Catch Up Time : 26th October 2009

Hello Readers,

Sorry for the very erratic flow of posts since last 4 weeks. Its been a very challenging time since last one month. Challenging physically and mentally, but I would say more mentally. Allow me to explain.

P.S. – What I am about to share may not be interesting to many of you and that’s fine. But I believe there is a lesson to be learn from here and hence the very idea of this post.

Also I am not sure whats my real motive is to write this post. May be its a way to share my experiences and in the process feel lighter within myself, may be its a way to let others know what all can happen out of the blue and be prepared for it. Or it may also end up being amusing or stupid or fun to read what ever follows from here on. Or it may be to find out what you would have done had you been in my place. So any feedback is most welcome.

2nd Oct’09, me and my family moved to another house. Fortunately we found another one in the same area where we were staying before, so there was a comfort of knowing the surroundings against exploring everything from scratch.

Now ironically, the main shifting was a breeze, we had hired professional movers and packers to pack and move the goods and thankfully they stood by their claims of being professional and efficient. But what followed(and still following) has been nothing less than nightmare.

I want to add that the amount of phone calls I had to make in the last month, was equal to the amount of calls I normally make in around 9-12 months. Now you may ask why ! Well read before and you will know why !!

Strike ONE (STRIKE as in Baseball, 3 STRIKES and you are down and out)
To begin with, a day before I was about to move, I called my Phone/Internet Service Provider to take a request for shifting my connection so that my old number remains the same and also I ‘thought’ it would be a faster process against applying a new connection. Alas how wrong I was.

It took 16 harrowing days and 100 calls to get the connection finally set up at my new place.

I would like to mention that on day 15, I was so fed up/frustrated/angry/irritated of this delay which was affecting my other work, I got myself a portable modem which cost me around 3 months of my rental which I pay normally to my Service Provider. The moment I got the modem, it seems as if there was an instant vent up of all my not-so-desirable inner turmoil and I felt so much more relaxed. If only I knew it was just a matter of one more day. Or who knows it was an intentional play of cards by the almighty.

Now the side effects of all this was that I used to be very irritated all day long. The irritation was not entirely because of the delay but because of a lack of concrete response from my Service Provider as to what exactly is the problem and precisely by when can I expect my connection. Everyday whenever I used to call them, they used to say it will be done today, but that today came after 16 days.

Strike TWO
Next came the pain of getting my Air-Conditioner(AC) set up. Now there were two steps in getting it set up. First was to make a provision in my window for the AC to fit in and second was to get the delivery of the AC and getting it fixed by the technicians.

Luckily the AC’s were delivered reasonably on time. It was getting it fixed which turned out to be a long long wait. I called the concerned people to come to my house to take the measurements of my AC and do the needful in the Window. The person said he will be at my place in 15 mins.

Can you imagine that, that 5 mins came after 5 days and 25 calls. Even till date I am unable to find the exact answer as to why it took so much time. All I heard was excuses like “was busy”, “rains”, “weekend came”, “I went on leave” and so on. I mean is work ethic totally dead. And why all this was happening only with me ?

There is more, the person came finally, they took the measurements, they said they will have to make an Aluminum Frame to hold the AC to make sure there are no gaps. I asked how many days, they said 2. I thought I have waited so many days, 2 more days wont hurt. I said ok and requested them to speed up if possible. Now my guess is that the definition of “speed up” for that person was to “take extra time”. The frame came after 4 days !

Fortunately the final installation was done the same day as the frame arrived. Whew, had to wait close to 10 days for a good night sleep in a cool environment.

Strike THREE
Last week while animating on my desktop, suddenly everything went still in my comp, nothing was moving, I tried to restart using Ctrl+Alt+Del, nothing. Tried to reboot directly from CPU, again nothing !!! Finally I had to remove the plug from the main power source to switch it off.

I kept my fingers crossed and started it again. What I dreaded happened. Monitor started blinking with no display whatsoever. Also the lights on the CPU were not blinking which meant nothing was happening in the CPU. I thought may be its one of those times, when suddenly it goes off and suddenly everything comes back to normal. I tried again 3-4 times, no luck. I decided to give it a break and only after few hours, I tried again, but no improvement. Finally I decided to call my Computer Technician from a Computer Vendor(from where I have an Annual Maintenance Contract) and have a look. He came, tried every possible trick he knew, still no luck. Finally he said he will have to remove the motherboard and take it to his testing center to find the exact cause. He said, if the motherboard is fine, it may be a Power Supply problem in which case, next day itself he will get a new Power Supply. But if its the motherboard issue it can take more time. I asked him how many days. He said he cant say until he checks it thoroughly and promised to give me a call next day itself. Now this was Tuesday. Till Friday I didn’t hear anything from him. I called them around 10 in the morning and some stupid operator said that she is aware of my problem and will give me a call back. Till 8 in the evening no call came. I tried calling back but no response, which means they have wrapped it for the day.

