Monday, November 15, 2010

render party!

Modeling, Shading and Rigging Reel 2010-2011 from Shreyasi Das on Vimeo.

[2012 UPDATE: If you wish to view this older version of my 3D Generalist Reel, the password is "reel2010". Please note that this is not my current demo reel. Thank you!]

Quickly threw this together today. Well not so quickly, but finished it in one day, compared to my first reel that took me half my academic quarter to compile.

I want to refine it further, and re-render some things that our Renderfarm messed up. Also wish I knew better last year than to smooth my typewriter model. It's not the best reel, I admit. Either way, I at least have something right now, so I don't have to panic near deadlines. I want to focus more on working towards an animation reel in the coming months.

Ohkay, good night!

Saturday, November 13, 2010

lighting tests, cntd.

[2012 UPDATE: The passwords for the following videos are "test"]

Shot001_LightTest_11.10.10 from Shreyasi Das on Vimeo.

Re-did some lighting tests, with the character textured correctly this time. It's not bad, but it still feels flat to me. Going to play around with the lights more before break starts and I don't have the privilege of rendering in the lab anymore.. Rim lights should help break out the flatness a little, and probably a little more contrast. Other than that, I don't want to get carried away with lighting and texturing. Animating the clocks from shot-to-shot is going to take some meticulous thought, and that's next on my list to tackle before I start animating next quarter.

I also plan on thumbnailing most of my shots over break.

Shot010_LightTest_11.10.10 from Shreyasi Das on Vimeo.

Also, working title has been changed to "Dissonance".

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

enter protagonist




Here's my bot for my upcoming student film, almost done!! These are two renders I did for my Advanced modeling class.


And here's proof that my rig actually works so far! The poses should be familiar from Richard William's book of awesomeness. I slapped in the extreme poses for the character for this quick test animation. At first, I was going to animate something for a shot in my film, but I decided to do something more "cartoony" with broader movements to really push the rig. In actuality, the acting in my film will be subtler, but I wanted to make sure my rig was capable.


I can't wait till I can start animating!! But for now, on to more lighting tests!!

Thursday, November 4, 2010

sneaky peaky

These tests took about 11 hours to do. The character isn't done texturing yet. Now that he's in the set, I have a better idea of how to texture him so he doesn't blend in with the background so much. Till now, I've been using the Norman rig in my 3D animatic, so now I have a better sense of where I should be going.

Also, rigging is still as terrifying. But I have to thank my self from the past for making life easier for me in the present by practicing rigging all of summer =)



^ I goofed up on the timing of the light for this one.

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

digging out some modeling




Here's something I forgot to post last time.. It's my first project from Advanced modeling. We had to find a common, everyday object, make an efficient "rigid" model of it (^above) and then a "soft" deformable/animateable model with more edge loops, etc. I should post more pictures with my edgeloops on them.

Here're some of my reference images...







And here's my final animation of the soft model. There are a few things in the animation I want to go back and fix- like the snappiness that happens when it jumps up, etc.




And this is the first rig test I did for the headphones. Animating the wires was quite difficult!

Monday, October 25, 2010

"from one clock animator, to another"


Just came back from a weekend at the Ottawa International Animation Festival, and that string of words from the mouth of Dean Wellins, the director of Tick Tock Tale, was the highlight of my weekend. Teddy Newton spelling my name wrong on the Day & Night poster was pretty awesome too. As was eating delicious Lebanese food, treating myself to beautiful Czech surrealism and films from the rest of the world. Even some of the weirdness was wonderful, especially with friends to watch them with. Not to forget the environment- I felt like I was back in Edinburgh again.



Have to go back.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Mr.Bean, done.

Final render. I realize the blend shapes at the end are just mushed up in the animation. We had to make a clip under 10 seconds and I have a million blend shapes. I'll go back and make a better clip of it.

But for now, here he is! I'm not too happy with how he turned out, but it went somewhere.


Mr. Bean Caricature Bust from Shreyasi Das on Vimeo.

Saturday, October 9, 2010

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

caricature



Rowan Atkinson/Mr. Bean caricature in progress (ignore obnoxious grid running through his face). I'm so scared it's not going to end up looking like him. Here's what I started with




Thursday, September 30, 2010

post production intern project

Shore Nice to Meet You! from Danica Parry on Vimeo.


