SMIT SHAH

Steampunk Sky Diver

2012-01-02T10:51:00.003+05:30

/*
He was returning to the earth,
against the mighty force of air resistance,
falling 100 meters every second.
And he was tweeting how he felt like...
But its not safe anywhere,
two masked men came from above
snatched his brand new iPhone 4S
and jet-ed far out of sight
before he could cry for help.

And so, he is sad.
*/

Character Design of an extreme high sky diver, from the steampunk.

Shnake.

2011-12-22T16:18:00.001+05:30

Abducted!

2011-04-30T18:34:00.000+05:30

A quick sketch of a little girl being abducted. No Im not sadist, I did it for a now-non-existent brief :)

The Wee Strawberry

2011-03-22T11:57:00.001+05:30

Monsters

2011-02-16T19:24:00.001+05:30

After being offline for a long time, I'm blogging again. Lets begin with monsters.

Turtlenecks

2010-08-09T00:04:00.002+05:30

I am a little biased against people wearing turtlenecks. It always appears to me as if they are hiding something from me. That includes Steve Jobs too. This ones a little tribute to those shady turtleneck people.

main aur meri tanhai...

2009-02-19T17:31:00.003+05:30

Ok Hriday, there you go. A pun.

Flying with friends

2009-02-18T18:22:00.005+05:30

Flew with friends and then woke up. :)

Gullak

2009-01-24T21:02:00.007+05:30

Manish, one of my really close friend at NID, approached me long back when we were room-mates in third year to make a short animated dream sequence for his Diploma film. Two years later I tried keeping the promise. It is a 65 seconds short, drawn in Flash and Photoshop and animated in After Effects. It took me around 3 weeks with all the other work I was multitasking on. Here are stills from the animation and a few character explorations we did before the film. Ill post the animation once Manish releases the film.

Details
Film title: Gullak
Year of release: 2009
Director: Manish Saini
Animation: Smit Shah
Copyrights Smit Shah, 2009

What are you wishing for?

2009-01-21T04:06:00.002+05:30

bugged by my constant stare, he finally asked...

2008-12-15T10:31:00.009+05:30

My new blog address http://blog.smitshah.in/ is up. Please make changes in your RSS subscriptions.

Brown and Blue

2008-12-11T10:50:00.009+05:30

Still from the film: featuring Bhutaram and one of his mirage.

Bhutaram special.

2008-10-22T11:04:00.009+05:30

Images from the preproduction stage of Mirages. Most of these are from the storyboard stage while the character design was running parallelly.

Mirages

2008-10-21T10:06:00.001+05:30

The production on Mirages has begun. A lot of animation has been completed. My jury panel liked what all has been done. And Im graduating this december. I just have to complete the film before the year ends.

Mess Mural

2008-10-19T15:48:00.001+05:30

Mural done with PoP and oil paints with other miscellaneous live props over a canvas of cloth. It was done in 2006 and was an amalgamation of lots of ideas. If you look closely theres a poem written by Rohit Iyer, painted by Satya on the huge chai cup. Took us 3-4 Nights to complete it.

Ferrari FXX

2008-10-18T11:24:00.002+05:30

Was on my wish list for a long time. It just rolled in as a late birthday gift from Reshma. Only theres a slight difference. its packed like this:

Its 262mm long and 32mm high. Top speed : 9kmph

doodles for mirages..

2008-04-16T23:53:00.001+05:30

Some doodles I did for the film as it began early last semester. A lot of things have changed. But a lot of things remain the way they were first dreamt.

Chaos nasha 2008

2008-04-16T11:23:00.001+05:30

Some illustrations and characters I'd done for promoting Chaos Nasha 2008 for IIM-A, but they never got accepted. Now that the event is way past over, here they are... The nasha ambigram has been done by Vinu Chaitanya, a good friend and a batchmate of mine.

Perception or Reality?

2008-04-16T09:56:00.000+05:30

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."

