2 Oct 2010, sat-The acting session

Acting they say is never just about a single person's skill. 
It is a combination of many factors: synchronisation and timing being one of them.
This has been experienced in the schedule on 2 oct 2010 when the dialogue delivery was not matching. 
They do appear funny for an experienced actor or a filmmaker, but since we are all fresh talent, 
I guess it is but expected that there will be several retakes before the final shot is finalized!
In order to reach the shooting location near Kengeri [near the Bangalore-Mysore Highway], there is a lot of travelling to do:-
A minimum of 2 hour journey, from Bangalore North to Bangalore South, passing through landmarks like ISKCON, and then walking through an uneven terrain full of shrubs!
It cant get bigger than this! And there is enough collection of funny shots and moments to fill one whole DVD!
But all that will surely turn into sweet memories once our final product gets ready for release!
Hopefully shooting of the talkie part ends next weekend to give our team enough time to work on the voice recording [dubbing] part
 and then the post production work!
Wishing our whole team of "Creative Cruisers" who is working hard on this project all the luck!

With love.. Anil

2oct10, fri- The reverberations of "sada shiva.."[Mahesh Khaleja]

The song reverberates long after it is over, mainly because of its powerfull and clearly audible lyrics. No wonder it has turned out to be a chartbuster the day it was released even before its official audio release!
It gives a sense of hope that He will come to our help, even though personally I believe He is so powerfull that everything from has been planned in advance by Him, everything following strict rules of universe set by Him, so strict and powerfull that He himself cannot change the future [as some say the writing of Brahma cannot be changed by anyone. Not even by any God].
Our only duty is to perform our activities and thank Him for whatever He has given us-joy or despair, without any complaint.
Coming back to the song, hope that the song picturization also matches the expectations. 
There have been many occassions when we expect something from a movie or a song but it turns out to be below average!
There is already a image created in the minds of the audience by the songs [not to talk of the expectations, which will always be high for a superstar's movie!!]
and we can only eagerly wait for the final product to splash on the big screens on October 7th!!

With love.. Anil

Vector Based 2D Graphics tool-- Illustrator!

Worked on Adobe Illustrator and it was so smooth! Of course it wasnt a big file, but liked the way it worked and the options we have in it!
The user interface is strikingly similar to Adobe Photoshop except for some icons and options.

If you are wondering what is Illustrator and vector based graphics, vector graphics is the technique which completely removes any kind of pixellation which is visible in pixels of most of the images we see[like jpeg, png, etc..]

In SVG[Scalable Vector Graphics] format, we get the same quality and clarity of the image, no matter which level of zoom you are in!
So you can zoom in to 10000% and still find the sharp details just like they were at 100% or 25% zoom level!!
So, welcome to the "pixellation-less" world of vector 2D graphics!
Below is the simple svg image created by me!

The original SVG image is located here at Wikimedia Commons.


With love.. Anil

Lets give children a better life by joining hands with CRY-"Child Rights and You"..

Lets give children a better life by joining hands with CRY-"Child Rights and You".. 
Be human..Be a volunteer.

Independence special: Leader and Oye!

Watched Leader again, now on Maa tv, it is such a kind of movie which has a feel good feeling sans all the masala stuff.
Earlier, couldnt watch some parts of the movie due to a busy work
Overall its a very sensitive film, touching the obvious issues of corruption, cunning politics as well as casteism.
In a way, with it's simpler story and sensibilities, it feels better than Raajneeti!
Raajneeti is too much like an adulterated masala with too much spice added to it. It could have been a much better movie sans Ranbir and Katrina's love story!!

Another movie that has that fresh feeling is "Oye".
Amazing cinematography as well as realistic.
Pixelloid has done a remarkable work as seen in its behind the scenes video for this movie.
The compositing[mixing the virtual shots and the live action shots] is very neat and we can hardly tell which is real and which isnt!
Coming to the sun direct crisis that refuses to leave, we continue to miss UTV Bindass, UTV movies, UTV Action, WB and UTV World Movies.
All that we can do now is hope that sun direct sorts this issue soon enough to avoid further loss of customer confidence.

