BUSY SUMMER TIME!!

HEELLLOOO "Mumbai Summer" !!!! The heat and my stress are competing with each other. The plummeting rickshaw rides. Noisy, honky, fumy, nauseating and perpetually under construction roads. The jittery and suffocating trains. Amidst this madness a number of songs teleport me to a music heaven. A few among them are: "Bin Tere (Reprise)" from the movie, I Hate Love Stories. Shekar's voice in the song is amazing and it's lyrics and composition by Vishal is right on the money. "Stop Me" a cover of a 80's British band, "The Smiths", by Mark Ronson. This song features one my favorite recent singer Daniel Merriweather. "Beggin" cover by the Norwegian hip-hop band Madcon. The song was originally sung by the 60's American band, "Four Seasons", and apparently they were the most popular band before the Beatles. Well, so much for the songs. Below are some of the illustrations i made when i had some spare time. I will soon be writing about my on going projects.

This sketch is dedicated to my all time favorite movie, "Ratatouille". Pentool is my recent love in Photoshop. I get sharp and crisp forms and selections.

Say hello to MOONALISA!! Another one with pentool in photoshop.

A quick e- card i made for my little sister. All Flash!!!

A quick illustration with Photoshop.

Some experiments with Flash and Photoshop.

Some experiments with Flash and Photoshop.

FLASH ! FLASH ! FLASH !

Wow, finally i am being able to spend sometime on my blog and upload some work i like. Last few months have been hectic. After long Eminem made it to my playlist with his number " I love th way you lie", but i don't really give him all the credit for it. Rihanna sounds fresh and soothing, and i wished to hear more of her in the song. Another song i liked lately is, Animal by Neon Trees. Well, below are some Idents. All flash and some post work. Really enjoyed detailing the characters and animating them, though the deadlines were backbreaking.

The Initial design still

The Initial design still

Below area  few programme packaging work for UTV Bindass

The images below are of the spots i worked on a few months back. The characters were made and animated in flash. The background images were cutouts from images made on Photoshop.

YAHOOOOO !!! ANIFEST TASI 2010

This is my fourth month, in Mumbai. I am slightly settled in the city. A number of projects, are on. My stereo short "RAMATIYA", was a winner at ANIFEST 2010 and a still of it luckily made it to the cover of the Animation Reporter Magazine.

Last two, months have been a marathon of POMPLAMOOSE music. These guys do brilliant covers and originals. Recently, i was glued to Vh1 and HBO. Got to have a look, at some brilliant shows and saw some old movies again. This was a brilliant, Diwali treat. Below are some more fortunate interviews and articles on my short film. 

Finalist for The Art of the Comic !!

Got some great news from ART & THE CITY, online art journal. I was one of the finalist, for a COMIC STRIP competition. They, publish my work on their site and commission me for more five strips, which will follow up on their site. The theme, was city life. I enjoyed, working on them and am looking forward to the other strips coming online. Below is the link to the site.

http://www.goethe.de/ins/in/lp/prj/kus/bil/en6557638.htm

RAMATIYA

The unbelievable has happened!! Though i am still to finalize the sound, but the FILM IS OVER!! It was screened in the Design Vision Centre (NID), with fancy LCD 3D Glasses. I can't find words how to thank Mr. Pradyumna Vyas for sanctioning this research project. Sekhar Mukherjee and Praveen Nahar for their patience, guidance,support and bearing the delays. Naeem Sheikh for always being updated with his stereo equipments and getting the projector for the final screening, which made the colors more beautiful then i had imagined. Raval Chandresh and Franklin Kristi, for their ever readiness to help me with software and equipment.Paresh Soni for the DVC keys. Kaushik Chakravarty, Atul Bhai, Sanjeev Bhai for their encouragement. My friends at NID, Pradeep Patil, Nitin Patel, Anuj Sharma, Peter Alwyn, Dawa Imchen, Sanjay Jangir,Abhijit, Chiranjeet, Mochu, Navleen, Shweta, Avinash, Aishwarya, Charles, Manish, Gautam, Amber, Gagan, Rohit, Smit, Longbir, Ranveer,Hemant,Yash and many more who pulled me up when i thought it was an impossible task.

RAMATIYA from PRADEEP SONI on Vimeo.

RAMATIYA 3D from PRADEEP SONI on Vimeo.

RAMATIYA * end stage

It's a holiday evening and i am listening to my all time favorite song, "All Star" by Smash Mouth. I was in love with it all over again when heard it as the OST for SHREK. It is an apt song to go with Shrek's character. Another one of my favorite song in the movie is "I 'm believer", originally by the Monkees in the mid 60's, later a cover my Smash Mouth. What a treat! Well, the main chunk of the animated film has finally been sent for sound. Here are some designs for the FLASH animated dream sequence and translation of the 3D characters to "Rivetted Puppets". Doing this was a good break from the never ending work in MAYA. Can't wait to texture them and be done with their animation. Looking forward to being done with the film by the coming week (fingres crossed).

RAMATIYA * work in progress

Ramatiya is a short Stereo 3D Animation Film i am currently working on. It is a love triangle drama of wind up toys.I have worked for years to materialize this project. I was fascinated with what i could achieve with MAYA and over a dedicated period of time learned the technicalities of Modelling, Texturing, Rigging, Lighting, Animation etc. It has been a mammoth size task to learn these techniques and complete this project all by my self. The film is also being rendered for stereo viewing so i have learnt immensely about the language of stereo during this project.

This is a film still from the dream sequence of the movie.

The expressions of one of the characters of the pet.

These are some mock posters i made for my film.

Still shots and characters of the movie.

These are the initial sketches and designs for the movie. I took photographs of my home town which is in Rajasthan to derive the aesthetics for the film. I studied Rajasthan's paintings, motifs textiles, and architecture. Simplified them to adopt for my designs.