Philip K. Dick, "How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later", 1978

Gali Gali Sim Sim

2008-04-03T17:33:00.002+05:30

Ask me reasons to write this post and ill open a 500 page diary with thundreds of reasons in it. It was my first animation at NID. Thanks to Deepti Bhadbhade, Vaibhavi Kowshik, Ayush Jain , Vijay Puniya for helping me build the sets. It was a lot of fun making and breaking and rebuilding it. Also thanks to Manish Saini who was on the camera for all the nights we stayed up shooting. I remember we had 2006 earthquake while we were shooting this film. Man, those tremors ruined my 3-4 shots..... Another reason to put this post up is because it so happens that i have joined Miditech in Gurgaon. Its the company that produces Gali Gali Sim Sim for Turner, India and Sesame Street. I am on the production design team for the live action section. In short this is the team responsible for making the sets and props that the muppets use in the program. We are making designs for the entire galli that these muppets live. The other reason is quite lame. It was the only short of mine that I hadnt uploaded.
And incidentally my working in Gurgaon is a reason why you dont see many posts of how my final year film is going on. But ill soon catch up. Im about to complete one sequence which im planning to upload soon.
So here is my first film at NID. I would love criticism. please go ahead and post me comments.

Stuff done at NID

2008-03-16T08:36:00.002+05:30

A conserve energy promo by Smit Shah and Madhurapoorna Krishnan

Keeda

An exercise in stop motion by Smit Shah and Rohit Iyer (full credits appear after the short)

Images of my present Storyboard.

2008-02-18T13:43:00.001+05:30

Water colours

2008-02-01T14:55:00.001+05:30

Ok the good news is that this film is going to be my Diploma film. (finally!!). Meaning this is the film that is going to earn me my diploma at NID. On that note here some more work...

One probable teatment for my film. ....

The trip in images...

2007-11-28T20:01:00.001+05:30

Seconds before I was thrown off from the camel...

Sitting atop the bus the second time I went to Khuri

Cooking dinner in the desert

The first thing I saw when i woke up in between dunes.

The natives. Basic occupation: Animal Rearing

My first trip to Khuri was on a rented bike.

To Khuri, Kundhra and Sam

2007-11-28T19:05:00.001+05:30

So that was a short visit to Jaisalmer. Actually I was everywhere in the radius of 50 kms from Jaisalmer for a period of 5 days. I thought that would give me a better idea of the desert. Sometimes on the top of a local bus with my feet hanging in front of the driver, or sometimes trying to push most out of a rented bike in an attempt to get out of a deserted and disowned stretch of road that was duping my senses even in presence of a full moon. But that was not all. I got thrown off a camel back (by Mr. Camel himself). I spent a night looking at the brightest stars Ive ever seen in my life (looked like they were right out of the astonomy books) in the dunes where I was sleeping in a small hole dug by a local friend with nothing but a flimsy blanket. Not to mention that I had the first dinner and breakfast in a desert, hidden amongst the dunes, with the nearest settlement seven kilometers away. I heard for the first time the most amazing musical instruments in my life. Namely Morchang, Algoja, Kamaycha, Pyaledar Sarangi, and ofcourse the Ravanhattha.
And as a result of this trip, I know I will have to rework a little on the Character Design. The sounds and music are much more better settled in my mind. (Infact the camel jogging and making that music with bells around its neck is definitely making into my film.)

By the way, I got names for my characters. Ill call one Sidaram (because he speaks like hes got a nose block) and the other ones Bhutaram (bhuta as in corn).

p.s. Khuri, Kundhra and Sam are the places I was actually living in. Jaisalmer was more of sleeping 'adda'. Must say that tourism has terrorised Jaisalmer. Ill write about it in a seperate post.

Mirages!!

2007-10-01T01:19:00.001+05:30

Back with a bang. Lot of reasons to have been invisible. But no time talking about them. The film still needs to be completed.

What I have right now is a story. A few good characters. A few concept sketches and style- treatment boards. Almost a storyboard.

Heres whatever I can share for now.

And I tried making a maquette of the shorter guy. This is what i came up with. Its around 6 inches tall and is made up of red clay.

Everyone of us is a guard.

2007-07-27T02:39:00.001+05:30

We all guard our precious belongings. And no one can valuate how precious our belongings are other than us. Remember that one SMS your loved one sent and you havent deleted it since 3 years, or that xerox of the first cheque your first job earnt you, or a wrapper of the chocolate you shared with your first date, the letter your father wrote to you when you first came to a hostel? We all have memories. We all have mementos. We guard them dearly. And no one can understand the value of those trivial things in life other than ourself.

