Time For New Year Resolutions

Ooh, I love making new year resolutions! They're so much fun to break. Ok. They are not. I made resolutions on the eve of my birthday and need I say, I hardly ever followed them :(

Now is my second chance. To make another set of resolutions. Except, this time I'm going to follow them. Sincerely. They're imperative for what I've planned for my future. Very important. So here are my resolutions for 2010, not in any order.

1. Write a poem/song: This one figures in my resolutions almost every year. I want to write a song, or at the least, a poem. No. A song. That's easier, right? I'm amazed at how a poet manages to compare silky flowing hair to a broomstick so beautifully. I can just never do it. This year I'm going to work hard at it.
   
2. Stop eating 'unreal food' for lunch and dinner: The only reason this is here is because I just got yelled at for not eating 'real food'. Apparently, maggie and marie biscuits come from a parallel universe and are not 'real'.
3. Learn to find the greater of two given fractions: Ramanujam is avenging me. I know it. I still remember, that evening, as a little girl learning the beauty of halves and one-thirds when I had invented an easy method of 'sorting' fractions in the ascending order. I had ridiculed the famous mathematician for not 'seeing' the simple method of doing it. Of course, the logic made no sense whatsoever (which took me months to realise), but hey, you can't blame a little girl for putting in so much thought into fractions. Well anyway, Ramanujan was offended and he cursed me to never learn working with fractions and till today, fractions bring me to my knees. And I am not going to let Ramanujam win.
4. Learn a new language: And it's called Gibberish. I've come to realise it's very useful for a person planning to pursue MBA. Wish me luck.
5. Learn to lie: I can't lie. Blame it on my birth date. But I need to know how to lie. I've seen the benefits of it. Besides, lying is a creative activity. It needs wit, presence of mind, prudence and creativity. People who can lie make convincing story-tellers. And that is why I need to learn this art form. For animation's sake.

About the year that passed, I don't even remember the resolutions I'd made. I was 21 for a major part of the year and true to the astrology book I'd read somewhere, it definitely was a 'happening' year. Lots of ups, lots of happiness and lots of downs, lots of sadness both at their extremes. New experiences, new insights, it was as if I was given a crash course on life. I hated it, but I managed to weather through it and emerge wiser and confident than ever before. I didn't realise it then, but I needed it for otherwise, I'd have been a lost soul. Now, I know what I want. I know exactly what to do. With the road forward visible with such clarity, I couldn't be more ready to embrace the year ahead.

Wishing all of you a very happy and a prosperous year ahead.

Happy New Year!

Parking Blues

Does car parking send chills down your spine? Fret no more, because here's a solution. I found this article here. It says,

Dumbfounded at the thought of parking your car in a small space? Don't worry, now scientists have developed a mathematical formula that will help motorists park perfectly.

The formula, developed by Prof Blackburn from the University of London's Royal Holloway College, begins by using the radius of a car's turning circle and the distance between the vehicle's front and back wheels. Then, using the length of the car's nose and the width of an adjacent car the formula can tell exactly how big a space needs to be for your car to fit.

By applying this to basic parking guidelines, one can work out exactly when to turn the steering wheel to slide in perfectly, The Telegraph reported.

So next time you find a small parking place, stop the car, get your pens, pencils, erasers, scratchpads, calculators out, use the formula and calculate exactly when and at what angle you need to turn your car, then find a giant protractor to turn the car by exactly that angle and if you've made no mistakes in your calculation, congratulations. You've successfully parked your car! Parking a car could never be easier and so much fun!

