Do What You Love and Love What You Do

My Demo Reel

I received my appointment letter from Digital Juices, Bangalore, after two rounds of interview. I will be taking up my dream job from Monday. Yay!!! The pay, the shift or any other negative aspects which some people point out, does not bother me at all. Because, this is what I want to do and this is what I love to do.

There was a time in my life, when I almost gave up what I wanted to do and settled down with what I should do. I went with the flow and some pressure to land in Diploma for Computer Sciences. Even though I like working with computers, software engineering was not for me. After three years of strenuous travel which took up nearly 3-4 hours of my time every day, and after struggling with the syllabus I did not enjoy, I was left with two options. Continue to work in a field which you do not like for whole of your life, or take up something you desire and love, even if it means coming out of your comfort zone.

Animation, movie making and art has always been my passion. I wanted to take up animation immediately after my SSLC. Unfortunately there were no good animation centers around Byndoor and also everyone other than my Mom, told me it was a wrong career choice. Finally both I and my mom gave in to the pressure and I landed with something that I did not like.

With encouragement and support from my Mom, I decided to take up animation and pursue my dream job. It was not easy because we both had to face a lot of objections from every corner. It was much tougher on my Mom because she was blamed for not guiding me properly and pampering me to spoil my future. But she took the bold step and supported me, in fact I feel she loved the animation career for her son as well.

With the decision made, I entered Arena Animation, Jayanagar for my DAE course to #StartANewLife. I stayed in PG for the initial period and missed my mom and sister quite a lot. But my passion for animation kept me going. In just a little more than a year, my family shifted to Bangalore and I was back with them.

I completed all the assignments given to me with great effort, much more than what I ever had put in school or college. There was a huge change in the way I worked. From struggling just before deadlines to catch up missed work, I was ready with my projects ahead of time. The first semester I came up with a comic, second semester a 2D movie for which I won a 2ndprize and finally for the 3^rd year my project of Ad making won mefirst prize. We always do well when we do things we love.

I started my own YouTube channel with a friend, called SpikyEye where I upload short movie clips. It has a long way to go yet. 

I am glad I chose to move away from a struggle with a career I did not like and took up something I love with passion, because this is what I will be doing for a long time to come. I started over once again and I started anew with new zest, forgetting my struggles in Diploma. I hope to do well and see success with my career as well. Wish me good luck folks!

https://housing.com/

How to Get a Terminator Effect

Choose a profile picture for which you want to give the terminator effect.

 Find a right kind of terminator andriod image on google images which should be similar in size to the profile picture.

Erase parts of the profile picture, where you want to have the terminator effect.

Added the terminator android Image to the photo shop 

Arrange the layers of the images to merge according to the effect you desire

Give finishing effects but adjusting colors and tone. Also burn the edges to smooth the merging lines. 

If desired you can change the color of clothes or background, according to your taste. Select the part of the image you want to change. 

Click open edit and choose adjustments and color balance and get the look of your choice. 

Image is ready to be saved now. 

Now you are ready with your new look! Have fun. 

Running Up Rocky Steps

“Going in one more round when you don’t think you can – that’s what makes all the difference in your life.”

I and my mom share a lot of interests and hobbies, which makes life interesting for us. We enjoyed competing with each other in video games like Mortal Combat, Most Wanted or Test Drive. There are certain games I win hands down and some Mom does, but often we do have good competition between us as well. The same goes with our love for beach, organizing game parties, watching TV serials and many other activities we enjoy together.

Mom used to download some movies she had enjoyed before I was born so that she could share the experience once again with me. We loved watching some movies, but few were so bad that mom wondered how she had enjoyed watching them so much in the first place.

We loved Indiana Jones, Back to the Future, Rambo, Rush Hour, ET, and many other movies. When mom told me about Rocky, I was hesitant to watch the movie because I am no great fan of boxing or any other violent sports. I don’t understand what is entertaining about people hitting people. Mom has her way of convincing me and she did. We watched Rocky not just once but few times over and over again, because the movie won over Maa once again like it did before, and I too fell for its charm. 

There was more to the movie than just boxing. It worked like an inspiration for me, where determination gets you what you want. I feel the fight where Rocky is not declared winner in the end, makes it so close to your heart. The movie itself, made by a struggling Sylvester Stallone was motivational enough.

After watching the movie for the 4^th time, I told Maa that I wanted to run the steps of Philadelphia Art Museum someday, like Rocky did. She said OK, as though we were going to do it in few years. How was it possible for a teen boy from a tiny village of Byndoor to run up the steps of an art museum half way across the globe? We come from middle class Indian family, where travelling abroad is not a luxury we cannot afford. So far I hadn't stepped outside my home state as well. That is when Maa asked, “So you actually did not learn that anything is possible with determination, did you?”