Holding on to a piece of paper for your entire life might be quite an irrational behaviour. But like Rowan Atkinson says it, "The most important things in life are in the end not rational." Friendship, Love, Memories and hundreds of other things that actually matter to a human being are in the end not rational.

Guarding aint an easy job

2007-07-27T02:18:00.001+05:30

This old work of mine for a course in Visual Scripting ( 3rd year NID) comes back as inspiration.

.

Guards!!

2007-07-23T11:37:00.001+05:30

I dont know since when, But I have a strange fascination for WATCHMEN. Period. They have a strange job. They are most of the times guarding that, which they are unaware of. And as if that were not enought, they are even supposed to concentrate on it. It seems a little absurd to me. Concentrating on something so intently that it would generally put you off to sleep, even though you are supposed to be alert guarding it. You would know what I mean if you have seen Le couloir (watch the clip here). Yes. It is nerve wrecking to sit at a place for a duty of 8 hours and be alert at all time trying to concentrate on some thing.

The proffesion: Its strange, Its baseless and Its popular. Its popular here in Gujarat atleast. For it is one of the most easily availible jobs. You just need to go and enroll yourself at a security guard providing company. For those who dont wish to work a lot and as the mindset of Gujaratis allow them to be, This is the most lazy job they could find. And hey you dont get paid much but atleast its not that bad.

Classically Speaking

2007-07-18T20:24:00.001+05:30

The character has come to life now. It has its personal reasonings and understandings, and it has a good conflict. Now what?

Classicaly Speaking, there should be a disruption or an enigma in the already existing equilibrium of the fictional world. This is either a consequence of the characters conflict or is external. A disturbance in the character's environment takes it to a point where an inevitable resolution becomes a necessity. This entirely follows a close cause and effect relationship, thus linking each event logically.

But that is classically not it. There is a requirement of a realist approach in it. You do that using more than one process of film making. Acting, Continuity cuts, Match cuts, Eyeline match, Flash backs.... In the not so very obvious ways the film maker does more than just make the film look real. What he is actually doing is controlling Space, Time and Motivation.

Clasically Speaking, that is film making.

Its taking birth

2007-07-13T21:08:00.001+05:30

Everyone of us has a reason to be what we are. From who brought us up, where we were brought up, the school we went and to what we do to make a living makes us who we are. The way we talk, the way we stand and walk, the way we react to situations, the way we make our decisions depends on what kind of things we have been exposed to.

All of us are characters of our own films. Living our lives, making decisions, showing particular school of behaviour. All of us have our own situations with problems, we have people to whom we go to get solutions to those problems, and once solved we rejoice with those people. All of us have a scope of thought and understanding which is defined by who we are. All of us, make our decisions based on that limited scope of thought and understanding. This is life and Film making is trying to understand life.

My script writing teacher would be laughing at me, wondering how I took so long just to understand this tiny and simple thing. But then we all have our own limited scopes of thought and understanding. Right?

Things get complicated here. Simply put, Good characters have conflict. Like all of us. Yes, A good character needs a Good Conflict to bring itself to life. The more the audience understands a character's conflict, and the more they can relate to it, the more they are going to like the character.

Does that mean good characters without good conflict are bad characters? Not exactly, but they are also dead without it. A rat might be a good character, but a rat who wants to become a chef is a character with a good motive as well as a great conflict. The character now has a reason to exist. Just like us. We all have motives to exist and these motives are hard to follow because of the conflicts.

Why I write this will probably make more sense once these kinds of posts become more often.

Why I feel the way I do for suits...

2007-07-05T14:24:00.000+05:30

Why am I looking down upon the Suits so much? Are they really bad?

First things first. I am a good man. I dont do bad things. Especially looking down on other people. My parents taught me not to do such evil things right when I was a palm top. I dont look down upon Suits.

Suits are not bad people. I've said that before.

Having said that, I'll make it clear that I dont look upto Suits, and I dont think Suits are great people either. And I have reasons to feel so. In my local language, MBA has a full form. Mane Badhu Aavade. Meaning "I know it all." And its true. Not that they know it all, but the fact that they actually think they know it all. Fine, no issues with that. The issues arise when you poke your nose into something that someone else specialises in, and you know only that much about it that the first search entry on google explains. And the issue is grave if that 'something' is actually Design.