I called them the next day and blasted the hell out of them. They promised to call back. Finally after a few hours, the owner(of the company who had my Annual Maintenance Contract) themselves called, apologizing like a criminal pleading for mercy and said they will give me a replacement the same day. Saturday passed, Sunday passed and no replacement came.

Then today I thought enough is enough its time to take some real action. I called them and threaten to cancel all my Contracts I had given them thru various sources. In addition to this I told them to give me my motherboard back as they were too useless to repair it and that I shall get it fixed by somewhere else. They said to kindly wait for one last time and that they will call me in 15 mins to tell me the exact date when I will get my motherboard. They called in 10 minutes and said that on Wednesday they will surely come and fix my motherboard. Now I really don’t know whether they will stand by their word or again one of their empty promises, but I am really hoping that they do, as its been close to 8 days, all my animating and other work has been on hold and I am feeling like a new born baby, totally helpless to do anything.

Now is this really a co-incidence that I was been served by pathetic customer service on and on with no end in sight ?? Or is it that God wanted to test my patience and my character ??

But one good thing happened, because of my desktop crashed I was forced to tackle my laptop problem which I have been ignoring for a long long time. My laptop had problem of bad sectors in the hard disk and shutting off automatically and abruptly at no particular interval of time. I got a new hard disk and also fixed the problem of shutting down abruptly. Apparently there was some issue of Thermal Sensors on the CPU. Whatever that means !

FOUR (its not really a STRIKE)
On hindsight may be this is the problem which is making me over-react to the above strikes. Since we moved in, I have applied to a few places(in my city) to offer my services as a 3D Character Animator. Its been almost a month and no replies yet. I understand these things takes time, but is it too much to ask even for some notification, whether yes or no. If its Yes I can jump with joy and even if its No, I will at-least know whats working and whats not and get on to tackling those issues. Some one has said “no news is great news” but here in this case its definitely not doing me any good. I sometimes really wonder, some things/actions/events just cannot be explained in human simply understandable terms.

Now you may be wondering what is the lesson behind all this. For me it is :

1. Things wont be hunky dory all your life. Regardless of how good life is going for you, there will be times when nothing, nothing at all seems to work. Thinking otherwise is being extremely naive !

2. You can never have enough patience because how much ever you feel you are cool and composed, there will be events that will just freak you out and drain all your patience.

3. Every event good or bad is an experience.

4. There IS a reason why anything is happening in your life.

5. To practice letting go. To not revel in good things/event for long and to not drool over not so good things/events for long.

6. To not judge any event, just savor it in the present moment and take it as it comes. The definition of good or bad is nothing but your viewpoint at work.

7. Never never never give up. I will be very forthcoming, this time in my life has tested me the most. But I am determined to not let it get the better of me. I will keep going regardless of what happens. If I have to walk against very strong winds, so be it.

8. Find your own avenues in these trying times, which can make you relax a bit and get distracted from all the negatives. For me its being with myself. When I am alone and quiet I feel my batteries recharging. Introspecting is a very powerful tool. Try it.

9. Appreciate the presence of your near and dear ones in your life. Without doubt I have been in the worst of my moods and behavior in the last one month than I have ever been in my whole life. But I am thankful to my parents for their undying love and support all the while despite my erratic mood swings and temper. I am convinced God made parents because he couldn’t be everywhere at the same time.

10. When you are at the very low of your life, see the good part, the only way you can go from here on is UP ! I absolutely feel the same currently.

Before I get deeply engrossed in emotional talk, its seems prudent to wrap this post up. I really don’t know what made me write and share all this with the world at large. But I am feeling a lot better, bringing all this up and sharing with you.

If you have anything to share in the context of this post – be it your experiences of testing times, be it advise/suggestions for me, be it about how you would have handled it if you where in my position, please feel very free to do the same.

Thank You !

@|b

Self Growth : Taming Anger

As mentioned in my previous post, Self Growth is one of my many endeavors I want to explore as much as I can. Though I have shared a few articles here and there, from now onwards I will be doing it on a more regular basis.

