Some good news, and some back news.

My back can't take it anymore! I've been doing more drawing than I've ever done in my life! Every day, by the time I finish life drawing, I have this severe pain at the bottom of my neck and back. Its not really a muscle pain I think... it's the joints. (And now because I used the word joints, this page will be flooded with drug addicts and junkies soon as it starts to show up in google search results for 'buy cheap joints' or something..) So I've been taking Ibuprofen. Yeah, the same thing that is said in the beginning of the song 'Zinda Hoon Main'.

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I remember back when I was in akola, Tauji would always insist sleeping on the floor if he had back troubles. I kinda have had the same experience lately, as I have been sleeping on the floor too. I cuddle up inside a sleeping bag and its like going camping. LOL... joking. Its not NEARLY anything like going camping..But after the nights that I sleep on the floor, my back doesn't get that tired so easily. On the plus side, the room is cleaner because I vacuum the carpet more often. hehe.

I made bhindi again today, but not the kind I always made. I made what mom called 'pyaaz waali bhindi.' Its cut in flower shapped pieces and cooked with onions to give a different flavour. While I was cooking it, Jon came and asked, what is that? I said 'Okra' He said, "Isn't it like, stringy?" I said, Oh, I cut it differently this time. Its a different preparation. I was so stuffed after the dinner that I was getting really sleepy. I didn't even clean up.

As I was sleeping in my nice, cozy, warm bag, I woke up at around 4 in the morning. Damn!! I was feeling kinda thirsty; luckily, I had a jug of cold water in my room . I had some water and tried going back to sleep, but I couldn't. My body was totally weary, but my brain was not. My feet and back were still recovering and my eyes were burning! After waiting for a couple more minutes for the sandman to come my way, I got up, and got to work!

I worked on my second hand drawing and ended up with a pretty good one. The proportions of a couple fingers looked off but I fixed that. If more modifications need to be made, I will just trace over the drawing. Then I started to work on storyboard... And I just want to say, "Drawing storyboard 'large' SUCKS!" Its just not something I'm into. Another good news, my hand sculpture on DA got 6 faves in just one day! yippe!

iphoto nuiances

I was not very sure how to start this blog entry So I'm just gonna link you guys to this post where I discussed the problem with leopard and jpegs managed with lightroom. Yesterday, I was so happy that I could finally use iphoto now, because in the 10.5.2 update of leopard, Apple finally fixed the aforementioned problem.

So I started to import all my photos into iphoto, but I had set the preferences to keep the files in their original location. This way, My internal hard drive will not be filled up with stuff, and I would get better speeds when doing other stuff while using iphoto. But just a few minutes ago, I noticed that the iphoto library in pictures folder was using up 362 MB! This was not acceptable, and I decided to go digging.

I opened the container, by right clicking on the library and selecting 'show package contents'. I sorted by file size, and in view options, checked 'calculate all sizes'. And I was pointed in the right direction. There's a folder called modified that is occupying 174 MB. It contains many random pictures from the albums. I say random because I haven't even touched a lot of the photos (In iPhoto that is). I wonder why its doing that. If someone has any idea, please let me know.

The next folder using up a lot of space is the data folder. I guess this is a necessary evil. It has all the pictures, in small thumbnail sizes. Maybe this is what facilitates the quick skimming in the events view. So I guess I will have to live with this folder occupying upwards of 110 mB.

I also saw the new version of aperture, and I have to say, with all the guided tours and video tutorials on the apple website, they sure do make their applications look cool. Its not that I want to stop using lightroom now, I just wish there were some of those great features in Lightroom. Like the incredible integration with the other leopard applications. So go check out Aperture 2 Guided tours.

Pet peves and sheridan lockdown

I finally ended up going shopping and I bought a whole lot of food! I am like an ant storing food for the winter. Only I, am storing food for the portfolio time. I don't want to have to go shopping in the coming weeks. While I was at the grocery store, I had decided I was going to make chole today! I bought all the ingredients that I didn't have, and I was pretty excited for it. I think this is the first time I've made chole all by myself.

At the Indian grocery store, the lady at the checkout asked me about the incident at sheridan today. I didn't have much to say, because all I knew was from many different sources, and I didn't know which one was 100 percent true. She asked me if he was a white guy... which I thought was kinda awful... racist. But I don't really care who it was. All I care is about finding out that they did all this for nothing. Even since I first heard they spotted someone with a gun, I had been thinking it must have been a paintball gun or a fake/toy gun. The email that I got from sheridan college president said, and I quote 'cameras recorded video of a person carrying an object that appeared sufficiently suspicious' It could even have been a tripod stand someone suggested. Blah!