I am a strong believer that Design can make a difference. But Suits think that Design is the way their walls pictures look. I hate it when someone asks me, "Hey you are a designer, tell me how does this new wall picture I've bought looks?" or "Hey, you're a designer, tell me how is my new dress (goggles, shoes, Suits etc.)" And I have been in such situations a hundred million times. I dont care what I wear. I dont wear brands. I dont care if my clothes are great. I never wear goggles, or suits. Does that mean I am not a designer? Probably. But I just think Design is something more than just Pretty things. And if you thought Aesthetics was our core subject, Aesthetics has to do a lot more than just the way things look pretty.

Infact I am one of the Freaks who are not really inclined in the creating beautiful things. (though Im trying hard to actually get good at it.) But I hated it when they would say, make templates for this website, and hey this should be this way , those things should be those ways, put those things here, make those things such, and dont do anything like that please..... OH! I thought I was ACTUALLY going to make the template.

Anyways. To understand the power of design, its important to understand Design. And understanding design is not a 4 and half year job. I remember an incidence when on the first day of my incubation to the foundation course at NID, faculties were introducing themselves. And Mr. S M Shah, one of the senior most Graphic design faculties said, "I've been in design for just 35 years, I dont know what design is yet."

What goes wrong between Suits and Freaks

2007-06-20T16:40:00.001+05:30

vinu: was just thinking that the problem is that the suits don't understand creativity
they understand logic
say for example an engineer and a freak are working under a suit
the suit asks the engineer to do something
me: ok
vinu: the engineer either does it or does not do it
if he does it
it is either right or its worng
but in the case of freaks the process is not so clear cut in black and white
say the engineer has to calculate the rate of fule loss due to a hole in the air craft

me: yea
vinu: he applies the formulas and works it out
it is either right or worng
on the other hand the suit asks the freak to come up with a story for an animation

well unfortunately there are not rights and wrongs there
me: yea
vinu: and the suits don't get that.....

the Suits and Soapflakes on wet bathroom floors

2007-06-19T11:09:00.000+05:30

There are somethings more torturous than working with the Suits. Picking up a soap flake fallen on wet bathroom floor. Normal people generally push the soap flake on a new soap bar to get some sort of fused soap. But I doubt if managers do that. Fusion soaps are design solutions to age old problems. But Suits dont understand simple Design solutions. So for the Suits, the Freaks have to come up with more stupid solutions. Liquid Soap. Voila ... Now they understand there is life beyond soap flakes. But they use Liquid soaps for 10 days and revert back to the use of soap. They realise that its actually a stupid solution to the soapflake-wetfloor problem. Why? Because liquid soap becomes solid on drying at the mouth of the nozzle.

Now Suits are busy again. Looking for a more stupider solution to soap bars sticking on the wet floors. It wont be long before they come up with the idea of using toothpaste on their bodies. But beware Suits.... that would burn a lot if applied under the waist level !!! Dont ask us how we Freaks know it. Why do you think they call us the Freaks....

Suits just suit themselves....

2007-06-19T10:49:00.003+05:30

Suits are not dumb people. They just cant think beyond a point while design is concerned. This is no joke, its a heartbreak. I have actually come across situations (truthfully hundreds of such situations) where the Suits want me to make a product look like something else. This is why I said they have their references on their tongue tips. The importance of making the product stand out of the crowd is not so difficult to understand. Is it? Look at that website, take this quote from the following book, make use of colours like on that website, use words from that website.

The Suits

2007-06-08T16:55:00.000+05:30

I came across them for the first time on BlueskyDisney blog, where Honor Hunter speaks of these species that used to exist in Disney, and have been getting kicked out since the Mr. Lasseter has been there. But they are not confined just in an animation studios. This breed has infested a large number of creative places on the pretext of making these places Bigger and Better. In very short period of time they bond with their likes and make sure their population increases and make the Freaks (the creatives) believe that they are no good and the creative place would so flourish only if they were a little fewer.

How do I know about this? Because I have been living with teh Suits for over a month and a half now. This place seems to be full of them. They are everywhere. you start your morning seeing them, have lunch with them, work for them, and then you wait for them to take you home. Why? Because you live with them(Yes I do...). And believe me CEO's, Middle Managers, Product managers.... all are same.

