Kshiraj Telang

The following graphic is a concept drawing for an upcoming short film by my very talented and close pal, Shrey Tatke. Can't provide further details, but I can guarantee, it will posses a very beautiful storytelling, and I shall share it soon after he makes it available for distribution.

This very quick drawing was made when I was attending my father in ICU at Jabalpur Hospital where he was hospitalized due to a severe attack of Pneumonia. I am thankful to Dr. Behrani and everyone else from the hospital unit, for their efforts helped my dad survive such a critical condition. I dedicate this drawing as a tribute to those kind people from the hospital. I am also grateful to everyone from friends and family who had their wishes and support for us.

Kindly ignore the drawing quality... my objective of making this and the environment around me was different then.

My idea of date is slightly different. I choose to shop, that too of stuffs which interests me. ARR music keeps playing whenever possible. And thus the maximum amount of the time gets spent in purchasing DVDs for myself, searching books and exploring gadgets. My dearie isn't as crazy as me about them. Even then she is always smiling and involving in everything I do. At the end of the tiring day, when we sit together, I have all my time employed at unpacking DVD covers and flipping books. But while I do that, there is someone sweetly waiting with a spoon to take care of my appetite.

In the Foreword of the book 'Burton on Burton', Johnny Depp mentions about how he got the opportunity to play Edward in Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands. The first sight of Tim is described by him as pale, frail-looking, sad-eyed man with hair that expressed much more than last night's pillow struggle. The first thing he thought was, 'Get some sleep.' Well, that's Tim Burton. Tim as a director has always fascinated me with his artistically directed genius works like Corpse Bride, Edward Scissorhands, Sleepy Hollow and many more. His recent movie, Sweeney Tood : The Demon barber of Fleet Street drove me crazy. Here's a small piece of tribute to the legendary work done on Sweeney Todd:

Last week I managed to find the newly launched toys from the Storm Hawks series. Out of variety of character selections available, I chose to get Dark Ace. He's my favourite character from the series. Even after being an arch villain to Storm Hawks, I am addicted to him because of his ruthless warrior nature, loyalty to Master Cyclonis and no compromise attitude. Although not enabled with much articulations, I liked the toy's closeness to the Dark Ace we see on television. The proportions are brought just identical. Play time!

The time when I was ordering Surf's Up : The Art and Making of a true story, I was trying to add one more book in the order merely to complete it. I was skeptical about the impression it would make as compared to the highly anticipated Pixar Art Books I ordered at the same time. But I was proved wrong after it was in my hand and I was done with flipping just first few pages. This book is full of concept art, sketches, 3d WIP imagery and movie stills.

Insight Editions, the publisher has included some great collectibles along with the artworks within the book. They come as postcards, stickers, a poster, supplementary thin booklets and a DVD which exclusively speaks about the process and journey experienced while creating waves for the animation. So not just art students and mature audience, but even little kids will go crazy as they notice those colorful goodies.

There is ample amount of character designs of Penguin, along with environmental concepts of the island and color keys of various sequences from the film. We also get to see extracts from the screenplay here and there, which makes the book travel along with the film. They have covered art of almost every visual element from the competition beach. The color spreads on each page is as fresh as a holiday on a similar island, as they illustrate the layouts of the beach. There is also a sneak at the character creation phase where we get to see phases from concept sketches to 3d models. I have become a big fan of Sylvain Deboissy, the Character Designer of the film after I was hugely impressed by his art found in the book. While Cody our surfer penguin covers the text from the book, there are also comments from Director, Producer and Animation Supervisors sharing their experiences.

At the ending pages there are a bunch of photographs of the crew's time at beach and VO recording sessions. On an whole, a must have book for everyone be it into or outside animation.