The Little Sacrifices She Makes

The incident just happened. It's almost insignificant, but what struck me after that is what is making me write this post. Mum had come home for lunch. She wasn't supposed to come home today, but she had to because she had forgotten some documents that she needed at work. While mum was searching for the documents in a folder, I was arranging lunch in the kitchen. I noticed there was dal and curry enough for just one person (We thought there was enough food for two and so no lunch was cooked). Instinctively, I served all of the dal and a major quantity of the curry along with rice on mum's plate and handed over the plate for mum to relish. As mum began to eat, I went back into the kitchen and served rice and the remaining curry on my plate. Since there was no dal, I picked up curd from the refrigerator to mix with rice. I then went to the dining table where mum was having lunch and sat down. When she saw my plate her jaw dropped. "What?" I asked.
"Why are you eating rice with curd?"
"Because I want to eat rice with curd today"
The pathetic liar that I am, mum knew I was lying.
"Did you serve all of the dal on my plate?", she asked.
"Ummm... yeah"
After a second's silence she said, "I'm supposed to do that for you."

That was when it struck me. God alone knows how many times mum compromised with her things just to make me or my sister or my dad comfortable, and the number of times such small sacrifices go unnoticed. We don't even realise that mums do these things. They do all these things without complaining, ever, without even hinting that they're doing it, without expecting anything in return. And what do we give them in return?

That is why they say, "God cannot be everywhere, that's why he made mothers"

Incredible !ndia

No words. Let the video say it all.



Incredible !ndia.

Pepsodent Bachche Jhoot Nahi Bolte

If it were in my power, I'd have given this ad an award. Why, you ask? It's because of what the ad teaches children - Jo bhi khaao, sach bataao (Whatever you eat, say the truth) - to be truthful.

Children, mischievous as they are, are always scared of their parents for soiling their clothes at school either due to playing on a muddy playground or due to spilling food on the clothes while eating, more so when they eat something that's forbidden, like ice-creams, ice-candies and chocolates.



In this ad, a little boy (named Satya) spills ice-cream on this trousers and is scared about what mummy would say when she sees it.
His friend says, "What's the big deal? It's just ice-cream!"
Satya replies, "What do you know? Germs, Painful teeth! My mummy loves my teeth more than she loves me".
His friend asks, "Satya, don't you brush your teeth?"
Satya says, "I do. Everyday. But... Orange juice!!"
"Orange juice?"
"Yeah, I'll lie to mummy!"
"Satya from Satya's mouth?", the friend says sarcastically.
"If it fell on your pants wouldn't you have lied?", Satya mocks.
"No."
Satya reaches home. Mummy asks, "Whose pant is it?"
He says, "Satya's! Shall I narrate the story?"

Pepsodent Bachche Jhoot Nahi Bolte. Awesome ad!

Arranged Marriage

A discussion with a friend today compelled me to make a post on the highly debated topic. This post is not about love vs. arranged marriage. These are just some thoughts/fears I have about the whole process before you tie the knot, be it love or arranged.

How does an arranged marriage happen? The parents choose the boy/girl. The boy and the girl meet, they talk, talk and talk some more. Finding that their expectations from marriage match, they decide to get married. Is that all? Is the matching of expectations all that is needed to decide to spend the rest of their lives with each other?

Honestly, the concept of an arranged marriage freaks me out! Now let's say, the expectations of both the sides are a 100% match. You now see the personal traits and compatibility of both sides. Obviously, when you meet a new person you are nice to the person. The other person will be nice to you too. How do you really know if the person is good or bad. Ok, nobody is a 'bad' person. So let me put it this way. How do I know we're compatible? Do I say we're compatible when our expectations match and there is a good chemistry between the two? The chemistry is always good when things are good. When situations are adverse, that's where it really matters. Will we be compatible when things go bad? Or are we going to fight over the silliest of matters? I know fights are inevitable when two people live together, but it's ok when the fight is over something that really matters. Fighting over silly matters is a big pain. I hate fighting and arguing, and would do anything to avoid it. When I get married, I really would want to know the not-so-good side of the person. More than the good part, it's the bad part that I want to know. Everybody has got good qualities, which is not something that you need to worry about, and bad qualities, which you cannot take for granted. I need to know if I'll be able to put up with the annoying qualities of the person for the rest of my life. Is it possible to know what these qualities are before one gets married to the person? Or is it going to be a surprise-surprise moment after marriage? Of course, marriage is a life-time commitment and one would (at least, I would) accept all the annoying qualities and accept the person for what he is, unless it is an immoral quality that is totally unacceptable.