Suits dont know what freaks do. Suits dont want freaks to do what freaks do. Suits want freaks to do what they want to be done. Freaks are lowly creatures that will make their presentations and their products look like the products that are already successful (read products made by other freaks), more commonly they want everything to look like google and apple. And they want it fast. They always have lunch time deadlines, they want everything ready by lunchtime. Suits have a hundred references on their tongue tips. Whatever they want is always like those references.

Everything must be the way Suits 'want' it to be. And all the Suits want different 'wants'. All teh Suits want things to be according to their 'wants'. There are many Suits in a place. Hence they are always fightingfor each others 'wants'. Not with swords and knives. But by not giving what the others Suits 'want' for their survival. Hence all the projects end up getting stuck at bottlenecks (FYI Bottleneck is their favourite name to refer other Suits). Also not to forget that after every internal battle Suits come to Freaks to bitch about other Suits.

Suits are not bad people. But they definitely are villians in the Freaks' lives. Suits cant survive without Freaks, but they think Freaks are like leeches stuck on their bodies. Suits are always in suits (I thought that was obvious). And Freaks are always freaky (again i thought that was too obvious).

(To be contd....)

2007-06-07T10:39:00.000+05:30

Picked from February isuue of Reader's Digest....

More than one reason to like it......

क्या करें? लोगों पे विश्वास करना भी तो मुश्किल है। part 2

2007-06-06T15:48:00.000+05:30

This used to be a comment from ayush to an earlier post called क्या करें? लोगों पे विश्वास करना भी तो मुश्किल है. and has now been converted to a post.
If you havent read the earlier post please read that first here.

The author, Ayush Rajvanshi, is an Animation Film Designer from the renowned National Institute of Design (NID) and is currently working for CNBC

Picture this
A Late after noon in a posh residential area in Bangalore, the weather is nice and the sun is softly warm. You are generally enjoying the weather and the walk along the wide roads next to the National Games Village Park in Koramangla, when an old woman approaches you in her 70’s. She is well dressed and speaks good courteous English.
Well!
With a smile she is successful in stopping you and capturing your attention. She takes advantage of her white hair and good manners and tells you how she is new in the city and has lost her bag and all and needs some money to call her son. She offers to keep your phone no. And return the money later.
Quite convincing! Coz it isn’t run of the mill husband and wife with a kid lost in a strange city.
But by then you are so captivated by her sad story and give a damn about some ten bucks coming back to you, because giving her just 2 rupees for the call makes you look cheap. What do you do then in such a situation?
I offered her to make a call from cell phone!

Wow! it just struck my mind and lo! I thought I had found a solution to her problem.
She wasn’t prepared for that. She reluctantly took the phone. Typed some number spoke in English for some time, gave me back the phone, thanked me, refused to take any other help, walked away and disappeared. I felt very happy having helped an old woman almost the age of my grandma, who I hardly meet and rarely speak to. So it fulfilled that gap. Any ways I too walked on.
The next day it was not as sunny and there were clouds and it looked as if it could rain any moment I was too hurrying down the road wanting to reach home before it started to pour when a familiar
‘Excuse me!” broke my concentration and stopped me.
The same old lady in the same saree was trying to impress me again .I too smiled and was about to ask if she had found her son when in an instance she blurted out the well rehearsed and time tested dialogues. I was shocked. I wanted to know how far she could stretch her drama. At the end when she asked for money. I didn’t want to be rude to her owing to her age so I politely told her that she had made a phone call from my phone just the other day. She looked apologetic said sorry and disappeared again.
From then on it became a regular thing to se her at the same spot, same time trying to speak to the pedestrians and then disappear and even I had started to treat her just like any other tree or a lamp post on the site. I didn’t know
What to do. Didn’t feel like complaining to police.
Then next day owing to Bangalore’s lovely weather and the splendid greens of the National Games Village park I decide to post pone my work for some time and enjoy the evening sun.
I enter park and whom do I see there. It was the same woman but today she was not alone. She was sitting with a much younger guy and perhaps exchanging something. I sat there watching them for some time from a distance. She kept the coming in and going out at regular intervals .A tenner gone from my pocket for her cause would have made no difference to my life but its just that I didn’t want it to end up in
Somebody’s booze, as the other guy looked like a drunkard. But then I was wondering if I would have been really cheated if I had given her the money coz I would have given them in the best of my intentions and it was her problem if she was up to some thing else. Any ways I enjoyed the sun and scene and came back home a little wiser.