Here's what a couple of talented interns and I worked on during our Summer internship at Humble TV. I'm yet to get the original copy, but one of the interns, Danica Parry, has posted it online.

I contributed to the 2D animation (water, clouds, shadows), 3D animation (1st, 4th and last shot of the octopus), visual effects, rotoscoping, compositing and early audio/video edits (and a bit of rendering)

This was fun!!

Sunday, September 26, 2010

Newton's Cradle



Been really sick this past week, and trying my best to motivate myself to accomplish things.

Monday, September 20, 2010

expression. music. rhythm.


Bhava Raga Tala from Shreyasi Das on Vimeo.

My one quarter film from sophomore year! Finally! Took me 10 weeks to do- I based it off of Bharatanatyam, a classical Indian dance form that makes use of sculpturesque poses. Natyam means dance, and Bharata is derived from the Sanskrit words, bhava, raga and tala which literally means expression, music and rhythm. The film was screened at the High Street Film Festival in Rochester.

I like how it turned out, but it wasn't as challenging as I would have liked it to be. (Hail the two-quarter!)

But here's what Bharatanatyam is actually like, so you can see what exactly I experimented with. I used the poses to match up with a different kind of music not traditionally used for this kind of a dance.


Sunday, September 12, 2010

inspiration tests

Trying to figure out visual styles, etc. etc.

I was pretty much drifting in the air when I sat down to work and plan things out. So I started with doodles and sketches. I have a secret crush on animating credit sequences so I started sketching possible backgrounds for my credit sequence animation (I know, I'm more excited about the credits than the actual film- which kind of got me thinking... but now's not the time to explain that)

So I started with these:




And got inspired to do these...



This is just lambert with occlusion. Initially, when I didn't even have an idea, I thought of this style for simplicity's sake because I had seen one or two student films in this style that weren't super-immaculate with textures and all. But maybe I won't use it.. I just wanted to try it out.



As far as layout, I'm taking inspiration from German Expressionism...




Over summer I had something like this, but now I feel like it doesn't go well with the mood and the personality of my character.



So now I'm going for something more like this:


And now I'm super excited about the film!


Friday, September 3, 2010

a new beginning

The safety instruction monologues by airplane stewardesses are ringing in my head in all languages right now. I'm off for a ride, and I don't know what it's going to be like and it's shamelessly frightening!!

I like, at the end of of a period of time, or seasons in this case, to say that I've accomplished something. So by the end of the summer, I think I can safely say I've got a better grasp at the concept of rigging than I did before. On my second go, I think I made a decent rig for a really rough representation of my character for my next film.




There were a bunch of crazy problems that got me all frustrated and then I figured out solutions to them and felt elated, but then it lead to other problems, which I fixed again, messed up again, yadeyada.. But in the end, I think it turned out to work well. I mean, I was able to animate a really quick walk cycle with it without facing any problems (except for the shape and dimensions of the character which was very distracting and got in the way). And it also helped me learn how a rig that I build works, in comparison to the rigs I am used to working with.































And lookit that mustache test!!


Hopefully, now that I've gone through this, the process will be much smoother when I finally do it on the final character.

Wish me luck!! I have homework already!

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

aja

School will start in a few days and I figured I won't get to play around with my tablet as much, since I won't really need it for drawing. Thus...


It's Shiva btw. A very feminine Shiva. He has a million names, and apparently one of them is Aja. Which I love. It means unborn.


Thursday, July 29, 2010

on a side note.

"The Domestic Abuse Helpline for Men and Women (DAHMW) is a volunteer directed national non profit agency that offers supportive services to and public awareness about under served victims of intimate partner violence.

We have submitted an idea to the Pepsi Refresh Project www.refresheverything.com Pepsi is giving away millions to fund great ideas. Ideas are chosen for funding through public voting on submissions.

We are looking for volunteers to spread the word about our project idea and encourage people to vote for us daily(voting starts August 1st). Ideally you will enlist your social networking friends to vote daily for our idea as well. Voting begins August 1st and ends August 31st.

