New Posters

I painted these two posters after coming here..one was inspired by a shell of a snail I found while wandering around the Humber trail behind my house..! The other one..I don't know why!

From my Sketchbook...

Some of my recent sketches and scribles..

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An unlikely poet..

I was never interested in poetry! To me,it was something far removed from the world we live and breathe in.We live in a world predominantly prose-like.Facts,figures,objects,lights,sounds,colors all being constantly narrated in front of our senses.Our senses are like the the laser beam in a CD player(this is the analogy what I can think of in my era!),constantly reading this seamless narration! I was even against any sort of lyricism in a narration! Why be so 'touchy-feely' about the hard rock reality?- this was my perception about poetry or anything poetic or lyrical until I read somewhere that poetry is about looking into things more realistically than they seems to appear! It's like tearing down the outwardly cover of so called reality and dissect it out of utter passion, contemplate the bits and pieces with immense sensitivity!
I understood but still wasn't quite interested in writing some.There is a very popular saying in our culture that a Bengali man/woman must have written a line or two in some point of his/her life!But I was still a virgin in this matter!Then came another realisation that I cannot write a poem but feel it.You sort of, conceive it without even knowing about it and then 'vomit' it pathetically because you cannot even hold it inside you.How disgusting! And needless to say ,these disgusting incidents would happen to me several times, when i found I cant help but write it down! This immense creative force made me write some poems,which stink or smell.They are written in some of my most emotionally fragile or wild situations,both negative and positive.Just sharing with you people!


Untitled 2

Umber moon,
Soothing light
Drenches your face...soul...you...
I call it love.
Searing light of sun
Scorching your back...
Burns your skin...
You call it love.

Untitled

The drop of water.
It was falling. And falling...
As it used to be falling.
For thousands, thousands of years.
Ceaselessly.
The same sight. Probably boring.

I know it has become heavier by now.
Heavy from memories of so many years...
So many...
Probably from the time of
The first man on earth.
It started falling...
When he was born.
It was coming down...
In waged wars
In massacre of millions
In deception
In treachery
Suppressed pain, in gobbled cry,
It embraced all. Dissolved all.
During the first dawn of peace
Soldiers, with faces blackened with smoke
Yet so radiating.
On the way to home.
In the madness of love.
Or the first sight of food.

Now the drop is heavy.
Tired…
How long it will have to fall?
With a never quenched thirst...
To embrace earth.
And it is falling still…
“Ma! You are crying?”



Minutes to Full Moon(Poonam)

A tug of war..
97C
40C
0C
-10C
I am dead
-35C
-40C
Freezing..
Frozen are my
Lungs, heart, eyes
Brain, emotions, desires,
Wrath
My love..
-50C
-52C
Burn me
Burn me like fagots,
I may get some warmth.
Oh! My god!
I can't
I can't
I can't.

More Graphic works of mine..

Some of the graphic works that I have done..
I love to design CD covers.While designing these covers i tried t o come up with some new ideas.The titles are all fictitious.So Ihad that freed om to choose a title and then work on the visuals..medium was poster colour. Conceptually I tried different things.I tried ti break the image of those bands or artist which are reflected usually on their original album covers. There are other designs too.




I designed some hoarding ads. Though they were class assignments.It was a design for a mobile company advertising their special offer on the eve of valentines day. I avoided the usual cliche approach and tried to make more lyrical.Juxtaposing two very different and sometimes conflicting objects and extracting a meaning which surpasses the metaphor of the both forms with a lyrical twist was my goal. I was watching german post war era installations pretty much at that time.It had an impact.And apart from this I once did some poster designs for a fashion garments company which was going to show their collection in PRET E PORTER,PARIS. I did some initial designs before actually creating those poster.Here is on of my favorites from them. The client also liked it but it was not accepted because they wanted to keep the image of the garment untouched.

This year's gifts from Gobelins!!

Inka Bola



Un tour de manège

A very sensitive work from french school of animation Gobelins!

I really likes this one..french guys are really exploring new horizons! Kudos..!!

New MTV animation from Universal Everything!

An awesome job from animation farm Universal Everything..just have a look.U can get some more cool stuff in their site!

MTV International / Mister Furry from Universal Everything on Vimeo.

Good Korean animation

I could'nt help uploading this awesome animated short ..wonderful texturing and character animation..

Works I did before coming here..

The painting i did before coming here in Canada.The poster was done in my final year in college. Lot of things influenced me while doing it. It was sort of an amalgamation of what I learned..

