All material copyright Rohit Iyer unless otherwise stated.

4 June 2008

Busy...

I found this excerpt from Norton Juster and Jules Feiffer's The Phantom Tollbooth (which, by the way, I've never read). But I very faintly remembered seeing the animated adaptation as a child and although I couldn't even remember the name, thanks to the internet I didn't have to. Ironically enough, this excerpt describes my day almost perfectly.

"Well, if you can't laugh or think, what can you do?" asked Milo.

"Anything as long as it's nothing, and everything as long as it isn't anything," explained another.

"There's lots to do; we have a very busy schedule-

"At 8 o'clock we get up, and then we spend

"From 8 to 9 daydreaming.

"From 9 to 9:30 we take our early midmorning nap.

"From 9:30 to 10:30 we dawdle and delay.

"From 10:30 to 11:30 we take our late early morning nap.

"From ll:00 to 12:00 we bide our time and then eat lunch.

"From l:00 to 2:00 we linger and loiter.

"From 2:00 to 2:30 we take our early afternoon nap.

"From 2:30 to 3:30 we put off for tomorrow what we could have done today.

"From 3:30 to 4:00 we take our early late afternoon nap.

"From 4:00 to 5:00 we loaf and lounge until dinner.

"From 6:00 to 7:00 we dillydally.

"From 7:00 to 8:00 we take our early evening nap, and then for an hour before we go to bed at 9:00 we waste time.

"As you can see, that leaves almost no time for brooding, lagging, plodding, or procrastinating, and if we stopped to think or laugh, we'd never get nothing done."

"You mean you'd never get anything done," corrected Milo.

"We don't want to get anything done," snapped another angrily; "we want to get nothing done, and we can do that without your help."

"You see," continued another in a more conciliatory tone, "it's really quite strenuous doing nothing all day, so once a week we take a holiday and go nowhere, which was just where we were going when you came along. Would you care to join us?"

"I might as well," thought Milo; "that's where I seem to be going anyway."

31 May 2008

Anonymity

hi, my name is wren-underscore-86 and i am an internet-aholic.

HI WREN-UNDERSCORE-86!!!

i’ve been online for two-and-a-half weeks now...

GOOD FOR YOU, WREN-UNDERSCORE-86!!!

no, no... that’s not good. in fact, this is the longest i’ve been online ever.

in fact, it’s the longest i’ve been anything.

WREN-UNDERSCORE-86, YOU’RE AN INSPIRATION TO US ALL!!!

try to understand this – i am trying to break free... but, i can’t stop typing!

CLAP!!! CLAP!!! CLAP!!!

don’t applaud me, you morons! this isn’t something to celebrate! i’m fucking trapped!

TRAPPED!!! TRAPPED!!! TRAPPED!!!

i should’ve never clicked the link! i shouldn’t have! i did it against my better judgement... internet-aholics anonymous, my ass!

THANK YOU FOR USING WWW.IA.COM. YOUR FREE ACCOUNT HAS EXPIRED.

what the fuck?

YOU ARE NOW BEING CHARGED DIRECTLY FROM YOUR ACCOUNT...

what the fuck?!!!

IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO CONTINUE PLEASE CLICK--

wtf?!!

LOADING... LOADING... LOADING...

omfg!!!

21 May 2008

An Accident...

18 May 2008

Sunday is for Church


Today I went to church for the first time (Other than Christmas mass in 2004-05 and some random visit in Karnataka while sightseeing) and attended a sermon with Dhaneesh.

It was... interesting. Ironically, when I went in, I thought of a movie I finally caught up with this year, The Passion of the Christ, and the priest happened to talk about it during his sermon.

I also goofed up pretty much of the time when it came to the whole getting up-sitting down-bow-getting up routine.

I wouldn't mind going again. And next time, when I go in, I'll think of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (no blasphemy intended).

15 May 2008

My New Lapto... er... "Mobile Workstation"!

Hello out there!

I haven't posted in a long time (this is kind of apologetic is common behavior amongst most bloggers I've noticed - probably best to avoid it from now on).

A few days ago I finally got the new laptop that I'd ordered - the DELL PRECISION M6300. It's a monster of a machine and it's actually referred to as a "mobile workstation":




The Precision is very, VERY powerful. The speed of my work has suddenly shot up on this. I'm sure a lot of people working on Hi-Definition digital graphics would know what I'm talking about when I say that technology can be a big limiting factor when it comes to creativity.

On my old PC, the render times for previews themselves would make me edgy and impatient. And rather than trying out all the options and variables that I had in mind, I'd settle on the first or second test simply because I didn't want to wait for another long render.