And another important development has been the frequent powercuts, which took 1 day break on 15th August on the eve of independence day.
This allowed me to render some of the first images of the project inspired by avatar!
Rendered the first 2-3 seconds which shows the logo of Anilmation with the text "An anilmation creation".

With love.. Anil

29 July 2010, Thursday

Update on the animation project:

By monday, I guess most of the texturing for navi1 was complete[90% approx].
Need to do it for navi2[neytiri] now..Same color scheme and strokes, but differences in proportion and details..
So, it shouldnt take much time to colour or make-up her..
Another thing worth mentioning: Shifting gears! From a pentium 4, 1GB ram to one with pentium 3, 128MB ram..
Guess this also teaches us to look at both extremes in the same light.
Never get over-excited over momentary happiness/joy nor distress in despair.
In short, level headedness.

And the performance in a photoshop test[creating a copy of image of a game menu in Permeative Technologies, Bangalore] on wednesday could have been better, not because some new tools can be used but because some steps could have been avoided or altered. 
Even working in Photoshop is a kind of art. 
Since there are several ways of doing it, you need to know which tool is best in the given circumstance and also need to be good in painting with the mouse.
Anyway, it was a good learning experience. Obviously, not the same could be said about the travel from Forum Mall to the bus station, which seemed to go on forever. Literally the "journey of a lifetime", fighting for every inch of available space in the packed bus in strange postures!!
Hope someone had "scaled out" that bus![in animation terminology!]

29 june 2010, tuesday

Having watched Raavan this tuesday, came to know why Raavan flopped so miserably and turned out to be second big disaster for BIG Pictures after its "kites" met a tragic end!

Seems like they are poised to make a heavy loss this fiscal!

And having seen Raajneeti the same day, found out how different these two huge films are!

It was almost like Mahaabhaarat vs Ramayan! And Mahaabhaarat won by a huge margin!

By the way, Videocon d2h has the best DTH package in comparision with any other service! 

Just imagine: all the best regional and hindi channels[GEC as well as all hindi movie channels], and all the infotainment channels[discovery, NGC, animal planet and History] are available in the basic pack for just 150!

And thats not all. There is also the english movie channel MGM added in to put in spice to the pack!

At first, it sounded like the d2h has gone crazy and giving top channels even in the south basic pack! And it certainly is the best pack by a long way!

Even the highest pack[called diamond pack] costs you only 250 odd bucks that has all the sports, english entertainment and movie channels, etc that you ever need!

As far as quality of equipment/service is concerned, not much information is available though. 

But the packs are the best. Quite sure that sun direct will also add more quality channels soon to counter d2h's offer!

So dth customers, you can watch out for some exciting news soon!

With love.. Anil

Irritant people and show off..

The culture of showoff had reached such heights that we take parties for granted.
A birthday party a few days back was more of a test for patience, a show of glitz and status than any enjoyable ceremony for the little one.
Personally speaking, there is a lot of fake faces put up in most of the parties, especially of those whom you know very little.
You just see the make-up covered faces of people who are as vulnerable and ordinary as any other inside.
There is nothing as ugly as a place full of fake and artificial smiles.
Thats precisely why I dont believe in such glitzy parties untill and unless its some close family/friend's ceremony.


And there are also those irritating, bugging people who give free advice to others as if they know each and every page of the Britannica Encyclopaedia.
And worse still, they even call them losers based on the path they are on[like "B.Sc/B.Com? oh..no. you should have done engineering/medicine"]. 
Let me be clear that they may be down for the time being, but not out.
Every day there is some goal. Sometimes we reach it, and sometimes we dont. But the beauty lies in the journey that we embark upon. 
As we get the feeling of achievement, the race towards our goal gets thrilling. It is similar to Cheetah's sprint in the wild plains of Africa.[The most thrilling scene that you can see in nature].
But in a rat race, many people compromise on many things to crook themselves into a hole and suffer the whole life.
So for those who think that I am out and done with, I guess they got the message across loud and clear.