Outdoor drawings

Here is some of my other works.I trying to post most of my significant works..just have a look..
These are all outdoor studies.It was real fun..Not only from the point of view of reaching the level of perfection at this subject but also from a point of view, more abstract! This is the only medium of creating art that gave me the chance to come in direct contact with people around me,the environment they live in. It gave me an insight into our society.Into the daily chores of common people,how they live ,how they laugh and cry! Its an awesome experience!
What I used to do is first decide in the weekend where to go! There are plenty of places worth sketching.I used to single out any one or just get out of home and set out for any place that came to mind at random! Kind of quest for the unknown! And generally the later was more exciting because you never know what was there in store for you! And after reaching there I usually looked for a suitable place to sit and sketch and then start another journey on paper with pencil.I also used water colour to get the shadow and tone of the picture. Sometimes I used black Chinese ink.
Loads of memories are attached to these sketches! Each art work has a separate story with it! Its really amazing in terms of how much experience I gathered during these sketching sessions!I not only captured what is in front me,my subject and what is on the paper but also in my mind the happenings around me etched an impression.It developed in me,sort of a reflective approach toward human behaviour! I remember during a similar session when I was busy sketching a old structure in front of me, an young man from a near by tea stall (by the way,in India we have lots of street side stalls of tea vendors.they prepare tea and breakfast also.But not like fast food chains in Canada or N.America.They are smaller and more close-to-heart in approach.Something like little hot dog stalls in downtown.) was very happy that he was going to his home at some village of different state in vacation.To my surprise he broke into an impromptu song and jig on the street in joy.And every time these moments served as a breather to me after hours of exhaustion of sketching ( I used to sketch on a spot for almost a whole day) .

I always made sure that I didn't sketch with blind eye to the surroundings.So everything around me had an impact on me.

Header image changed ..

Hi all,
I changed my header image.The photography was done by me.It was CN tower at night from a car.

When Disney came to him with a hefty billion-dollar contract offer of working and directing movies for them,Bill Plympton was overwhelmed.The reason was ,quite presumably, more than the pool of money! " I love Disney,I grew up watching Disney cartoons", he was saying,like millions of mesmerised others. But the cost was too high for him too.Each and every art work that he would create would be copyrighted by Disney."What if I tell somebody some jokes?", Bill himself answered it with a wry smile- that too would be the property of Disney! And that was enough for this OSCAR nominated, independent ,'sleazy'-as he prefers to call his cartoons- Oregon born animator not to fall for this alluring 'rendezvous'! We,the little bugs of animation world might wonder what would have happened if the two completely different institutions of animation world-Disney and 'Bill Plympton' ,with an yawning gap between them-came together! But from Bill it was a big 'No'!
Although he is an independent animator,Bill Plympton is a grim jawed executioner when it comes to making aesthetic and technical decisions in his films.He singles out every reason that makes his film expensive and hard to sell. According to him a short film has to be 'short',it has to be 'funny' to watch and it has to be 'cheap' to produce because it has to sell. The " Plympton's Dogma"- as he terms it! And to achieve this he uses several techniques.He shows his films to people before releasing them and if some of the parts aren't quite impressive to the viewer, chances are there that he would probably remove that gag from his scenes. Very conflicting,as it may appear for a path breaking animator like Bill Plympton,but there is no room for self indulgence in his process of film making! Ne needs money to make the next film-one of many compromising things that an independent film maker has to suffer from. On the other hand he denies the fact that an animation film has to be very wishy-washy and full of pretty images.He defies the so called animation world's secret that animation is for kids and therefore there should be animation for adults.So they also should have scenes with suppressed libido, depiction of sex,violence and blood spilling and that too with an overwhelming sublimity.Even I was perplexed when I first saw his film "Guard Dog".His latest film 'Idiots and Angels' has all of these classic Bill Plympton visual imageries.Then he also admits that he doesn't always create gory films.His film 'The Fan and The Flower' is about a love between a ceiling fan and a flower,created with beautiful compositions in black and white in every frame.He says he loves shadows and loves to play with it. I think, the 'shadow' in his films is sometimes psychological too.
As far as his technique is concerned,he prefers to animate with as little frames as possible.For example he would generally use 3 frames for a side to side hop of his 'dog' (he showed that to us by drawing on paper). As we notice,colors that he uses are pretty subdued and subtle.He tries to keep it 'earthy'.Before start animating he goes through some pencil test of his shots.He fixes the camera angle,decides what color should it be and also tweaks the animation.

We were almost at the end of his lecture the 3rd floor lounge of Starz Animation studio.There were some exhibits- his sketches and books of illustration.They were for sale also. He earns money from selling these materials and merchandise too.And who doesn't know the cliche- 'Money matters'!

Picture Courtesy: Simon Chang of Starz Animation

Posters and thoughts

I have always been drawn to the playfulness and flexibility of graphical way of expression.Being a graphic designer is so much fun! I regard it as my voice..a very robust and loud! I have always been a big fan of Andy Warhol. Though I did not get influenced by him. Rather his dynamic nature of designs and other works attracted me a lot! Since I love to design posters..I decided to put up some of them here.Have a look.Interestingly enough,each of these posters are created in different phases of influences by various artists and theoreticians during my growing up days as an art student!