Skills: Social Networking: Must be creative and knowledgeable about social media sites, blogs and group lists.

Requirements: Access to a computer and the internet for at least one hour a day.
Contact: Jan Brown at nefaatall@yahoo.com"

DO IT!

Saturday, July 24, 2010

headed somewhere

So I've finally decided to make a 3D film for my next school project, thanks to a little encouragement from my professor. I was pretty hesitant about making the decision because I've no experience in rigging or cinematography. I can figure out ways to simplify texture and lighting, and even cinematography for that matter. But the thought of rigging makes me nervous.

I'm planning on a robotic, mechanical character to save time on rigging, but I still have very little knowledge on how I'd go about it. So I'm redoing this rigging assignment we did in class from the Modeling and Animation Handbook, and hoping I'll be able to figure things out.

Here's a little something I quickly doodled as "early concept art" while waiting for Final Cut Pro to render an edit I did for a small intern project. The mustache was a new addition to the character design I had in mind, but I don't know how I'd animate it quite yet. I've never worked with clusters and stuff.

I'm hoping I'll be able to learn something from one of my supervisors here at Humble. I finally got to meddle with some 3D stuff yesterday. I modeled this 2D paper cut-out-ish character using poly planes and used tools like the Sculpt Geometry tool, nonlinear deformers and a few others. It might be how South Park characters are modeled, I'm not sure. I read an article about it once. But I'm pretty sure I took a long round-about method because the texturing and stuff wasn't working as easily as it should've. Anyway, so this character has a mustache and I asked my supervisor if I could shadow him while he animates it. It probably won't get animated while I'm still here though.

Anyway, and here's another random thing I did in Flash while waiting to be assigned a project. It goes by a little faster than I wanted it to but didn't get the time to fix it. I wish these players would let you frame-by-frame the videos.


Also, I found a grey hair on my head today :( And I finally watched Despicable Me! It was awesome of course, except I felt like I missed out on a lot of gags at times cause sometimes there'd be so many going on at once, right after another, and there's a soundtrack playing practically all through out the film. But so entertaining and fun characters!

Sunday, July 18, 2010

people jumping off buildings


So just a quick note thingy about my amazing discovery while adventuring with my friends in Madison Square Park.

Statues of the same bare man on the roof of super-high-rise buildings standing super-close to the edge! It's hauntingly beautiful. Gives me the goose-bumps, and is a temporary installation work by the amazing sculptor Antony Gormley. It's a self-portrait I believe, and very effective in it's purpose, if you read the article:

The project name is called Event Horizon.

This guy has really awesome sculptures that focus on the human body, and some pretty intriguing drawings too. Check it out.



Friday, July 16, 2010

dabble dabble




Blah. Just playing around with the tablet.

I realized I like working with tangible things more. I prefer a pencil and paper over digital stuff.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

rudiments


I started experimenting with using my tablet and ToonBoom. This took me the entire day! The landing is kindof awkward, I know.

There's obviously a lot of cool features I haven't figured out yet, so it's fairly elementary. But I'm glad I got something done today while being put on hold by Verizon high speed internet agents the entire day and teaching a parent how to use a computer :D

Monday, July 12, 2010

the bong update

Just came back from a wonderful weekend at Atlantic City. Every year, Bengalis from all over North America get together for the North American Bengali Conference (NABC), also called the "Bongo Sommelon" in Bengali. This year, it was held at Atlantic City. It’s basically a huge get-together of Bongs from all over, with live performances from local and famous artists, cultural exhibitions, and super-expensive food. To be honest, I wasn’t too excited about it.

Yes, I’m a cultural person, and I love being a Bengali. But I never quite enjoyed Bengali music, film, literature, etc. I appreciated the fact that we Bengalis are an artistic lot, but never engaged myself in it. I was pretty much a Westernized child while I lived in Calcutta. And I liked Hindi films and music more than Bengali…

But now I’ve come back an almost-die-hard fan of percussionist, Bickram Ghosh (there’s something about live percussion performances that make you feel good about life), bought two of his albums, and a bunch of films by Bengali directors, Anjan Dutt and Aparna Sen. I even considered buying some translated Tagore and Satyajit Ray shorts, but they were pretty expensive compared to its original price in Rupees. But that’s what you get for leaving your country and wanting things from there! Definitely check Bickram Ghosh out though.