True to her words, in 2 years I had my chance of running up the Rocky Steps. Standing atop the steps, I felt motivation and optimism surging through my heart. 

It was kind of an impossible dream that came true so quickly. Moreover, nothing was planned. It all happened by chance. My mom wanted to visit her friends in USA who were cancer survivors like her. They had a support group and most of them got together for meets quite often. Being in India, Maa could not attend their get together. So in 2008, she decided to visit USA and meet as many of them as possible. We spent 4 months with Mr. Jay and Mrs. Paula in Florida which was an amazing period in our lives.

By luck, one of mom’s friends Miss Judy lived just opposite of Philadelphia art museum and she invited us to spend few days with her. This is how I could run up the Rocky steps. We also celebrated 4^th of July with the Americans, watching the fireworks from the best view we could have. Me and Maa stood below the statue of Rocky #together and wondered, how this did happen in real. Sometimes, things go wrong but often things go right for us as well. Life shows us many moments to be optimists and motivated, but we tend to sideline them and concentrate on things that go wrong. That is the reason why we feel that many things go wrong. We only have to learn to look at the positive side of our lives where miracles happen every day.

Some Pictures from Philadelphia

From The Jaws Of Death to Optimism

When we shifted to Byndoor from Bangalore, the first thing we wanted to do was to have some pet animals. I have always believed in freedom, for myself and for every living species. I wanted pets but not those for which we had to keep in restriction. Hens were the first option that cropped into my mind. We could have them as pets as well as allow them to roam around in our backyard with complete freedom. 

Our Beautiful Rooster Enjoying A Warm Summer

For 8 years, we saw some amazing life cycles of chickens which sometimes are unbelievable. Though many chickens are killed mercilessly every day for food, having them as pets, changed our perspective towards them. Their happiness, comfort and lives meant a lot to me.

One of the tragic stories which had left us in sadness, turned out to be an amazing miracle which filled us with optimism. One of our chicken laid 9 eggs. We decided to allow her to hatch them. This was not the first time we did that. Earlier we had bred some 4-5 broods. Hens do not venture out much when they are sitting on eggs and we have to take care to feed them. My mom left the doors open so that our chicken could venture out whenever she wanted to. Unfortunately, this proved to be something terrible for the chicken and her eggs. A stray dog which had ended up in our backyard, took advantage of the opportunity and attacked the brood. Instead of running for her life, the hen fought fiercely to save her eggs. Finally the dog accepting defeat must have run away.

My mom must have had a shock of her life when she went to check on her chicken, only to find her dead due to the injuries beside her eggs. We all wept for her, and then accepted her fate and buried her in our backyard. We did not know what to do with the eggs where some eggs were broken and others badly shaken in the fight. We did not have heart to throw them away. There were some more days left for them to hatch. Only six eggs remained intact. We wrapped them in warm cloth and left them where they were, because the summer heat in coastal region could incubate them. On the third day, when my mom went to check in on them, she heard tiny sounds coming from the eggs. She thought she must be hearing things because of the hope she had. She called me in to confirm. I could see a slight movement in the eggs. We were excited beyond description. There was rush to find a box to house them in our bedroom, so that no stray dog could ever even have a peek at them. Mom was ok with it. Immediately, I set up a box, a bulb to keep them warm and put them under our bed. A miracle happened on the New Year’s Day when one of the egg slowly broke open and wet ugly looking black chick crawled out of it. We looked at it and worried whether it would survive or not. Slowly it crawled toward the light bulb and made itself cozy over there. Half an hour later another egg hatched and 1 hour later another one. The chicks became active in few hours’ time. 

Helpless and Sticky Chicks

We spent our time on google for 3 days, learning how to take care of chicks. The rest of the 3 eggs couldn’t hatch though we waited for another 3 days.

These chicks were very comfortable with us and soon became a part of our family. I almost slept beside them LOL. They survived to grow up and turned into two red roosters and one hen. Their survival against the odds filled my heart with optimism and also told me never to give up hope. I will never forget the moment of sadness that overwhelmed me when I saw the dead mother beside her eggs, nor the joy that filled my heart, when the chick crawled out from egg. #lookup

Home sweet home

Chatting time with their human family

Time to sleep, they sent signals to shut off lights

Take my picture... take my picture

Ready for their play time in our yard while we kept watch

Creating Stop Motion Movie – Lego Mario

This stop motion video was made using Lego blocks

Stop motion is an animation technique where we take photos to create a video which appears to be quite unlike any video you may shoot directly. It is like taking a bunch of photos of an object (clay models, toys, people, and nature) which you move or change bit by bit as you continue to click pictures. Finally when the pictures are arranged in a sequence at a desired speed, it looks as though the object is moving on its own like in the flip book. It’s a fun animation technique which anyone with a camera (and a tripod would be good) and a lot of patience can do. You can also use toys with moveable hands and legs or clay to create a great stop motion movie clip of your own.