... which is why I think, personally, I believe love marriages make more sense. I have nothing against arranged marriages. In fact, my marriage would be an arranged marriage if things are as they are at present (You never know the future ;) ). In a love marriage, you know everything about the person, the good and the bad (and the worse) before you tie the knot. You'd have had fights and you would know how both of you deal with it. When you marry the person, you already know how the rest of your life with that person is going to be. Maybe your expectations are not the same, but the love that you have for the person will let you make small compromises with expectations, and make expectations match. To quote Canara Bank's tagline, "You change for the ones you care". The only downside is the heartache when one side refuses to accept certain qualities and the couple breaks up (before marriage, of course). Heartaches are painful and nobody would want to go through them a second time, but a heartache before marriage is better than a heartache after marriage.

Now that I think about it, love marriages and arranged marriages are not so different except for the two facts that in a love marriage you fall in love before marriage and in an arranged marriage you fall in love after marriage/engagement; in a love marriage you choose your partner and then tell your parents, and in an arranged marriage your parents choose a prospective partner and then let you know. It's the matter of how much of the person you know before you tie the knot that makes all the difference.

Bell Bajaao

It's October and it's Domestic Violence Awareness Month. It's a campaign video by Breakthrough to create awareness about domestic violence which needs to be stopped. I wonder why this video isn't on TV, or is it?

Bell bajao - Ring the bell. 2 from MeltingLAB on Vimeo.

See? You don't have to do something really big to make a difference. Just ring the bell.

Courtesy: A Line of Thought

K.I.S.S.

Keep It Simple, Stupid. I'm a fervent adherent of this principle. And it helps. Specially at times like this. It's been long since I used my creative juices and created something on Photoshop. Preparing for BSchool entrance exams takes up all my time, energy and patience; and I have little time to do anything else, and that includes eating chocolates too. With so little time remaining for preparation, I expect everything to be grasped, understood and remembered quickly. But my brain seems to take its own sweet time to push things into the permanent memory area. That is a huge frustration. So I've now taken up this policy of "Slow and steady, bell the CAT" and I'm putting the one-liner up every where. Since I use my laptop quite often, a wallpaper to this effect was imminent. So I made one, in a jiffy so I wouldn't waste much time on Photoshop, and came up with this. It's simple and stupid. But I like it!

The Making:
Though it looks simple and stupid, it took me about 20 minutes to finish it. First of all, font selection. It took time to find a font that expressed steadiness. After experimenting with about four fonts, I finally chose Poplar Std since it was heavy and sans serif (I have this obsession with sans serif fonts). The next ten minutes went in colour selection, the most dreaded part. I wanted something soothing and neutral. I didn't want the design to command me, or remind me of stuff, like green (would remind me of greenery and nature), pink (too gay :P), red (are you ordering/commanding me?? :-X), yellow (ewww.. why is that even a colour?), orange (fire!!), black (gives me an I'm-too-serious-to-think-about-colours, unenthusiastic feeling). I even tried chocolate brown, but that would again make me want to go out and buy a big bar of Dairy Milk Roast Almond :( My only option, and my favourite option, remaining was blue! No colour soothes me like blue does. It does remind me of the oceans sometimes, but in a pleasant, calm and serene way. So blue it was. After experimenting with shades of blue for about 2 minutes, colours were finalised. Then came the placement of the text. I had originally visualised the text to span the entire screen, but when I did that I felt as if the words were screaming at me. Besides, my eyes would have to span the entire screen screen, left to right, to read the text (Yes, I'm that lazy, that I don't even want to move my eyeballs :P). So I decided against it and kept it simple, stupid that would be in an aesthetic postion with respect to the four temporary icons on my desktop (For those who don't know, I usually NEVER have any icons on my desktop).