Speaking of Bengalis, last month’s 11 Second Club winner was a Bengali from my hometown! I took a look at his other entries and he has track record of high-rated submissions. It’s nice knowing that you don’t necessarily have to come all the way to the US, despite the slew of opportunities you get here, to be awesome at animation. In fact, there are so many opportunities now in India.. even in Calcutta.


And speaking of the 11 Second Club, I tried my hand at last month’s competition. I wasn’t too proud of what I did but it was my first time and just an attempt to make sure I keep at this animation thing. I think most people didn’t like it cause I didn’t have a creative scenario going on. I read all the instructions about how you shouldn’t spend too much time on the looks and modeling, and went ahead and assumed you can’t be creative with it, which was rather silly of me. But anyways…I made some changes to it. It’s still not perfect obviously. But I’ve a lot on my plate now, and I think I should start off with simpler exercises- like with body dynamics and stuff- before diving into dialogue and acting. I haven’t even formally learned how to lip-sync yet.

Redone Entry


I recently bought a tablet (Intuos4 Small) and downloaded a trial version of ToonBoom. There’s a lot I want to do in whatever’s left of Summer, but I don’t have too much time. Nevertheless, I’m going to try. I’ve never used a tablet before so I have to get used to sketching on that, and also, animating with it. I realized a few days back that I’m really not equipped to do any one thing. Yeah, I made a traditional hand drawn film that got a lot of recognition, but apart from drawing on paper, I really don’t know how to do much of anything else. I know bits of different things, but not comprehensively. The last few days I’ve been pretty demotivated about the skill-set RIT’s given me so far and about the fact that I haven’t really had much responsibility given to me at my internship because I don’t know anything extensively yet.


Train Doodles


I think I just need to get back to the workflow to start feeling good about myself again.

So, the past few weeks while I was rotoscoping mindlessly, I got myself hooked onto the Animation Podcasts, Spline Casts and Animation Mentor Webinars. While all the talk of CalArts being The Place to go for animation kinda got me disconcerted, I learned SO much about the industry just by listening to all these people speak. It’s awesome, really. Really inspiring.


Train Doodles II


Anyway, looong post! So the next few weeks, I really need to get started on translating footage. There’s about 160 Gigs of it that I got from the filmmaker last week. Now that my exam’s over, I can spend time on it. But at the same time, I also have to practice animating with a tablet, brainstorm viable ideas for my next film (and decide between 2D or 3D!) and complete at least ONE polished 3D animation exercise good enough for a reel. Because believe it or not, I’m already worrying about next Summer. I've already kindof started thumbnailing an idea, but I think the idea's still too ambitious right now.


Nritya


And just so you know- if you ever have one of those days when you feel negative about your work and feel kindof worthless- donate to charity. Sounds clichéd, but at least you’re doing something. It really does make you feel good.

Enjoy the 100 degrees!!


Sunday, July 4, 2010

it was written




Slumdog Millionaire was on last night and I was in the mood for some quick doodles. I forgot how much I enjoyed the movie. And the music.


~


And here's a random Aunti-ji of course.

Happy 4th of July!

Saturday, June 26, 2010

Nuances on the Train




-Some people, during idle moments in their conversations, will tap their fingers rhythmically, even if they’re not listening to music.

-People sitting next to each other on a train rarely make eye contact while conversing, especially if close friends. Obviously, cause it’s awkward to have your head turned sideways the entire time. They’ll usually stare at an angle toward the other person. And if they’re lovers, they’ll gaze downwards rather than straight ahead. Strangers are more likely to glance at each other more often (unless of course you’re absolutely threatened by that person. In that case, you’d probably face the opposite direction)

-Some people will shake their heads when talking- even when they’re not negating anything or talking about something objectionable.

-When women read books, they’ll usually start with their heads tilted and then sit erect with their necks straight when they feel uncomfortable- never the other way round. Maybe men too, but I’ve only noticed women doing it.

