Swan Song

Another ending drawing near. My animation project has been coming along swimmingly I should say. One of the problems of finishing things earlier than planned is that you get tempted to get really finicky with what you have. At this point, I can do a lot of things to my work, and I'm tempted to, but it's time to wrap things up. I won't be posting any more WIP's for the time being for personal reasons. But the final product is soon to come. I'm hoping to be able to apply for film festivals with it. I don't know if my film would be good enough for festivals, but it's worth trying.

In other news, I just got a fancy mail in the post from the National Society of Collegiate Scholars saying I've been nominated to become a member. And I've decided to accept.

Also got into two internships in NYC- one administrative, one hands-on. Still waiting to hear back from others. I think, by this point, I have applied to more than 30 places.

Another project that needs to be done by the end of the quarter is a live-action film relating to the Deaf experience for my Deaf Art & Cinema class. I'm working with 4 other people. One of my weaknesses, apart from obsessing constantly over tiny details, is the fact that I always feel the need to take charge over things. Not dictate things- but just constantly nag people till they do what they should be doing, trying to get the best out of them. I trust people to do their work (for the most part), but just not to their best of abilities. I feel it should be different out in the real world, where everyone's as dedicated as I am. Right now though, all I want is for my team members to reply to my e-mails :)

I am also going to be returning to my translating job again. My friend who went to Croatia for a study abroad last Spring, met Shawn Convey, a photography student who graduated from RIT and lives in Bosnia with his dance activist girlfriend, Ashley Fargnoli. They both had gone to Kolkata (my hometown in India) and had shot footage at an institution called Kolkata Sanved where they promote Dance Movement Therapy. They have over 60 hours of footage for the documentary they want to make- DMT -, including interviews in Bengali. They need translations. And I'm doing it for them. I had done some last winter. Then things were paused for a bit becuase they've been busy with fundraising and such. Now I'm getting back to it, and I'll be doing more for them. I think I'm probably still the only translator they have.

It's a lot of fun and it brushes up my Bengali, even though it doesn't need brushing up. Being almost tri-lingual is something I'm unashamedly proud of. :)

Quote of the Day: "The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page".

I really wanted to say "Well-behaved women seldom make history", but that barely applies ...

Good night.

Some Ancient Updates

So this is something I never ended up posting last quarter because I was concerned about whether or not I was allowed to. It was my final project for Intro to 2D computer animation. We had to take 90 seconds (or more if we wished) of a song and make a music video to it. This video was solely for the class and I do not own the rights to the music (You Love Me by Kimya Dawson).

We had to use a combination of Flash and After Effects to make this movie.

It was a fairly new experience for me, because I had never experimented with a minimalistic style. I kept being drawn towards making the movements more realistic.

All character and props were drawn and created by me. Except for the backgrounds which were images taken from the internet and edited in Photoshop.

Blogspot butchered the video quality here...




As far as my one-quarter animation is concerned, I am done animating everything. Now I have to go back and fix some of the animations, add some inbetweens to places where I animated on 2's, get rid of distracting scan-lines, etc. Then I'll start editing and have it all done by the 10th week.

Summore Drawrings

They're a little skewed because of the way I photographed them...


We focused on the head today. I think I got better as I went along...



The weeks are going by so fast. Before I know it, college will be over.

energies

It's been a while since I put stuff from my figure drawing class up here. Last week we had a model with really dynamic poses. These were all 1 minute poses.


And although I know a lot of things aren't perfect about these two drawings, I really like them for some reason.


Probably the way they're so disproportionate.

what if i did THIS...

Still animating. My plan now is to finish the remaining 20 seconds in the next two weekends. Then spend the rest of the time (3 weeks) fixing all the animations that need to be fixed and editing the thing.

So here's the new stuff:

And I was just experimenting with editing styles with the last clip, so it saves me some time when I actually formally start editing:

brilliance

I happened to stumble upon the making of the title sequence for Taare Zameen Par, an awesome Bollywood film. The title sequence is a really charming series of frame-by-frame animations, and it's wonderful to look at the working environment of these people and the products they come up with... and comparing it to the working environment of animators everywhere else in the world.



How many people know his name? And the names of those sculptors meticulously handcrafting the characters...They're not graduates from well-known universities... I doubt half of them have any formal education in art either.

And look at how they time their shots!!



These things just make me really happy and inspire me in ways I can't properly express.