Congratulations to the winners!!

With the prizes of deccan herald short story contest having been announced, its heartening to see that so many people were interested in writing!
Congratulations to the winners and eagerly awaiting to read their works in the coming issues of Sunday Herald!
Its been a nice experience while writing the short story, and there was never a moment when it seemed boring.
In fact, the later script writing for our acting session also involved lots of corrections and learnt so many things as we kept putting details into the basic story and making it entertaining rather than a documentary work!
All of it was exciting and amazing to say the least!
Of course the bigger challenge will be to extract the performances out of everyone to make it look good on the screen.

With love.. Anil

Lost in the ocean of Maya!

Not a day passes off without creative ideas coming up as to how the whole animation project[demo reel] can be shot!
A camera angle makes such a big difference that an ordinary looking scene can be made to look exhilarating and breathtaking!
This is where James Cameron's Avatar scores heavily over any other movie..Its not enough to just create lots of beautifull stuff in 3D.
It needs to be captured in all its visual glory whether giving the right lights at right places, bright colours or the camera movement and angles.
And one of the breathtaking shots of avatar is the shot where the birds dive down next to mountain heaven's height[during Jake's first flight]! Watching it on the silver screen, it looks like if they went crazy or what!! That shot shows the spirit, beauty of nature, energy and passion that the director had in his story!
Similar shot was in the all time master piece by the same director--Titanic. The shot where the ship races with the dolphins/killer whales takes the breath away and expresses the feeling of winning a race with the nature with the largest and most beautiful ship ever built then!
The camera again was spot on, giving thrilling moments to the audience!
It is shots like these that cant be missed when making a trailer! For now though, modelling keeps me engaged every moment!
The making itself is an experience to be enjoyed!


By the way, "New York" on max the other day was nice! Frankly speaking, I saw it without any great expectations, but the tale of 3 friends and the 9/11 effect was well told..
The screenplay was crisp and the movie moved at a good pace. And it was based on facts. A must watch movie for those who forget the other extreme of fighting terrorism-the innocents should never be hurt.

With love.. Anil

Movies that really make an impact and entertain!

There have been so many movies and so many more reviews, good or bad, or fair or unfair.
But there is one thing that Indian movies didnt try to do: welcome an innovative idea that tries to transform the common mindset.
When I say common mindset, it doesnt mean breaking our customs or forgetting our culture.
It means reminding ourselves of the fact that we are all humans before anything else.
We have the inherent urge to explore. We love. We hate. We are afraid. We fight back.
But we never had meaningless traditions by birth. Its all fed into us and brainwashed by our society and innumerable entertainment sources[even that is a part of the society].
For eg., with all respect to the makers of the early 1990s Telugu film "Chanti", which was aired on Gemini tv on tuesday evening, the movie had some terribly shocking scenes which insult the society in a very unrealistic way.
There are several ironies in the film some of which are even outright funny, but let me focus on one incident where the villains insult an innocent woman in the run up to the climax.
The whole village [numbering more than a hundred perhaps] become mute spectators to just 3 men who are seen as highly powerfull in the village.
I know this is a common sight in a zillion movies, but the most shocking depiction is when the same society pleads the woman not to go.
How the hell do they have the right to ask someone to stay back when they proved thenselves useless?
Do they want her to suffer the same thing again and again in the name of culture in the blind-deaf-dumb society like theirs?
Of course nothing is real in movies, but this scene is outright shocking because it goes to the extreme of unrealistic, sadistic, spineless depiction of society.
It shows how the entertainment media catch the weak point of the society and use it for their advantage/business.
And the censor board thinks that showing these scenes of insulting a society is better than showing heads rolling?
There have been so many paradoxes like Magadheera being given an A certificate despite not having a single scene of insult or shock.
Even the film "Mahatma" has been in the news last year because of a line in the song which says "Gandhi is not just a surname of Indira..Its ..."
The name Gandhi in fact stands for truth. It stands for more than a surname of some one, which is right and theres nothing insulting in it.