-Sometimes, when people have conversations on the phone while sitting between strangers on a train, they’ll stare evilly out the nearest window and mutter. Like they’re performing the Confundus charm or something (yes, a Harry Potter reference).

-When you can’t find a seat on the train and you have to stand, and you’re standing close behind a seated passenger, they will give you at least 3 furtive glances per minute, and won’t stop. [It’s true. I might have terrorized an adorable lanky old man (with a cute little satchel) just by standing so close behind him].

-Some people will fiddle with the hair on their eyebrows when they’re idle (I know, ew.)

-When people are really really sleepy while traveling seated, they will sleep in the most awkward and uncomfortable positions- compared to moderately sleepy people, who’ll just tilt their heads against something. [I know this to be true. I’ve had exhausting trips to and from India lately. And by the third flight (which is usually the shortest- like 2 hours at most), I can’t take it anymore and I will creep out the passenger next to me if I have to in order to get my sleep.]

-A lot can be said from the back of people’s heads.
__

A lot of these seem obvious and I probably knew it all along. But noticing something and having a subconscious knowledge of it are two vastly different concepts.

I’ve been commuting for three weeks now, to and from NYC. Long commutes after long days of work. And I usually only have the energy to plop onto the window seat (IF I can get a seat, that is) and plug into music and tune out the flurry of people around me.

It wasn’t until yesterday that I realized, and smacked myself on the head for realizing so late. There are PEOPLE around me. Even if I can’t bring myself to take out my sketchpad in the crowd (although I did yesterday), I can at least put my people-observing skills into practice.
Apart from honing my ability to pay attention to details, all the endless rotoscoping is hopefully giving me a subconscious sense of how athletes move, although recently, I’ve been outlining quite a lot of blur. But still, there’s a lot to learn!

Looking at ordinary people do ordinary things can sometimes surprise you too. A lot of the things you’ll notice are obvious things, like I said. But really, if you think about it, they’re the essence of human behavior. Something like tapping your finger on your coffee-to-go can communicate much more than waving your hand violently when giving a political speech (Don’t ask- I spent 3 hours of my life I will never get back watching a Bollywood film about politicians, and subtextually, about bad acting. Anyways…)

I don’t think there’s a better place than stations of to really look at these subtleties come into play. They should make an Encyclopedia of human idiosyncrasies. Maybe it does exist, and maybe I’ll look for it when I can get a hold of something more advanced than dial up Internet.

But for now, I shall feed myself with my own list of nuances.


Monday, June 14, 2010

festivities


This weekend I was back at Rochester for my first film festival! Bhava Raga Tala got selected for The High Street Film Festival that was held this June 12 at the Dryden Theater in George Eastman House.

This is the first time the festival is being held, and it was started by Matthew and Kate Murphy. Here's an article about it (read it! I'm featured in it too!).

My film was the only animation out of the 11 films that were screened, but it was a great experience. I got to talk to other student filmmakers and some professionals, and my film was received well!

I also started my internship last Wednesday at Humble TV. I know I'll be learning a lot during my time here, but at this moment, I am very intimidated because I am new to some of the software and techniques and I need to self-teach a lot of these things to give these people the right output in the right amount of time. My first three days, I rotoscoped. This is my first time rotoscoping and I think I'm getting the hang of it. Humble TV is working on motion graphics for the 2010 ESPY's right now so it involves rotoscoping athletes and putting them in different environments. My first rotoscoping was Shaun White doing one of his tricks. I'm excited to get my feet wet in some compositing, and hopefully, a lot of new 3D stuff.

Apart from that, my summer's been pretty static. Doing some animating in Maya and hoping to be able to write at least one more children's poem like I did last summer. Maybe it'll inspire me for my 2-quarter too.

Also, I have an IMDb page now for Bhava Raga Tala. :)

Sunday, May 23, 2010

looking and listening

I took American Sign Language and Deaf Art & Cinema this past quarter and was taught the importance of visual communication both in terms of everyday communication itself, as well as in terms of cinema.

I also took Audio Concepts for Animation, where the importance of sound being the life and soul of a film couldn't be stressed enough.

I haven't had the time to properly reflect on this.