Logo-ish

This one has been in file from a very long time. Er... did I already post this? Well, anyway, here's the story of how this happened. This was a brainchild of boredom (so is this post :P). I was experimenting with colour combinations on Photoshop. I chose four nice colours, made four strips of them and placed them one above the other. Done. Now what? I'm still bored. I start clicking random buttons on the screen, and suddenly see the little used tool, Polar co-ordinates in the Distort filter. I used the Rectangular-to-Polar feature and the colour strips changed shape! The result looked nice, as if someone had dipped fingers in paint and grazed them against the screen. I now wanted to do more and make it personal. So I looked for a suitably styled "M" that went well with the design and finished it! I now use this picture as my Windows login picture.

P. S. If you're here to comment on how the 'n' looks like a 'd' and spells "Mad", shoo!

P. P. S. If you're reading this on Facebook, please please go here to comment. Blogger is permanent, Facebook is not. I love your comments and would like them to be in a permanent place. Thank you for commenting :)

Sony Ericsson K550i vs. Nokia E63

I recently bought a "smartphone", a Nokia E63 for which I left a Sony Ericsson K550i. And honestly, my K550i seems smarter than my E63. Not that the E63 is a bad phone, no way. It's just that Nokia E63 doesn't show its smartness in conspicuous ways. The K550i was just a normal phone with normal features, yet it had some features I wish were in my new phone. I love the features of E63, but when it comes to ease of access and the user interface it is no match to Sony Ericsson. If Nokia learnt looking at phones from Sony Ericsson, without doubt they would be one of the best mobile phone manufacturers in the world.

Here's what, I think, Nokia should learn from Sony Ericsson:
Smartness - When a person who's not in my contacts messages me, I see his/her number in the From field. After I enter the person into my contacts, the number doesn't change to the name of the new contact! This is really annoying after using K550i where the name appeared in every place the number had been there! Nokia, where is your smartness?

One-touch buttons - I could do more on my K550i without the one-touch buttons than I can do with the E63. While E63 has specialised customisable one-touch buttons, I could use the up, down, left and right buttons on the K550i as one-touch buttons that I could customise. There was a button on the right where I could list any number of frequently used applications for easy access. I agree, the home screen on the E63 has this option too, but I can list only six applications (nine, if you include the long-press feature of the one-touch buttons). If I list the rest of the applications on the second homescreen, the switching between the homescreens takes longer than my limit of patience with electronic gadgets. There was another button on the K550i that showed me a list of all open applications that I could switch between. I think the feature is there on the E63 too, but what are the buttons for it? Anyone?

Organisation of the menu - I'm sure anybody who has used Sony Ericsson would agree with me on this. Sony Ericsson always has only nine menu items within which all features are embedded. Nokia has a very cluttered and confusing menu. It takes really long to get used to, and most people who have little patience never go through the entire menu. It looks like in an attempt to organise all the features they ended up over-organising. I just wish my E63 had a menu like the K550i where I didn't have to scroll down every time for the rest of the menu.

The T9 dictionary text predictions - This I can never get over. The K550i seemed to know exactly what I was going to say. If it offered me the wrong word and I hit a backspace, it immediately offered me the next most likely word I would use which, 99% of the time, turned out to be right! It offered me the list of words in a drop-down box from which I could choose the appropriate word. Though with the E63 I no longer need word predictions what with the qwerty keyboard, the text prediction feature on K550i was the best! I truly miss it.

Mark Several feature - This feature on the E63 frustrates me a little. When I need to select a few items in a list, I have to select individual items, open its menu and then mark each one of them, while in the K550i the Mark Several option would only require 'checkmark'ing the required little boxes that appeared at the bottom-right corner of the all the items on selecting Mark Several. This, I think, is a feature that Nokia should really work on. Nokia, please introduce a Mark Several concept in the phone.