No such problems here. This baby has a 2.4 GHz Intel Pentiun Core 2 Duo CPU, 4 GB of RAM, and an NVIDIA Quadro FX 1600M graphics card. It really screams. Add to that the fact that I have mobility and access to the wireless connection all around campus ensures faster work and more blog posts in the near future!

Let me take a final moment to say goodbye to my old desktop PC. I had it for three years and we had some really good times. So... goodbye desktop; hello "mobile workstation"!

16 April 2008

Prince Achmed Poster

A poster I made for an NID Film Club screening:

6 April 2008

A line test a day keeps the doctor away...



I've decided to re-learn and refresh my animation skills and what better way to do so than animating some simple tests every now and then?

15 March 2008

BLACK HOLE by Charles Burns


I haven't posted in quite a while. So I thought I'd get the blogging juices flowing again with a brief book review.

As you've probably come to expect from me, the book in question is a graphic novel (can't go beyond picture books these days - I've spoiled myself!) called BLACK HOLE by Charles Burns. I read this quite some time back and I really, really enjoyed it.

The book is about a group of teenagers in a small town in America who start spreading a strange STD which has different symptoms for different people. The approach that Burns takes is a heady combination of teenage angst, suspense, sex and horror. That's one formula that can never go wrong.

I especially related to one of the main characters, Chris (a girl in this case) on whom the effect of the disease is that she sheds her skin just as a snake does, at regular intervals.

There's an in-depth analysis of the book here. I totally recommend this book for it's wonderfully stark black-and-white art and the story which is top-notch. I recently heard a rumor that the book might be adapted into a film by none other than David Fincher himself. Frankly, I think this is a bad idea and I hope nothing transpires. The art of the book is integral to the story and the medium is perfectly suited for this tale.

Speaking of the art, I was surprised to notice similar looking artwork in one of the films from the Fear[s] of the Dark trailer. And surprise, surprise... that particular short has been directed by Charles Burns. It's very interesting to see his style applied in an animated format.


19 January 2008

Saturday Sketch


I'm at home on vacation and I took my WACOM Bamboo along. I decided to try out Corel Painter. Here's an initial, if somewhat default sort of sketch. Hopefully there's better stuff to come.

10 January 2008

Bonkeshwari reviewed on Wet Paint


Hot on the heels of the Cartoon Brew post, Bonkeshwari has gained a positive review on the animation blog that I discovered today, known as Wet Paint. You can read the review here:

http://wetpaintblog.wordpress.com/2008/01/09/bollywood/


If you think I'm plugging this for all it's worth... then you're right!

8 January 2008

Rani Bonkeshwari got Brewed!

Cartoon Brew, like Drawn!, is a site I visit almost everyday for news and inspiration. I decided to send in Rani Bonkeshwari in the hopes that they would post it, and guess what? They did!

http://www.cartoonbrew.com/advertising/rani-bonkeshwari-by-rohit-iyer#comments

I'm very, very happy and I'd like to thank those guys for considering this.

Of course I'd also like to thank Manuscrypts who runs the Brantings blog for reviewing this first, over here:

http://brantings.blogspot.com/2007/12/of-content-being-king.html

I'm on cloud nine!

Agent Smit

Click for bigger image!

Another poster.

This one's for the pre-diploma display that my batchmate Smit Shah put up. Made this overnight in a few hours in Photoshop. Just a bit of photo-manipulation. His name is Smit, so the idea for the poster was kind of obvious.

I'll be putting up pics (and hopefully a video too) from MY predip (which took place in December) soon. Keep an eye out!

28 December 2007

Vaibhav's World

Click to enlarge

A poster I made for a talk with the NID alumnus and popular Indian animator, Vaibhav Kumaresh. I tried to capture Vaibhav's own bold and sketchy style. His characters Simpoo, Bhoot, Chulbuli, etc. are very well known in India as mascots for TV channels and consumer products.

Vaibhav's been having these Baatein sessions every year at NID, when he comes to take the Stop Motion Animation course.

10 December 2007

It's true! YouTube DOES bring back childhood memories!

17 November 2007

Grin... And Bear It!

I regularly read the SuperHeroHype Boards for discussions on Nolan's upcoming The Dark Knight. I also love looking at the great fan art that people post there.

After lurking for a long time, I thought I'd participate in the thread myself with a go at Ledger's joker. Here are the two versions I posted here:



The portrait was sketched and painted directly in Photoshop and the background images are not mine. I think the joker card is a Bob Kane design.

Click on the images for larger versions.