But here's my final project for the audio class.. I did NOT animate this. Two guys in our class did for the purpose of the assignment.

AUDIO for Animation from Shreyasi Das on Vimeo.



The audio quality has deteriorated a little after uploading. Make sure to wear good quality stereo headphones to experience the truest product of my efforts!! I worked on this with my partner and did the first half of it till the "hell" sequence, while she did the soundscape for the hell scenes. We then looked over, or listened to rather, each others' segments and gave each other feedback. We both recorded sounds in the foley room using a variety of objects not limited to fruits, vegetables, chocolate pudding, mayo, whole punchers, forks and knives, wet t-shirts, rice crispies and so on and so forth.

I think it came out rather nicely!



Also, this quarter, I did all the sound design for my junior friend, Robyn Stanford, (who was also my partner in Audio). She was working on her one-quarter involving dragons and a tea-party and I did all the sound mixing for her. It was received well at screenings, audio-wise as well, and even made it to the Honor's Show! She's given me the kind permission to embed the link to her film here (and forewarns that the colors are slightly off!)

Tea Party from Robyn Stanford on Vimeo.

spring, a few words about


Another year has come to an end, and as always, there's been a flurry of activities. It seems to be a trend at the closing of every Spring quarter.

So, to back up a little- my 10-week animation project, popularly known as the "one-quarter", was completed, screened with good feedback from the faculty at the quarterly screenings, and selected for the School of Film & Animation's (SoFA) Honor's Show to be taking place in Fall next year.

Two days ago, I turned 19 and took charge of my own decisions. I had received an e-mail from the chairperson of SoFA informing me that the faculty members had decided to nominate me to be the undergraduate representative for the National Princess Grace Foundation Award in the Film category. I was tremendously excited. On further research, found out that this award award was meant for thesis films, and furthermore, the deadline for sending DVDs, treatments & proposals, script summaries, pre-production samples, bios, and other paperworks was in 10 days.

I emailed the chair about it and he informed me that the award could be applicable for any advanced project I would be doing next year (not just for a thesis) and that I should let him know immediately if I wished to decline. Had I been doing a thesis next year, it would have been an ideal opportunity, because by that time, I would have had a solid idea at hand, the pre-planning stage would have been rolling, and I would have a lot more samples to send exemplifying my work under my belt.

But next year, I will be working on my "two-quarter" (20-week project), and unlike my thesis, I do not have an entire academic quarter before this project is to be started, to seriously mull on the ideas being catapulted around my head, polishing the idea, etc. Instead, I have 10 days, if I am to apply for this award. As I've mentioned before I think, pre-production and ideation is the most important and most difficult part for me, and unless I can completely marry myself to my idea, I cannot work with it- be it 10 weeks, 20 weeks or an entire year.

If I were to come up with a 2-quarter idea in 10 days, send all the supporting materials and possibly win the award, I would have to be committed to this idea for the next 20 weeks that I would be spending working on it. I would have run the risk of hating an idea I spewed out in that small span of time and jeopardizing one of my three important projects during my time in college. The quality of my work is important to me and I didn't want to potentially sacrifice that by applying for the award. I wasn't afraid of the deadline. I was afraid of what the outcome of winning the award would be.

It was an especially hard decision for me to make, saying no, because my parents and my friends who knew about it were quite vocally against it. But I thought long and hard about it, and decided to forego the opportunity. It was a privilege being presented with the choice, and for me, all that matters is that I am recognized in my school as being capable.

I must say, making huge decisions like these in such short time can drain you of a lot of energy. Especially when you have to spend the rest of the day packing all your belongings and all the junk that accumulated in your room over the year and move out.


This quarter has been amazing. I've met new people, shared new ideas, earned an interview with Pixar at such an early stage in my career (even though it didn't work out in the end) and got many other valuable interview experiences.. I'm excited about what's to come.

Now I'm home, aching from lugging heavy things around. Will take a day or two off before diving into more work. Film festivals. Scholarships. CLEP. Internship. Translating. Animation practice. And ruminating over ideas for my next film. It has to be twice as good, now that I've made such a big deal about spending time on pre-planning.

Happy summer!

Thursday, April 29, 2010

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.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

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.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

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.