I came across this fantastic article on getting a grip on our anger. Though I strongly suggest reading the full article, here is an excerpt which is super useful for me and should be for you too -

“

There’s now widespread agreement among anger experts that it’s better to evaluate angry feelings before acting on or even accepting them. Williams is a leading proponent of this view; he recommends asking yourself four specific questions whenever you feel angry:

1. Is the situation or event that triggered my anger important? That is, is the thing that triggered my rage something that threatens my well-being?
2. Given the situation or event, is my anger appropriate? Faced with the same circumstances, would the average person get angry?
3. Is the situation modifiable? Is there something I can do to change it for the better?
4. Is it worth it to try to modify the situation? That is, is it worth my time and effort?

“

Source for the above excerpt.

So next time you get angry or are on the verge of getting, ask yourself the above 4 questions.

@|b

Catch Up Time : Done With Animation Mentor, What Next !

P.S – It will be a long post but hopefully worth your time ! Thanks in advance for reading.

(This image was chosen after a lot of thought and purpose! Read on to find out why!)

I am writing this post after considerably introspecting my life as it happened in the last 2 years with more emphasis on the course I was doing at Animation Mentor (AM) and how it has influenced my life for good.

First things first, my course finished last week and now I am officially an Alumni of AM and not a student. This feeling itself is wrapped in different layers of excitement, growth, optimism, sadness, inspirational and so on. More on this below.

Almost around 2 years back in September 2007, after working as a full time 3D Character Animator for close to 4 years, I found out that getting up in the morning to go to work was a painful chore and I was really not enjoying my work. The reason I was not enjoying my work was that I was not learning anything new, I was animating like a mechanical mass of flesh, getting scenes, animating, showing for approval to my Animation Director, sending to client, getting it approved….this process went in a circle and on and on. So I felt it was the right time to take a hiatus and get back to some learning before I get totally disconnected from Animation all-together. Around the same time AM had released a couple of its student’s work and I had no doubt this was the place to go to and re-invent myself or rather discover myself all over again.

I strongly believe that everything happens for a reason and looking back at my life, every event (good and not-so-good) makes total sense as to why it occurred. I also feel it was my destiny that the timing of the release of AM’s student work coincide with the time I was not feeling good about my work and it was a signal that it was time to take the plunge.

Now in my community/culture/social circle/mindset of many many people I know….leaving a job and going back to education was considered foolish/stupidity/throwing your leg on the axe and so on. In short it was not favored at all. It was more like once you get a job, work for few years, then get married, start a family and so on. I was strictly against this normal course as I felt we get one life and it’s not about going from one station to next but rather enjoying the time in between. What’s the point of doing things just because others have been doing it and what’s worse is doing it unwillingly. If you strongly believe in something and which you feel is right in the long run, by all means go for it. There will always be naysayers because they don’t want others to do the things, which they want to do but cant. They are like fire, you pay heed and it’s like putting fuel to it, you ignore them and they will smoke out soon enough.

So after a month of leaving my job, my journey began at AM and it seemed as if I was in a total different mindset now and that the whole world was working together to make me happy. It was a fantastic change from the mundane job to being a student and learning so many new things day after day. I used to stay awake way past my normal time, yet used to get up with so much energy and passion to start a new day of learning.

Joining AM was without any doubt one of the best decision I would have taken regarding my career. The mentors are top notch people working in the industry since many years in the form of Animators, Lead Animators, Animation Supervisors, Creative Directors and so on. In the last 2 years whatever new Animated Features have released, almost all the mentors are featured in the credit list of different movies. I have never really waited for Credits before, but now it’s one thing which I will not miss for anything, as the joy of watching your friends/mentors name in the Credit list is amazing.

Also what’s the charm of being in AM, apart from the education is the community of people including Mentors, Students and the AM Support Staff. Everyone is so very helpful, down to earth and wants each other to succeed. Now considering that majority of the mentors have a full time job in creating the next blockbuster to entertain us, they make sure to be there whenever we need them. Be it E-critiques, Live AV QNA, emails, forums, they respond as soon as they can. Which in my honest opinion shows them how much they care about people having the same passion and tells a lot about how wonderful they are as human beings. Hats off to the entire AM community!

Its crazy to look back how fast 18 months passed by (It was actually 21 months since I had taken one term break(3 months), since me and my family moved to a new city). The curriculum at AM is very well structured, tight, it forces you to be disciplined and have a very good way of managing yourself and your time. This is where AM tricks you. You join AM thinking it’s all about animation, but you get so much more apart from Animation. You become more disciplined, you value time so much more, you plan your day in order to make it as efficient and productive as ever, you meet so many different people from diverse geographical locations and cultures, you cultivate new lifelong friendships…I can go on and on. In brief AM is a complete package provided you are open to learning and personally speaking it had a very profound positive impact on my life. An impact for which the results are definitely not instant but in the long run, I know and I can feel it that I made a very judicious choice of doing AM.