Delivery Reports - A whole section for delivery reports? Isn't that a little bit of an overkill? E63 lists delivery reports in a separate section! In the K550i, a successful message delivery would be indicated by a tick mark next to the message in sent items. An undelivered message wouldn't have the tick mark. Sony Ericsson kept the concept of delivery reports really simple.

Well, there are a few more but these are the main features that I wish were different in Nokia. If you're asking me why I didn't buy another Sony Ericsson phone when I have so many complaints against Nokia, blame the price. A Sony Ericsson phone with the same features as an E63 would be at least 50% more expensive. If it weren't for the price, I'd have bought another Sony Ericsson phone without a second thought. That doesn't mean I like my E63 any lesser. I still love it! E63 rocks! :D

I don't know what to do online

Internet has revolutionalised the world. It has changed the way people live. In India, however, it does not seem to have influenced the lives of people in a very big way. Yes, people do use the internet to keep in touch with family and friends; however their usage of the internet stops there. I wonder why.

Ever since I was introduced to it at 12 years of age, the internet has never failed to fascinate me. It first started with exchanging emails with my cousin. I then got introduced to the ever-green search engine google.com, and ever since then, there was no looking back. And that is the reason I fail to understand why the internet hasn't intrigued more than half the population in our country. You might say half of them cannot afford it or don't have access. My point is in purview of the people who can afford it and have access to it.

In college, everytime there was an assignment to find out information from the internet, most people groaned. Well, that's probably because it meant more "studying". Most people I know have email accounts they never use. They hardly ever log in to social networking sites. When asked why they don't access the internet often, they say they don't know what to do online! How could they not know what to do online? I could spend hours browsing, reading and discussing online. There is no dearth of things to do online! After checking my inbox, replying to emails, reading online newspapers and feeds on my feed reader, reading blogs, watching videos, appreciating art on smashingmagazine.com and I still have time to stay online, I google-search questions that haunt my mind, or just play silly games on facebook or tickle.com. I never run out of things to do online, and people say they don't know what to do!

I find it incredibly amazing that I can share the silliest of thoughts on twitter.com and have interesting conversations on them. It's amazing how I can stay abreast with the latest information to the minute, and people say they find it boring and don't know what to do online! How is this possible?

P.S. If you are reading this, you probably are among the small percentage of people who use the internet for more than just keeping in touch. I would be glad to know how you spend your time online.

[3rd Nov 2010] Things  to do online:
Here's a list of interesting websites that maybe you could check out. Just a few to get you started (in case you're here because you really want to know what you could do online)

• If you've got a lot of digital photos on your computer, maybe you could try ShapeCollage that lets you make picture collages in different shapes.
• If you want to learn something new you could try SoYouWanna.com - a website that tells you how to paint your room, how to fake an appreciation for art, how to survive in a Brazilian jungle, how to publish a book, how to be a model, or maybe even how to be productive online... just about anything for anyone.
• New to the internet, and want to know all the things you've missed? Check these top 35 internet memes of the last 15 years.
• There's even a website that says it is dedicated to the bored and unemployed (not that you are), but this site's got interesting entertaining stuff. It's called Fork Party. I like checking the Fail section for laughs.
• If you like TV (or fiction - be it watching or reading), there's TV tropes. This website, I must warn you, can be addictive.
• If you like art, or even if you want to look at all the beautiful art that people are coming up with, you could try Paintings I Love or Deviant Art.
• And then there are the more popular websites like TechCrunch, Mashable for all the technology and gadget news, YouTube and Vimeo for videos, Flickr for photography. There are websites for just about anything one could be interested in. Someone I know learns to cook new recipes through YouTube.
• And I absolutely love the Make magazine. The DIY stuff is awesome.
• And finally, animation. If you're into it go to LineBoil.

These are just a few websites that I like (I'm not associated with any of these websites). But you could really find anything you want on the internet. Have you tried Postcrossing (where you can trade postcards from your country with someone else from another country)?