Back home, jon was also cooking dinner for him and his GF. And it was a really nice and busy atmosphere. I kinda enjoyed it. Add to that the fact that vironica did a lot of the dishes... thank you vironica. I had gotten 6 bottles of crush, and jon asked me if he could have a GLASS of it. And I said, ok. But he drank one whole bottle. Plus, he was being very grumpy about me putting it in the fridge to cool. Yeah, with stephanie's bottle of water too! I realized there wasn't enough room in the fridge for all the juices and milk, and asked her to finish the bottle of water and/or throw it away. And jon said, "there's room in there!" I just said, "fine, you put it in there." But then stephanie started taking to him about it, and saying that its ok, but jon still insisted that the OLD OLD bottle of water be put back in the fridge. Wtf dude!

Thankfully, my chickpeas turned out pretty good and I had a nice meal. I put in all the ingredients and spices by my estimate. So I wouldn't be able to reproduce the exact same taste again. Regardless, I have enough for a couple more times... Maybe I'll take some to the workshop tomorrow. Yeah.. that'll be really sweet! Too bad oliver isn't going to be there. He's going to the ROM. What luck eh? Almost every time I make some food, and want to share it with him, things just don't work out. Atleast he's still giving me a ride to toronto.

Gotta head back to work now. Have a good one.

Tired blog about this morning's dream

What a snowfall we had last night! It was the most snow I've seen fall, EVER! I had so much fun walking back in the snow... it was like I was in some Hollywood movie. Like 30 days of night or day after tomorrow.... Just that day after tomorrow is more than 10 times worse! Jon had shoveled the driveway, but by tomorrow, there was gonna be even more snow out there! I was really hoping for a snow day today, but it didn't happen.

My alarm constantly kept going off after short intervals from 8 am in the morning, but I was too sleepy. After I turned it off and went back to sleep, I had a dream. I dreamt that I was back in school, mount carmel, and this time, all the teachers were very nice. Two teachers in particular, Bedi teacher, and Chitra teacher, because I remember their incidents rather well. Bedi teacher wasn't being insulting and mean, instead, she was very polite. And treated kids as people rather than little insects. I think this dream was a result of me thinking, what if when the teachers asked us a question, the students yelled out, "what a stupid question! Sit DOWN!" or "Don't ask me stupid questions!" LOL. With Chitra teacher, she actually explained a problem to me personally, which is a big deal in a class of almost 60 kids. Then came the shocker, I thanked her, and was leaving the staff room, and I happened to do something goofy. She laughed and said, "oh Yash, I love you."
????!!!!!

Another thing I wanted to talk about is my conversation with suraj... we were talking about school and he said that I wasn't bullied. You can say that I'm in denial, but I refused to admit that I was, and to that, I just moved on. Similarly, when arjun bhaiya would say 'your parents never spanked you, did they?' I would just make a smug face and say "no, they didn't." Maybe I liked making him feel I was better off than him because he would get yelled at and beaten a lot. But I still remember particular incidents very clearly. Like the time I wouldn't drink milk and we (mom dad and me) were up till way past 12 because they were gonna MAKE ME DRINK IT. haha.

Today was a surprisingly tiring day. I was only life drawing for one hour and my neck started hurting really bad. As I was leaving, the model asked me why I was going so soon... I said I'm really tired... She said "Its just one of those days. So I was just gonna go rub on some ointment, and take a nap. But as I was approaching the house, jon was out shoveling, and he yelled out to me saying that I must shovel the driveway. What the Fuck! I offered to help him yesterday, but he had already done most of it, so he said no. But today, I wasn't feeling up to the task of shoveling. I would have really loved it if I was left to my bed and bengay-the ointment. All the while i was out there, i was cursing that old lover of vironica's who was just standing there doing nothing. I was going, "I'm here to study, not shovel snow off of driveway for free!" I even need to go shopping but vironica's hardly ever home.

I still haven't heard from aparjita or vince. But I am getting done with my room drawing and part of my object drawing. Till next time, here's yash signing off for the day.

Perspective room drawing- help me!

(my question is in the last paragraph)
Yesterday, As I was going for life drawing, I got a little late. And the bookstore closed, right before I got there. So I asked oliver if he had extra newsprint that he could let me use. We walked to res and he gave me a pad. While I was there, I was reading jokes from reader's digest. I always loved those columns... laughter the best medicine, all in a day's work, Life's like that. I would laugh my ass off! They have the best jokes.

