Happy Birthday Dilip Saab!

The 11th of December was the Legendary Thespian's 'happy' birthday!! Just thought of these really old sketches of him done for an animation piece sometime in 2000.. almost 13 years ago! With the sudden realisation of the passage of time, also dawned the realisation of the timelessness of an artist's work... Dilip Kumar was at the forefront of creativity and success in Indian Cinema for many decades of its golden age and has inspired countless actors from Dharamendra to Amitabh Bachchan to Shahrukh et al.. and somewhere down there in that list of the inspired I find a very earnest myself... I have always loved Dilipji, with not a feeling of an actor but strangely as an elder to look upto.. a person from my own family.. that I feel very close to tho I dont know him at all..
Anyway an old sketch from 13 years ago with a lil touch up.. (this was a printout of an image in our files which used a ruff sketch in the original..) Hope you like it and remember that we become who we do on the shoulders of the ones who came before us.. in his case, its the shoulder of a giant!

Dilip Kumar in 2000 and a flashback from Naya Daur..one of my favorite moments in Hindi cinema

Talisman.. The Trailer!!

character study for Talisman

Have itching to put up something interesting for a while..but juggling too many things.. the studio is undergoing some rapid and cool developments.. you will hear about it soon!

concept for BigB's character in the Talisman promo

In the meantime some semi-recent stuff that was great fun to do. Some of you who caught Ekalvya on the big screen may have seen a trailer for a film called Talisman, to be directed by one of our fondest friends, Ram Madhvani (Happydent, Xbox360, Himani Pain Relief etc,etc) and produced by Vidhu Vinod Chopra. This film was a fantasy-'sword and sorcery' epic, the sort not made in India since the magical 60s and based on 'Chandrakanta' a late 19th century novel which I think, was initially a serialised story appearing in periodicals.It was written by Babu Devakinandan Khatri and borrows many concepts from the then widely popular Dastan traditions.

Character concept

We worked only on visualising and designing the preview trailer which was to announce the film. Initially we were to also execute this special effects heavy piece as well as create concept art for the entire film, but it was not possible for us to get involved for ten thousand reasons.. the most important of which was that we just couldnt have handled it logistically .Also this was a moment of truth period, where we realised we wanted to return our focus to animation.

The following are the boards we did for the piece. It helped to set the tone for the piece and the design for Amitabh (yes, him again) Bachchan's character.All of this was done practically overnight and was enormously satisfying to put together. Quite a rush!

...the storyboard panels

Anyway, the released trailer is on youtube.. here it is. Some details are different in it as you will see. My personal opinions aside, in the time at hand, it got done and well enough to be put on the screen! so kudos to Ram's team for sheer courage in the face of odds!! Thats how movies get made in India!!

In a lighter vein: Amitabh Bachchan

Now for something completely different...or is it?!!
Remembered these sketches (made long ago when we were working on Ekalvya) when writing the last post.
Dusted & cleaned them up.. was fun.

Btw that's Amitabh Bachchan, India's greatest Star of the last four decades. Both the sketches are based on my own experience being around him during the shoot of Ekalvya. I must admit, that I entertained the notion he wouldn't be larger than life at all..
But I am glad to say he was quite as you would imagine him to be.. overall at least, the details can be slightly different, the idiosyncrasies etc.. but he was very much The Big B.

AB as the title character, Ekalvya had a problem of failing eyesight.. but being an expert marksman that he is , he could get his target by sound alone.. His dialogue to Saif in the climax.." bas ek awaaz do... blah blah" was a source of much mirth. On a another occasion, I remember the director briefing him, " Imagine you are a dog!! Like a dog is aware at the slightest sound and flicks his  ears..." AB listened intently, probably wondering how he would flick his ears about.. he may have tried.

AB always had a posse of armed guards about him.. we had heard they were provided by one or the other of his influential friends.. (most likely Amar Singh? or Subroto Roy?) anyway.. they were of uniform character & personality ( at least as far as we could see).. however on more than one occasion they failed their job as some die hard crazy fan from the crowd gathered in the middle of the desert in Bikaner to see the shoot, would dive out and make for the Man! This would usually be a middle aged lady in a sari who was probably crazy over him since her childhood days.. and it was usually very funny and strange to see all these strapping guards completely taken by surprise by this woman who left her modesty by the crowd just to touch the star..

Then they would all jump her and overpower her, pin her down.. whatever, as they regained control of the situation with true machismo and pretended as if nothing happened at all. The dedicated fan would win her star's attention for that fleeting moment, maybe an autograph if lucky and all would be normal again. we were lucky she wasn't a terrorist.. With guards like these..