Working in Manali

Right, so I'm working in Manali now, and man, what a trip.

started out with a car ride from Mayapur to Burdwan, which was uneventful.

Then it was a 30-hour train ride on kalka-mail.

the train ride was rather boring, but I did attempt to plug in my computer into the wall, that was a bad idea, a circuit breaker was blown, and we couldn't use the plugs for the rest of the trip.

we arrived in C at 4am, where we met up with vrajkumar. (He drove the distance by car)

Here's everybody that took the trains but me:
After that, it was another car ride. this one promised to be very long.
Here's our convoy, sorta:

We stopped for Alu parathas along the way:

There were dizzying drops, which were too much for the camera, which promptly ran out of batteries:

Many hours later, I was finally able to get more batteries, at a place called Kooloo. we stopped there to relax a bit.

There were some weeds growing there than some people I know would be interested in:

On the road again:


We finally reached the house we booked, and this is the view we got:

And this is the actual house:


and this is my room:


and HOLY SHIT! WHAT IN GOD'S NAME ARE THOSE THINGS? ARE THOSE SUPPOSED TO BE MOSQUITOES?


And finally, because I like panoramas, a panorama:


And finally finally, a picture of me:

Making my character in 3D

So I am finally getting somewhere in 3D. Over the past few weeks I have started character modeling. It's pretty exciting since it's something I've always wanted to learn.

So... I wanted to show all the steps I took to make a character.

So I started with the Chona character (seen in my older post) and drew a simple strait front and side version of him.
Next thing, I imported it into Maya and made the polygons in the same form. I only need to do one side since its easy to mirror it.


Once I got the shape I mirrored it and had a full body object.

Next step was to make a texture. This was actually a bit complicated but involved a process called pelting where I had to cut up the drawing to create a texture unwrap.

Then I went into a program called ZBrush and painted on the texture by hand. Then I took it back to Maya and now I have a textured model.

Now that I have the have a model, I have to give him 'bones' so I can move him around naturally. I used a plug-in for Maya called 'The Setup Machine' where I define the areas of his body with boundaries.

Then I hit the 'rig' command and he has a skeleton.

Now I can pose and animate him as I like.

And place him into a scene.

More Pictures

Here are more pictures that I drew. These were for my into to drawing class. All of these are related to my story in some way.

This is a Teskabu. The horse like creature in my story

This is the ship that first traveled between the four world of Ashuram, Bhogam, Ilavrita, and Devamrita.

This is Wroklan, the capital of Darzul, a city in the story.

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Also, here are more pictures that my friend drew based on my character designs.

This is Emporer Egktum Thaa II. He is an important character and he is the ruler of Devamrita,

This is Kargastulam. He is the main antagonist in the story.

This is Saradan. The main protagonist. In the fist version of the story he was named Garuda.

This is Filan. In the original story he was Nandu.

This is Panu. In the original story he was Japa.

This is Chona. In the original story he was Abhay.

This is Fralentine.
She wasn't in the first version of the story, but I needed at least one female character.

This is Rajanu, who is married to Fralentine.

Abhimanyu the bull calf 4 days old

Elephant Laksmipriya bonding with Bishnupriya

Laksmipriya bonding with Bishnupriya

Hare Krishna!
for any one who has not seen this yet...here you can see how our elephant Laksmipriya is bonding with Bishnupriya. When I saw how they immediately fell in Love with each other, I cried. Seeing this made all the hardship it took to get this little baby to Mayapur, all worth it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbQHwROWZ70

Got a release out of the window!

so I've been working with some guys on a program called stonesense, which is a tool for viewing the maps from a game called Dwarf Fortress.

The first release that has me in the credits is out now.

more info here

Characters from my story 'The Gateway'

When I was 13 in Italy I told a story to Abhay and Nandu. I've evolved the story a lot. The main characters were originally named Garuda, Abhay, Nandu and Japa but I added two more and gave them unique names. I've drawn out the characters myself in the past but I'm not the best artist in the world. A friend of mine at school, Nate, drew these for me:

Saradan

Rajanu

Fralentine

Panu

Filan

Chona

My Animation Class Projects

Here are projects I worked on in my animation class.

Let me know what you think!

Mr. Cook Simon :)

Christmas 2009 Pics

Here are some of the photos I took of our family get-together.

New Years Family Reunion 2010