There is so much you can do and learn online. I hope I've helped you get started. Happy browsing. And also, be careful.

Artwork with Custom Brushes

Photoshop assignment: To create a custom brush and come up with artwork using the brush you just defined. I made five, and I'm posting two of them here. The other three don't warrant any consideration for they are below-average pieces of work.

Beware of Twitter!

There are a million websites out there glorifying Twitter for all the
good that it is doing to the world, so much so that Twitter is being
recommended for the Nobel Peace prize! Twitter is a great site, no
doubt; I myself am totally addicted to Twitter. Twitter has given me
some amazing friends and memories I'll never forget, but a recent
incident opened my eyes to how my addiction to Twitter was having a
negative effect on me.

Here's what happened the other day- I was sitting with my friends in
the lounge area outside the classroom discussing the books we'd picked
to write a review on, as an assignment to be submitted two days later.
Some of my friends had picked Who Moved My Cheese. I'd picked Thinking
About Thinking by K. R. Ravi (an interesting read, btw) and had also
bought Who Moved My Cheese for a bit of light reading. On learning
this, one of my friends said "I have the book. You could've borrowed
it from me. Why did you buy the book?" I replied casually in my
oh-so-enthusiastic tone, "I bought it because I wanted to own it!"
Another friend immediately remarked, "Manasa's replies are so short
and to the point!" There. It struck me. I realised.. that lately I've
been talk-tweeting. Everything I said was equivalent to a tweet, less
than 140 characters! I realised what Twitter had done to me. I'd
forgotten to be elaborate. I'd forgotten that my friends were
interested in details. I'd forgotten that they wanted to know what my
thoughts were. I'd forgotten that they wanted to know every silly
detail. That was when I'd decided that this was it. Twitter was not
going to take over my life this way. Twitter was not going to change
me. Twitter was not going to ruin my almost non-existent communication
skills. So I'd decided to draw the line and limit my access to Twitter
until my brain reverted back to normal-state. I'm just glad that
realisation dawned on me and now I'm back to normal! :D

So people, beware! Twitter has its bad side too.

--
Sent from Gmail for mobile | mobile.google.com

Gems

I'm finally done with engineering, and my, what a journey it has been. These four years saw a substantial transformation in me. It has changed me from a not-so-confident, not-so-friendly, big-time nerd to a confident, friendly, carefree person. These four years have taught me many lessons of life. It has taught me what friendship really means, thanks to the amazing friends I've made. They've accepted me for me, and have been with me through thick and thin. It's only been a few days since I haven't seen them but I'm already missing them so much.

Here's what I've learnt from the precious gems I've found here:

Amritha - The person who has irritated me the most. The person I fought with the most (after my sister). Our opinions and interests are so completely different, so totally against each other, but there was never a day when we argued about them. My partner in crime. My Siamese twin. She's been there for me all through. She has this uncanny ability to sense when I'm in need of moral support. My best friend.

Deepa - The only person I've met who has the same opinions as I do. People call her a kid, probably because she looks like one, but wait until you are in need of advice. When it comes to seeking advice, she was the person I always went to. She's the one who educated me about boys and their way of thinking :P When it comes to pulling my leg, she has no equal. She's the reason I lost my nerdy qualities for good. She taught me how to enjoy life. She taught me to let go. My best friend. Amritha, Deepa and me were inseparable and were called 'the trio' of the class.

Rashmita - If there's one person who literally took care of me like a mother, that's her. She has this talent of making her point with her sarcastic but endearing sense of humour. It's from her I learnt the importance and how-to of socialising; the learning is still on. If I do have a sense of humour, then all the credit goes to this girl.

Crystal - The defintion of "crazy". Roommate of only six months, a friend from three years. We've had amazing discussions on almost every topic we could think of -- life - the pleasures and pain, religion, world, cultures, arts, music, books, food, science, theatre, people, history, the universe, boys, crushes, love, marriage, dreams, internet, blogging, ghosts, family, friends, movies, the future, secret desires, food, clothes, make-up :P the list will never end. It's from her I've learnt to do what I believe in. It's from her I've learnt that it's ok to be a little crazy and weird.

