Tatha

Roadside Romeo

I saw the film a few days ago. I was going in with low expectations: I didn’t like the designs (quadripeds standing on two legs is kinda awkward), but I was still curious. Unlike many Indian “animated” features, which are sometimes more like animatics, the trailers for Roadside Romeo showed full animation and some real acting, for a change. Also I was interested in how local this film would really be.

I can’t believe I’m saying this: I actually enjoyed myself. It’s easy to make fun of this film, but when you realize it’s not trying to be more than it really is, you can’t help HAVING fun instead. The story is very cliched - a rich bratty dog named Romeo gets left on the streets of Mumbai when his family leaves for London. He befriends the street dogs, falls in love and hoodwinks the local bull dog villain (Charlie Anna, he literally steals the show).

What it lacks in terms of plot, the film makes up for with some great voice acting and insightful humour. The gags here are not translated from Hollywood, but rather from live-action Bollywood. The characters talk like stereotypes definitley, but INDIAN stereotypes, and that is (in a small way) a step forward.

The film has been written and directed by former (failed) Bollywood actor, Jugal Hansraj, and he actually does a good job of balancing comedy with interesting characters. The animation was done by Tata Elxsi - http://www.tataelxsi.com/ - and while character design and art direction do take a back seat, the animation itself is pretty good, without a hint of motion capture.

I’m pretty sure that by having Disney involved in this, the standards have definitely been raised. Made over a two-and-a-half year period, it seems to have come along pretty quickly.
My only hope is that this film, while bordering on mediocre, opens up avenues for better big-budget animated features here in India.

I know this has kind of turned into a mini-review I’ll just finish by saying, if you’re a Bollywood fan - go see it. Otherwise a lot of the in-jokes will fly past.

Jesus H. Christ!

Octopussy

Let's dance!

Moka at work...

Bunny

Rani Bonkeshwari Strikes Gold at the 2008 Promax|BDA Design Awards!!!

Rani Bonkeshwari won the "Best Student Project" award at the 2008 Promax|BDA Design Awards held in New York yesterday!

http://www.promaxbda.org/awards.asp?n=08bdadesign

Check out Page 12 below!

BDA Design Awards winners - Upload a Document to Scribd

Read this document on Scribd: BDA Design Awards winners

And you can watch the spot again here-


Rani Bonkeshwari from Rohit Iyer on Vimeo.

Film Junkie...

I'm one too!



More over here:

http://www.slashfilm.com/2008/06/16/votd-film-junkie/#more-12158

IYERCAST #1: In conversation with Shweta Bhatnagar

Alright, this is my first attempt at a podcast. This is an interview I did for the next issue of our college magazine, VOICEBOX. But that never panned out, so I thought I’d upload it on my blog for all to hear.

The interview is with Shweta Bhatnagar, an NID animation senior who currently works with WETA Digital in New Zealand. We talk about how she started in animation; how WETA happened; the projects she worked on; her future aspirations and a lot more.

Keep in mind that this interview happened a while ago (December 13th, 2006, to be exact). Also bear with the poor audio quality - this was recorded in the BMW (Behind the Metal Workshop), the NID canteen.

Finally, thanks to Ranjan for introducing me to Shweta and for lending me his audio recorder, and to Nitin Patel for his company. Enjoy!

Listen Now:

Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player

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."

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!!!

An Accident...

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).

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"!