its good understanding of drawing as an animator. I've always read in books and heard big people in the animation biz talk about having your pose work as a black spot on a white background. Abhinav has put even more really good artwork and character designs into the game. Now, I've never played any original rayman games, so I don't know what is originally made up by my friend here, but it all works. Great!

The gameplay has a few glitches or just minor nuances if you may, which I have pointed out to him, and expect him to try and clean up. But the game is tough when its supposed to be and pretty easy at times. Like the boss fights were kinda tough for me to get through. But again, I am a lousy gamer. My reflexes are as slow as a snail. So don't take my word for it, or atleast take it with a grain of salt. Try out the game for yourself here.

The game music varies nicely, as the mood changes. It wasn't very irritating or disruptive like it gets in certain games, I mean, I could sit through it all without muting my laptop. And I was typing an email between conversations. Sound effects too, are done nicely, I specially liked the part where the frog character pokes rayman to grab his attention to something. But there are still no voices, and The title clearly states that this is the text version. But we all hope the voices will be recorded soon and the game relaunched. come on! download it already!