Sonia - A baby in its true sense. Just like how babies don't care what you think and do things they feel like, Sony is this sweet little 20 year old baby. If someone has to learn caring and sharing, then it has to learnt from Sony.

Bhavna - She'll do anything for her friends. She made me win a silly bet at the cost of her falling sick, only because she wanted her friend to win it. She treats my vices as virtues. I've learnt from her what is to believe in yourself, to believe that nothing is impossible.

Maitreyi - I've realised from her how nice it is to be able to talk in your mothertongue. I'm a little jealous of her in this regard. Listening to her talk in Telugu (unfortunately, we've never conversed in Telugu) I've realised how much I loved and missed talking in my mothertongue.

Arsheed - The guy who's oblivious to the fact that he was responsible to get me out of my shell. We've never had major conversations, but the little thoughtful things he's done for me will never be forgotten. Showed me how little things can make a big difference.

Gowtham - I don't know how and why we're friends. I've never fought with any other guy like I've fought with him. He has irritated me to wit's end, but at the end of the day he's been there for me. He has made me realise what I expect from life and also, what I don't want in life.

Artwork goes digital

My 21st birthday gift from my parents was the best ever! It was a USB tablet and from then on it was bye bye to artwork on a book. My artwork went digital. Though drawing and painting digitally has lot many advantages over the conventional style, it is far more challenging to draw and paint. It's not very easy, requires a hell lot of patience and perseverance to come up with a decent work of art.

I suck at digital painting (you'll see very soon) and can manage to come up with a decent outline of a picture. My first love when it comes to drawing is the human form. So the day I had enough time to spend some quality time with my tablet, the first thing I found was fashion magazine. I opened it and looked for pictures to draw. I drew many out of which a few are being posted here.

The hair and the eyes are the hardest thing to paint. I suck at both. I tried painting one and you yourself can be witness to how much I suck at it. I tried the hair. They look like strings attached to the head. So I didn't bother to try the eyes. The others are just outlines for me to paint on, but for now that's more than enough :P

Muses

I watched the movie Hercules a few months ago, and I loved the animation, the look of the characters and the colour combination used. A book and a pencil immediately appear on the table and I spent hours appreciating and drawing the Muses (and their expressions) -

Baby HerculesBaby Pegasus

Artwork - Animals

I drew these from a book, though animation courses require you to be able to draw looking at animals from real-life.

Self Portrait

A year ago, before placements could happen, I was thinking of alternative courses to do if I didn't get placed, out of which animation was one of them. What rubbish! That's a lie. Animation was the only thing on my mind. I so badly wanted to get into animation, that I started looking at animation courses and degrees all over the world. I read the pre-requisites to join an animation course, and one of the colleges in the USA (Ringling Institute, if I remember right) asked for a self-portrait. Not that I would join the college, but the pre-requisite sounds like a very professional thing to do. I thought that was something I should be able to do after the course, not before. It almost sounded like an impossible thing for me. Then came the night when I decided that I'd do it. I opened a notebook at 11:30 p.m. and with a mirror in front of me I started sketching. At around 1 a.m. I came up with this.
Of course, it doesn't completely look like me (it was my first attempt, after all, at drawing a portrait from real-life), but a semblance of me exists. The most notable flaws are the eyes (they're too large.. someone even called them frog eyes :P), and the expression (that wasn't the expression I had that night :P). The face should've been a little longer too. All in all, I was very happy with the result, and was confident that I'd make it through the admission process had I sent in my artwork.

The Last Layout

This is probably the last timetable layout of my life, unless of course I join a course with classes from 9 to 5. This is the last for my engineering course though.

Inspired by all the cool typography I've been seeing on websites, banners, magazines and design websites.