Some of the moments that really stir you up in some recent movies on set max are:
1. "Aaj main pehli baar ek angrej ko tiranga lehrate hue dekh rahaa hoon" the dialogue in Chak De when Kabir Khan sees for the first time an Indian tricolour being hosted by an Englishman during the women's hockey world cup campaign.
It makes a big impact on anyone who sees the movie. In fact the whole movie is one gem of a package from the director, who seems to have written the script not with a pen but with his heart and patriotism and love for hockey and sports in general!
Even the inspirational words from Kabir Khan to his team are amazing. They can be said in any situation to pump up your spirits in a big event like a WC final! One important feature of that dialogue is it never pleads you to do well. Rather just enjoy the game to the fullest during the whole game! Felt like giving a standing ovation for the whole team which made the movie!

2. So many dialogues in the movie "fanaa" are just so beautiful that they refuse to fade off ever! Personally the best was:
"Agar bhool se bhi humse koi bhool hui ho toh usko bhool samajhke bhool jaanaa. Lekin bhoolna bas us bhool ko. Bhool se bhi hume mat bhoolna!" cinematography and music are the strengths of the movie as well as the gracious depiction of love in this movie!
Taking all these factors together, its one of the most beautifull movies!

3. The camera work in the "haule haule" song of "Rab ne" is amazing and catchy.
The beginning shot showing SRK without any cut is probably the highlights of the movie!
The most important thing is the camera never loses its focus on the main character-Surinder singh! and follows him for quite a long time in the song..
It makes even the ordinary scene of the song look fabulous and attractive!
Even though Raj's character looks dumb, irritating and unappealing, it is Surinder's character that saves the day for "Rab ne.."


With love.. Anil

Jumbling up of a movie by Max!!

Rarely has anyone seen such a big goof up by a top class channel like SET MAX.
On sunday "mera movie", fanaa was being aired and everything went fine untill probably the third or fourth break.
After 1 hour or so, there was a jumbling up of the movie. The 10 minute climax was shown at around 9.10pm, which might have confused most of us as to how come the 2.5 hr movie got shortened to just 1.5 hr!
Then came the slew of previous parts where the story went backwards and ended with Aamir khan being given shelter by Kajol!! What a gem of a fumble!
MAX--"Jumble" bana de!" would have been an apt tag line at that moment!
Guess the bosses at MAX noticed it and avoid any such goof-ups in the future!
 
With love.. Anil

The making of a 3D video:

Over the last few days, some interesting facts have been learnt regarding making a 3D video.
Let me tell you that creating the 3D effect is an art in itself.


Its not just enough to make a 3D movie by using stereoscopic camera and render it. You need to make sure that the audience feel the effect of 3 dimensional characters and environment.


And thats what was worked upon during the making of the "Anilmation-3D" video. When you watch a video, there are two things that effects your perception of the depth/3D:


1. Far away objects/environment.


2. Close by objects.




Its not as easy as you may think to create a good 3D effect all through the video.


As many of us know, to create a 3D movie, we need 2 cameras capturing the action from slightly different angles/positions.


To make close-by objects have the 3D effect, you need to decrease the coaxial seperation[one of the many attributes of a stereoscopic camera, which simply means the distance between the right camera and the left camera]


so for the close-up shot in the anilmation video where the letter "A" is shown, this distance was kept very low[approx. 0.3 units]


And in the same shot where the camera rotates and focuses on the other letters, the seperation has been increased slowly to a higher value as the main focus would be on farther objects[or letters]


In the case of the following shot where the camera runs through the tunnel, the sepeartion was kept to a much higher value, so that we can feel that the letters are coming closer and going farther. This is a challenge as we need to make sure we dont make a fuzzy video without clarity!


Overall, it does seem to be an exiting feature of Maya 2009 using which we can explore a whole new world of possiblilities in 3D movie making!