क्या करें? लोगों पे विश्वास करना भी तो मुश्किल है...

2007-06-06T10:52:00.000+05:30

"आप हिंदी बोलते है?" He looks at me with half pleading and half questioning eyes, that would stop any pedestrian. He was succesful in stopping me too. "हाँ" I said.

HIT!!! He's got my attention now... And why wouldnt he. Any human knows how it feels to be in a place where they dont speak your language. To add to it, he was more or less decently dressed. A little jazzy pink stripped shirt, and he had a woman (probably her wife) next to her again clad in a pink saree, who refused to make an eye contact with you. Basically they looked very घरेलु.

Time for the second part. "वो क्या है ना, हम लोग यहाँ पर नए है। और हम लोग नागपुर से आये है। महाराष्ट्र से। बालाजी जा रहे थे। लेडीज़ भी है हमारे साथ।" That is when it struck to me. Hey this seems like a deja vu. I was in Ahmedabad then and on the sabarmati bridge 2 non beggar like people had given me the same story. I knew where it was going.
My instant reaction was "पैसे मत माँगना..." His expressions changed from that of plead to that of a little guilt in self esteem. "नहीं नहीं, पैसा नहीं माँग रहा, वो तो हम थोड़े भूखे थे इसलिये..." I simply turned my back and started walking away with a lot of doubt in my head.

Ive made a mistake, Ive made a mistake. I was saying to myself.
Cheaters, Cheaters. I was saying to myself.

Why not find out? I mean, all I needed was a free evening and some stamina to follow them. Ok so it was decided that I would keep a safe distance and figure out what are they upto?

It must have been 6:30 in the evening and I was at Hyderabad Central, Panjagutta Crossroads. For anyone who knows even the least of Hyderabad, has a vague idea about the scenario. Its jam packed with only heads bobbing up and down as swarms of people are trying to go everywhere. Peaktime and the construction of flyover makes it the worse place to be at such a time. Very heavy Traffic situation. If caught in the jam, you could end up spending 30 to 45 minutes crossing a small length of 300 metres. which was the reason why I generally preferred to walk this distance than be in a rick.

Plus I had nothing else to do in life. So I stealthly kept following these 2 people, stopping now and then trying to act like a regular waiting for a rick or bus(I dont know why, i just didnt want them to know I was following them.) It was all running fine as they were heading in the same direction where my house was, so it was a no loss situation for me. generally it takes 15 minutes to walk that 2 km stretch that I do every evening, but todays agenda took 45 minutes to reach to my locality. And in between they tried almost 25 people with a hit rate of almost 50%. everyone fished out a note from there wallet. I was too far to figure out the denomination, but considering each guy pulled out a tenner from his/her pocket, that is almost 120 Rs.

Oh I forgot to tell you this, they werent alone in the area. They soon were joined by another couple with a kid. And in between the female very confidently walked into a costly bakery (I followed her inside) where she filled up a bottle of water as if she was yet another customer and had her food there.

I dont know if they were cheating or if their condition was actually broke. But consider this. Its vacation time and its monsoons. 2 couples with a very small kid (almost 3 yrs) without much luggage (just one small cloth handbag held by either females) have left Nagpur in maharashtra and have come to Hyderabad in Andhra pradesh, and are on their way to Balaji. They have no money to eat food. and they are going around asking lots of people for money, in a highly populated area at a peak hour. Also 120 Rs. is a lot to many people in India. And people like me are either happily giving them some money, or laughing at their trials to thug them. Interestingly all of them are left with a question mark on their heads, totally confused, wondering whether they did the right thing or not.

By the way, while I was following them, I kept telling all the people they left behind either subtracted of their money or not, what the status was: How many they had asked for money and how many had actually given them, in the short time that I had been following them.
All of them repeated the same answer :"क्या करें? अभी लोगों पर विश्वास करना भी तो मुश्किल है..."

ब्लॉगर किक्स वन मोर एस विथ इट्स रियल टाइम् हिंदी ट्रांसलेटर

2007-06-04T09:51:00.000+05:30

भाईयों और बेहेनों,

हमने आज ये सीखा कि blogger आपके पोस्ट्स जो english भाषा मैं लिखे गए है उनको आसानी से हिंदी मैं real time convert कर सकता है... इस से अच्छी बात और क्या हो सकती है...