They are painted in acrylic on board. During time I was working with this poster on the film 'Born Into Brothels',I was amazed by the style of Van Gogh.His use of impasto ,the riot of color and its expressionistic value literally drove me crazy!! I had to do something with that! So I started this one..I applied contrasting colors making them as much as unsettling ! The whole idea came from a painting of mine.What I did in this poster is to break the two images!
The other one on the left was created during a different phase! Sexuality and eroticism was always my interest as subjects. inspired by my professor and mentor Mr.Rebanto Goswami,I started going through a new form of tribal art which was unknown to me- Makonde art of East Africa.I was immediately enthralled by the motifs used in those painting.The crude forms are so abstract and 'modern' that I was blown away! It was very surprising that how
artists of so called civilised societies took so long to reach this level of abstraction where these people were romping around so effortlessly! It was at that time this design came to me as a scribble.The image here is actually the scanned scribble touched with Photoshop.The forms used here is mostly inspired by 'Makonde' motifs. The next one is pretty much a political poster made
during a very troubled
time.A very aggressive
government and revolting
farmers defying the murky
solution proposed by the people
in power! And we,the young artists
was in between troubled with questions,confusions piled up inside us! I wanted to express what I felt.

My Animation Demoreel 2009

This is the end result of 8 months of scratching! There are loads of things here to develop.Please suggest anything that needs to be improved..

Some news to hop in excitement!

Well guys,things are getting better aand betteer for me..!! We met Sir Elton John in our studio on 26th May.He came with the Premier of Ontario to announce a special grant made by the government of Canada and about the upcoming film that he produced- 'Gnomeo and Juliet' which is animated in Starz! This is a once in a lifetime experience..getting to see a living legend soo closely!..and by the way surprise does not end here! We are expecting Bill Plympton the OSCAR winning animator on 18th June,to come and give a lecture to us..hmm..never expected this much!

My first day in Starz Animation Studio

Now when I am writing this post we already have worked for four days in Starz.And still I feel that I am getting too much surprises for my little brain to handle.Life was never so exciting before.
Well,..to start from the beginning,I and six more students were selected from Seneca College this year to be a part of an internship program in Starz Animation Studio in downtown Toronto.And it started from 19th May and already it has started casting its spell on us.Surrounded by some of the finest Canadian animators and artists we feel blessed.
Our first day in Starz started with an obvious shaky feeling of "whats gonna happen?", mingled with an excitement of "yeahh..we are at Starz!!".We were invited to sit in an executive board meeting room kinda place! We were nervous! Then came our production manager Graham Moloy and our short film director Rob Silvestri,animation department head Dave Bass and other directors from respective departments. We had a introduction session answering three 'very very' personal questions..to have a better look at each others personalities! They are-
Whats my name?
Whats my favourite Ice Cream?(waaat...!!??)
and What is my favourite movie? hmmm...
Well by now three big plates full of delicious fruits,bagels n butter and muffins were in front of us to make things even better!Then we were shown our work desks with our names stuck on them!After that we had a tour of the whole studio..! About how things get done! We were pretty amazed to see how organized the work flow is! We had a clear idea of production pipeline.
We got introduced to various animators.And at this time I saw the celebrated Canadian animators Charlie Bonifacio,the acclaimed animator of several Disney movies(including the Mushu in Mulaan).I was bowled over by the fact that he was actually working behind me..(yeahh,..and still i see him everyday behind me busy drawing story board in his cool 'cintiq'!).Anyway, after all this..to make the day more memorable Graham gave us a treat during afternoon launch in a nice road-side sunny restaurant.In short this the experience of the first day..but perhaps there were more that got our attention which probably skipping my memory,but that's enough to say "Im lovin it!".Isn't it guys?

From college days...

To start with, I thought to put some of my previous works back in India. Here they are!

These sketches were mostly done on the railway station platforms of Calcutta (presently Kolkata). There is a parallel life runs on the streets,platforms of India. While sketching the figures of people one rewarding experience was getting a glimpse of this dusty, poverty stricken yet so lively life. Life on the railway platforms of Calcutta means ,hundreds of thousands of passengers running madly to catch a train from one platform to another! And under the shadows of this bustling life there are porters, under aged drug addicts,eunuchs,homeless vagabonds and many many more people who have nowhere to go! They sleep,wander,eat,make love and die there..on the platforms!

And in between these two contrasting lives we,the students from various art colleges struggling our way to be artists, used to gather and sketch 'figures'..relentlessly! With its virtually huge stock of characters,the station always amazed me!

Overture

I once read in a journal that research shows that the people who write diaries recording day to day affairs,tend to be suicidal! I don't know what leads them to this conclusion or what make this special group of people trying to perpetuate the bits and pieces of their mundane lives in the white pages of closely held diaries, so near to death! But that information made me apprehensive towards the thought of writing one. Well,I was in my early teens at that time! So you can easily imagine how matured i was! Anyway, in later times I often had an idea of writing down my course of thoughts,my opinions and my reflections about what I do- designing and animation.Though I was never courageous enough to put them in a blog in front of everyone. But somehow the thought of placing my works and ideas in a platform and getting opinions of fellow coleagues,constantly challenging or enriching mine was at the same time overpowering and luring to me!So I am here!

So do give me suggestions..things that should be improved,critiques of my work,thoughts!