In life drawing, I saw a kid who was drawing exactly like I used to when I first started. I really thought I should tell him the first thing gerard told me not to do - 'stop drawing little heads'. When gesture drawing, the action as a whole is more important than drawing a circle or oval for a head. I have come a long way since last year, and I have proof of that. I realized a couple of days ago that I still have some pages from my first ever life drawing session. It was hilarious.

I left life drawing early because this model was really annoying. The one who keeps touching his penis again and again. heh.. Anyways, I went back to the pit and oliver was still hanging around. So I sat there with him, I was working on my hand drawing and he was working on a funny drawing with his squirrel character. The problem with me is that I spend as much time thinking what to do as I spend on doing that thing. Or let me rephrase that.. the amount of time i spend thinking about what to do is equal to the time it will take me to actually do that thing. I need to find a way to make decisions quick, and act on them.

I worked on my room drawing late at night, and I kinda ran into some 

problems. I made some diagrams explaining what my dilemma is. I'll also try to explain that verbally. In case someone can understand it and find a solution, please reply. The room I am trying to draw doesn't have 4 walls. it has 6. its a elongated hexagonal shape room. so the walls next to the one I am facing directly, won't confine to the one vanishing point but instead, have two

 different vanishing points... right? take a look

Why does itunes say the artist of Aadat in kalyug is Goher Mumtaz?

I was just sorting through my itunes library, adding album art to the tracks and stuff. And the top of the list was Aadat, the slow one, that starts with 'aa aaaa ..~long music~.. Juda ho ke bhi tu mujhme kahin baaki hai...' For better explanation, I'll just post itune store url for the song. Now I had put in the artist as Aatif, I am not even sure if his name starts with two A's or just one. (But most places its just one A.) He 'was' the lead singer of the band Jal before Goher Mumtaz, the composer, decided to kick him out. From what I can gather from this page, Atif and his brother were trying to make money out of the band, whereas Goher's intention was just to make good music. And they were 'interfering' a lot with the work the band was doing. 

Now that the back story is done, I would like to get back to my question. On Amazon AND itunes mp3 stores, if you see the listing of the album Kalyug, you will see the track: Aadat(Aatif) Artist: Goher Mumtaz. Which I think is WRONG! The artist is supposed to mean the band or singer who performed it. And since this one was not performed by the band Jal, but instead, Aatif himself, solo, Artist field should have his name. And Goher Mumtaz's name should be in Composer. Unless, I got the story wrong and Goher actually sung that version of the song. 

Warning: Some offensive content.

I've been to life drawing every day from monday to thursday. Sometimes I even went to the 7 o clock one after the 6 pm session ended. I don't remember what day it was, but Ron was our model, and there was a really interesting conversation going on, which I HAD to blog about. But since internet wasn't working, I couldn't. Today, internet is back on so here I go.

Ron was talking about how a degree in animation is meaningless. I think the conversation started on the topic of english requirement for the program... Anyways, he said, "a degree in animation is like a degree in giving blowjob(I hope he was talking about girls) People only care how well you do it, they don't wanna know if you have a certificate saying tht you can give a blowjob." Which I think is extremely hilarious. Aw COME ON stop scoffing at me for this one line! I already warned you in the title! Back to the topic, he said, "all this confusion was probably because animation was a relatively new field." upon hearing this, I went "huh?" I didn't expect someone here in canada, at sheridan college where they've been teaching animation for a couple decades to say its a 'new discipline'. But what he said next, made that point clear. "Illustration has been around for centuries. Even before people started writing books, there were illustrations to tell people stories or a message." He's right... look at the ancient Egyptian wall paintings... Someone else prompted, "Animation has only been around since 1920." And I decided I should tell this to my parents... they'll really get a kick out of this.

They would have wanted me to be a doctor or an engineer... Medicine has been practiced for ages. Long before people discovered moving images, and the need to entertain themselves watching cartoons, they needed to cure all the diseases that befall humanity. Engineering has developed ever since man stepped out of a cave. (that's my assumption!) Fine arts has been around for really long too. but not in the form of animation. Leonardo da Vinci's drawings, I think are fit to be called illustrations, maybe technical illustrations. But they were not moving images... I can't think right off the back of my head who created the first 'moving image' drawing. If anyone out there knows, or takes the time to find out, please let me know.

Now, I must sleep. All that snow shoveling has made me tired. And all the okra eating made me sleepy...lol.