With love.. Anil

తెలుగు తల్లి పదమాల వెటూరిగారికి అశ్రునివాళి, మంగుళూరు గగన విషాదానికి సానుభూతి

"వేణువై వచ్చాను భువనానికి.. గాలినై పోతాను గగనానికి"

సాక్షాత్తు ఆ తెలుగు తల్లి మెడలోని పదాల హారంలోని ముత్యాలలాగా వేటూరి గారు ఎన్నో అందమైన పాటలు వ్రాసారు.


అందుకేనేమో. తెలుగు తల్లి తన చేత దగ్గరుండి మరిన్ని పాటలు వ్రాయిచుకోవాలని తనను తీసుకెళ్ళిపోయింది.


వేటూరి గారంటే ఒక రచయితే కాదు. ఒక వ్యక్తిగా కూడా చాలా మంచి పేరు తెచ్చుకున్న మహా కవి.
ఆయన ఎన్ని పురస్కారాలు అందుకున్నారో అనేకన్నా ఆయనకు తెలుగు భాష మీద వున్న ప్రేమ, ఎంత మంది మనస్సులను ఆకట్టుకున్నారో అనేది తెలుసుకోవాల్సిన విషయం.


మన అచ్చ తెలుగు భాషలోని మాధుర్యాన్ని చాటిచెప్పుతూ ఆయన వ్రాసిన గేయాలెన్నో. ఈ కాలం వున్నంతకాలం అవి గుర్తుండిపోతాయి.


ఒక "రాలిపోయే పువ్వా నీకు రాగాలెందుకే" కానీ, "యమహా నగరి" కానీ, "ఉప్పొంగెలే గోదావరి" కానీ, అలా చెప్పుకుంటే ఆయన వ్రాసిన ఎన్నో పాటలు ఎప్పటికీ మాసిపోని సంపదగా నిలిచిపోతాయి.


తెలుగు భాష తియ్యదనాన్ని మనందరికీ చూపించిన మహా కవి వేటూరి గారికి ఇదే నా అశ్రునివాళి.


తనికెళ్ళ భరణి మాటల్లో: "సాదా సీదా పదాలు వేటూరిని చేరి పరవసించిపోతాయి పాటలైపోయి!"


అలాగే అదే శనివారాన మంగళూరు లో జరిగిన గగన విషాదాన్ని చూడలేక ఆకాశం కూడా కన్నీరు పెట్టుకుంటూ చినుకుల్లా కురుస్తుందేమో అనిపించింది. వారందరికీ ఇదే నా ప్రగాఢ సానుభూతి...

Unveiling of the "Anilmation" logo animation video!

After considerable amount of delays and lots of scripting, the Anilmation logo videos are now live on Youtube!
This gives an unique identity to all the videos created by me, including the ones already created [like the lamp animation and dragon flight].
The art of animation as a whole has such a large scope that there are virtually no limits to what we can create! The making of 3D animation is also such an exciting one and its only fitting that the "Anilmation" logo is shown zooming around in 3D!
There are so many ways of creating the 3D effect, and one of the easiest ways is by taking 2 images of the same object(s) from slightly different angles.
And once we can cross our eyes and adjust to the image, it can create that effect of objects coming out of the screen!

And coming to the learning aspect of this video, its been completely done using scripting, which is based upon maya embedded language.
Everything including the glow of the characters in the end is done using expressions/code which is really interesting and one of the most powerfull features of the maya software!




With love.. Anil

UV Unwrapping-- A kind of puzzle!

Yesterday, working on the project, unwrapping was a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

Its more like solving a puzzle full of lines and putting them together to create a good layout for applying colors using photoshop later.

Unwrapping of the forest landscape and 2 of the floating mountains is complete and probably the more challenging part comes in the character modelling and giving the right textures to them!

For those who doesnt know about UV unwrapping in animation, it is the process by which all objects in a 3D environment are converted into a normal 2D plane so that applying colours to them using external files could be easy.