वोव थिस इस ग्रेट...... way to go google.....

MYTHS about being a Trainee

2007-05-30T11:15:00.000+05:30

ON Public demand I feel it is my moral responsibilty to eradicate many myths about being a trainee that have been lately doing the rounds.....

MYTH:No one, not even your fiercest enemies would put you into the war field without a sword
FACT: They make you work on Flash 7 and Photoshop with a machine that has 128 MB RAM.
('They' refers to the employers, and the company, and no one man in specific.)

MYTH: A trainee should be posted at Antartica or the Sahara desert.
FACT: Well with the AC directly throwing the air onto me its actually worse.

MYTH: Trainees should be put in the Darkest Deadliest Dungeons available.
FACT: What had I done that they put me with the Deadly Doc.

MYTH: Freedom to Talk is the last thing you could be stripped of.
FACT: In a Mobile VAS company, Employees mobiles are confiscated before you get into the office.

MYTH: They make you do the waterboy jobs.
FACT: I do not wish to speak of the work I am doing.

MYTH: You are not allowed to wear clothes.
FACT: Its worse, you have to wear formal- semi formal shirts and trousers.

MYTH: They chain you the entire time.
FACT: They dont give you Access Card. and you have to wait for other people to come and open the door for you. Till then you are stranded making stupid helpless puppy faces to everyone that pass you in a hope that they would open the doors for you.

How does it feel like to be a Trainee?

2007-05-29T16:59:00.001+05:30

Its been a month and people have asked me a hundrousand times, Smit how does it feel to be a trainee? How is your new job? How is Hyderabad treating you? Well I thought I would finally tell them how it feels like to be a trainee....

More Deadly Doc episodes...

2007-05-29T11:43:00.001+05:30

This one is called 'The Deadly Doc opens the Fridge'.

"I think we should keep some food in the fridge, dont you think Shah? It is good to have food when you need. You see, A fridge is like a Mind, ya?. The more you keep it filled the more healthy you are. (what does filled minds have anything to do with health??) isnt it? Oh you brought normal bread? You know normal bread is not good for health. You should have Whole wheat bread. The Brown Bread, you know? These maida breads are not good. These noodles and all that and all that..(not a typo, he says it twice) only make people fat. The people now a days are not so healthy. You see, The saints in the olden days used to live for 100 years. infact more than that.... But now the people have Heart problems, huh? at veeery early age (making a face as if he had eaten raw onions) By the way, where did you buy these noodles from? (jumping like a kid waving his hands in the air.)"

I replied "oh the shop opposite to the road..."

"Why dont you make some for us and the rest of the people around, Ill make some fresh toast. (oh I thought you said noodles was not good for our health..... And have you heard of FRESH toasts????) We will ask others also to join us for dinner... ANAND!!!! ........"

There goes poor Anand.....

The Deadly Doc in 'THE MORNING MANTRA'

2007-05-29T11:17:00.000+05:30

OK... Its that part of the day, when I have just woken up, the birds are chirping, the Morning light seeps into the window. Yawn. Wow, its a Saturday. I pick up my brush, get out of my room, open the fridge to take out some milk and bread and I hear a pleasant 'GOOD MORNING SHAH'... I turn around.. and all my sweet feelings for the saturday go down the drain. Wish I had slept more..... Why did I wake up so early.....

Run for your life... Its The Deadly Doc... and he's got a tea cup in his hand.... That means the end of life for any sane person......

POOF... the electricity goes out.... You missed your favourite Deadly Doc show ... You sure wish You had slept more.... But theres a repeat telecast tomorrow.... So wake up early morning on Sunday to see The Deadly Doc in 'The Morning Mantra'....

ps. Not advisable for People aged under 18....

psychotic proof of existence of 'intellectual psychics'

2007-05-25T12:25:00.000+05:30

For all the people who do not believe me, and thought I was exagerating my guesthouse-mate, the next intellect icon of the world (presently holding the same position inside the appartment), the Psycho Doc., this is a conversation extract on one of those fine nights that were spoilt by yet more intellectual mastrubations..... (I just wish I was present there to witness the big embarassing massacre of The Doc.)