For this video my friend Gautam and I together created 5 different Mario characters.

 Even though I have quite a huge collection of my Lego which I have been collecting for past 18 years or so, there was shortage of blocks for creating the characters perfectly. Hence, we created a general Mario head which could be shifted to all 4 characters. This was convenient because all the 5 characters would never be in the same picture frame. We replaced the toy Mario characters and made him move a little forward for each picture. The result was as a sequence which made him look as though he was walking, jumping and entering pipes, in pursuit of his princess.

 We moved the camera along with his strides which was not an easy task. Shaky camera gives your video unpleasant jerks and we had to struggle to avoid this.

You may wonder how did we get the toy to jump or stop in the air without any support.

 This is the trick of Photoshop, which helps in removing the supports for the toys, in this case our hand or strings which was holding up the Mario in elevated position. Though it takes some effort to bring about the desired result, the final result makes you feel it was worth it.

We enjoyed making this movie and had quite some funny moments of our own.

After we rendered the movie to check out the final output, we were quite pleased with our own work. Check out our movie and give us your honest feedback so that we can improve our work. Suggestions are always welcome.

Asus - From Expensive Devices to Budget Friendly Sleek Gadgets

Age no barrier for bloggers!

Indiblogger had organized a great meet as always and we had great fun with Asus IndiBlogger Meet 2015 - Bangalore Edition on 30^th Jan 2015 which was the first Indiblogger meet of this year and the first Indi blogger meet without their T-shirts. Fortunately, there was shortage no fun!

It’s been a long time since I last blogged. The invite only meet that I got invited for by Indibloggers , really convinced me to start blogging again. Great incentive!

I wished to make something different for this blog with a lot of images and videos; but the 48 hrs deadline doesn’t allow me the freedom of doing that. :(

  The meet started with few great songs ( the sweet dreams is one of my fav ) which shows the effect live music can have on you. Even in comfortable ambiance of ITC Gardenia you just come out of the sleep and be active for the upcoming event. 

The music worked as a energizer for me kicking me out of my slumber into which I was sliding in.

The meet was all about two great products from ASUS, a brand name I have known through their high end gaming systems like the ROG and the great Lamborghini edition laptop.  Now for a change through the sleek gadgets I saw other side of Asus where their PC and Laptops came with great features but were extremely budget friendly as well.
I am neck down in gaming and being in animation field, I have some knowledge of laptops and PC, especially regarding their game performance. I often go window shopping gadgets to test new products. People around me ask for my opinion or suggestions when they plan on buying new gadgets. So far, I would suggest Asus only for those who were looking for high-end gaming devices, especially their ROG series. For low budget, we always opted for other brands. Now I realize the game is changing in the favor of Asus. Their products EeeBook X205 and all in one PCc ET2040 I realized they offer best value for your money.  

At the meet we had opportunity to use and test both the devices. I found the EeeBook X205 quite slim and with a big screen for touchpad. The slim size and low weight makes it not only easy to use but also to carry around anywhere. After getting to know all it features I was surprised to hear the prize was just 14,999. Wow!

The other attractive gadget we got a glimpse of was the PC ET2040, which was great looking and handy device. The title of all in one suited it well as it had everything from in built battery backup to gesture control which becomes quite easy to use once you get used to it. Only way to improve this amazing PC was by adding a feature of touchscreen to it, but then everything comes with a prize. A 19 inch touchscreen would be fairly expensive and could never fit in a price tag of just 24,999.

Further the meet also included fun games which the young and old loved alike. This time around Indibloggers asked everyone to collect personal stuff from other Indibloggers which initially sounded like begging. When the game started off, it turned out to be quit fun way to get to know each other. Apart from this game we played a small skit forming 4 different groups to promote blogging with fun themes (not sure if I can say what our theme was, because it was supposed to be a secret ) but I guess the others were 300 war, Bollywood and Gangnam style dance.

The amazing, fun filled event finally had one of the best ending with the delicious dinner from ITC gardenia

It was a great meet and help us enjoy and change our usual daily routing life and to meet new bloggers!!   HUR HUR! HUR HUR!