Once the objects are all unwrapped, they could be editied in any image editing software and reapplied to the object with all the colours.

With love.. Anil 

The business of movies on tv!!

There is an exciting line-up of latest movies coming soon on Telugu channels! Leading the pack is Maa tv which acquired the satellite rights of 6 new movies, followed by gemini!
Simha- Maa tv
Namo Venkatesha- Maa tv
Adurs- Maa tv
Leader- Maa tv
Josh- Maa tv
Kedi- Maa tv
Aarya2- Gemini tv

With no doubt the most exciting of the lot like including "Leader" will be on Maa tv, except for Aarya2.
Probably Ramcharan's upcoming "Orange" is going to Gemini's kitty, though there is no confirmation about that.
It would be really interesting to see what Zee Telugu will be upto as it had the rights of as many as 24 latest movies in 2009!
With HD services coming up in India in a big way, one thing that would really spice up things would be a genuine HD version of Telugu channel like maa tv.
It would enable in experiencing movies like Magadheera in the best quality possible and give a theatre like feel!
Talking about Magadheera's premiere on Maa tv, it was surprising to see how quick the movie returned after a break[ranging from 4 minutes to 9 minutes] as well as the countdown that started 1 minute before the movie resumed! [most channels take atleast 10-15 minutes of break!]
Of course the experience of watching it in theatre is the best, and cannot be compared to watching on the small screen!


With love.. Anil

A team of creative talent: "Creative Cruisers"!!

 new team of animators has been created with the title "Creative Cruisers" on monday[10th may 2010].
The aim of this 9 member team[including me] will be to produce a small film/video complete with live action and special effects using software like Maya, Adobe After Effects, Photoshop[for texturing] and probably some software to edit audio.
And the team's logo has already been designed, with the script in the development stage.
So a small beginning has been made to understand the process of film making and learn the art!
All the best to our team!!

With love.. Anil

Over reaction and immature media

As expected, the media is heavily agog with criticism of Indian cricket team. But how much of it is fair?
The other day, star news aired a program titled something like "Sharm ho.." Some of the comments like the above are highly objectionable.
No doubt, the team has havily under-performed, decisions on the field backfired, and lots of mistakes happened. But its too foolish of these so called pillars of democracy to show them as some kind of villains or careless people. They need the support when things go wrong.
As supporters of Indian team, its our duty to be with the team during crisis or bad times rather than spew venom like hyper-aggressive beasts.
The players have complete freedom to give importance to whatever they want.
If they think IPL is more important to them, then they have complete right to do so.
All that they need to do is take a firm decision like Sachin, who has decided not to play international T20s more than a couple of years back.
There has been many blunders beginning from the selection of WC team before the IPL even began.
Some of the best Indian players in the IPL have been resting at home whereas underperformers went to the windies with the comfort of past performances.
No doubt media is meant to collect, analyse and present news to the public.
But at the same time, its important to give a constructive feedback and not to always create "bouquets or brickbats" situation.
We are with you Team India. We have a world winning team and all it needs is the maximum utilisation of our resources!


With love.. Anil

How to save yourself the horrors of Indian WCT20!

For those who is breaking their heads watching the batting of Indian side in WCT20 2010, some simple tips to save yourself those horrors
1. Temporarily shift your team to the opposition. Since almost the whole life you are going to support India, it does no harm to support the opposition for a match or two. Bet on the other team..If opposition wins, you win quick bucks. Else, India wins! :). So its a win-win situation for you!

2. If you get goosebumps to see the batsmen coming and going like a procession, switch to another channel and avoid any Indian news channel, as they will be concentrating on the scores all the time! Atleast for the next 1-2 days, alienate anything related to cricket!

3. Turn off the tv, take a deep breath and practise yoga even if it is 11pm!

4. Watch the horror movies like "Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna", and other dumb KJohar movies which are much horrific than India losing in cricket. You will get fed up of those movies soon and will surely feel better once you come back to the match!



With love.. Anil