Follow the link
(the author is an IIM student and one of the many victims of intellectual psychics)

UPDATE
I thought this was the best he could do... but theres more..(And like Doc would say.. "You see, Its not very specific, but vast and deep... and all that... only a Guru could understand that...")
Follow the part 2

Enjoy, but pray for me and all that.... (Shit, Ive started to talk like him now...)

HP Pavilion dv9000t

2007-05-24T14:32:00.000+05:30

Okay, I wanted to write this since quite long, but it was today that Rohit actually inspired me to write about this great machine that i have bought.

HP pavilion dv9000t is an entertainment PC from HP that runs on a 2.16 GHz Core 2 Duo processor. I have a 1GB RAM and a dedicated 512 RAM for NVidia GEForce 7600 graphics card. Obviously running on Vista with its Aero theme and managing multiple softwares like Photoshop, Illustrator, and Maya is not a great idea. So I sit back generally with my Windows 98 theme. 17" Widescreen is good, and the colours are bright. It allows me to watch highdef videos on a 1440 x 900 resolution. And also a 10 key numeric keypad is a facility. (click the photo for a larger image.)

Of course the whopping 3 and half Kg machine makes weird 'eep' sounds when you use the highly effective and much needed row of light touchbuttons for controlling media playback, but the sound can be turned off from the BIOS.

The touchpad is nice and accurate, also it comes with turn off button that is amazing when you are working with a mouse. It has powerful Altec Lansing stereo speakers, 1.3 Megapixel webcam, and 2 omni microphones. It comes with a firewire, 4 USB, S-Video out, VGA out, Media card reader (that can be removed to accomodate a small remote control for the machine).

Obviously there is WiFi, Bluetooth integration, but the optical media reader is actually a Double layer DVD Burner with Lightscribe, that should ideally allow me to burn disk labels on the disks, but I havent tried it yet..... The battery life is amazingly 2 and half hours ( it has 8 cell Li-Ion batteries)

Im not regretting not having the rotate screen and touch screen facility offered by the other HP models.

It works perfectly, smoothly. I love the Sleek Smooth look with nice imprint on the body, unlike those boxy flat black boxes. It crawls down smoothly in the huge bag they have given me to give the machine a ride on my shoulder. The first thing I did was see Ratatouille's HD Trailer.

Adobe CS3 launch- Hyderabad

2007-05-23T13:21:00.000+05:30

Well it was Quite a Pleasure to see Adobe Cs3 products at work yesterday, when it was launched here in hyderabad. I was amongst a few who stayed till the end. I must mention this, because it started with their Products that were in the Design (Print) Premium. And the Hall was jam packed. It went on to Web Premium, and the hall seemed like a party on a weekday (which it was), and by the time they reached Video Premium, it seemed like a wedding ceremony with bad dinner.

But lunch was good at Katriya. (why am i digressing..??.).

Ok I Must say the products looked really nicely re-done. Adobe Photoshop with its Smart Filters, new Quick selection tool, Auto Align - Auto Blend tool, looked real smooth. Also its perspective marquee works better. Hey did I mention its integration of 3D format like .3ds, .u3d, .obj ? No more sticking to two dimensions of a file. And hey! its not 3d, its actually 4d. Yes animation is now inside Photoshop. I know it was there before also.... BUT now it comes with a timeline. So import your quicktime .mov into photoshop.... ya!!

I think making texture maps for all 3d models will become much more easier.... save textures and apply them within photoshop. GOOD!!!

Also did i mention the great things Illustraor and flash can do??? ya they communicate like twin sisters now.... make movie clips within illustrator... (Damn neat, but i still dont know why i would want to do that...) anyways with actionscript 3 and flash CS3 you can convert animations into script, (though it doesnt lower your file size as i had anticipated it would) but that means now you can copy your animation and paste it to other tween objects...

With InDesign also they have done major revamps. but what i found exciting was After Effects and Premier. They have a new package called Soundbooth which is a sound editor for VISUAL PEOPLE... now what is that supposed to mean.... ??? anyways.... its nice, but i doubt if it would ever enter CS4.....

OK , As I say all good things about Adobe CS3, I would like to let everyone know, I havent used them. And as a lotof people have been disheartened with the way some of the things work, there is a fair chance that they actually dont work so great.... But i am going to lay my hands on it as soon as I can...

BUT yeah, the lunch was good.........!!