That’s one reason why I am having mixed feelings now since I am no more a student. I am happy to be able to finish AM and excited for what’s in store for me in the near future, but I am also a bit scared to not go off track and get into a comfort zone. Since AM is based on a real industry environment, we have weekly deadlines and a very strict structure of constantly evaluating our work. Now out of AM (at least till I am able to get back to working), it would be no easy task to keep animating and make sure we have deadlines on whatever we do. Without deadlines it’s only a matter of time before I start slipping and losing sight of my goals and tasks. I will keep you all posted on how I fare on this one.

Now a little about using the image in the beginning of the post. Before joining AM, I was not sure about where my life as an animator was going. I was just going with the flow and was totally oblivious of the path forward, whether it was a corner or a turn I had no idea and in all probability either of the two would have thrown me back as I was totally ignorant to see the things in a broader perspective. But now I feel like that little plant/sapling, who at least knows where he has to grow and move on next. It may be small now, but the key is that the foundation/root has been laid and now it’s all about nourishing and taking care. Similarly by no means I am animation-ninja yet, but at least I know (and thank you AM for that), about my strengths and weaknesses, what makes a good animation and an animator, developing and eye for detail, having a good workflow to name a few. (Though I have come across many people who when I say I am doing AM, believe that I need not study anymore and that just being from AM, guarantees me a job in PIXAR or equally big studios. How misinformed can people get? I am planning to have a separate post on this though as this really frustrates me to no end.)

Coming to the million dollar question of what next, now since I am done with AM? Well to start with, my short is far from completion. Only if I was able to limit my short to 30 secs I would have been able to wrap it while in AM, but not compromising on the story I had to increase the duration and now it’s almost double to around 55 seconds or so. I don’t regret it one bit, since it’s better to have a longer duration than to trim it to 30 seconds and confusing the audience as to what the short is about. Having said that it’s not that we can do just 30 seconds, I was clocking close to 25 seconds a week when I used to work, but that’s a different story and many factors were responsible for that. Each short is different with its own challenges and complexity and each animator have their own skill level. So finishing my short is one the top priorities for me.

At the same time, I am going back and polishing my old shots for my reel. Yes it’s time to enter the big (bad?) world of job hunting and then being a professional animator (good!). After going thru the grind, I am raring to contribute all that I have learned (and continue to learn) to where ever I get an opportunity to work.

I am also thinking of starting new animation shots in different categories like Pantomime, Body Mechanics and Acting. I may also have a progress log here, right from planning to the end to get as much feedback and share a bit about my workflow and also to continue learning from others and growing. Let’s see how it goes.

There is one more area where I have gone a sea change in the last 2 years and that is personality development /self-growth. I have had numerous personal challenges (and continue to have) and thanks to many people and resources online and offline, I was able to overcome many and I am working on overcoming others. This is one area where EVERYONE struggles at some point of time in their life, but are to scared of feared to admit (and it amazes me why, we all are human it’s OK to err at different level and to learn from it). So it’s my deepest endeavor to help people overcome their personal struggles and to share my experiences with them and vice versa. It’s my way of paying forward (and paying back) all the good things I learned from different sources. It’s very important to pay forward any good deeds anyone has done for you, because if everyone does it, the world will be a much better place to live.

So as you can see, I have a LOT on my plate as of now. I just hope I am not eating more than I can chew. Yes I will be stretching myself definitely which is intentional but I don’t want to let my task(s) overwhelm me and end up avoiding everything all-together. This is the part where my readers – YOU, can play a huge part to help me be on track. Nothing like having a diverse group of people to bounce ideas constantly. It helps to elevate our perspective at various different levels. This is the beauty of technology and the internet; it makes collaboration and communication so seamless 24×7.

Before writing this post I had a certain idea of what I want to share here, but as I began, more ideas, more thoughts, more content kept cropping and I felt appropriate to share them too. So if you feel this post looks a bit unstructured, my apologies, but please do let me know.

A LOT is coming from my side in the coming days. Tighten your belt and watch this space.

Talk to you soon!

Cheers,

@|b

Do Animator Enthusiasts Need to Attend Animation School?

There is a very nice and relevant post on Animation Mentor BLOG on whether Animator enthusiasts need to attend animation schools, what are the benefits and so on.

Check it out here !

@|b

The Coffee Story – Search Within And You Shall Find It

This is one story which has been engraved in my mind and the hidden meaning in this story is so powerful and inspiring that it keeps surfacing on my mind from the deep corners where its been stored for ever. I don’t remember where i heard this one, may be it was on TV, movie, magazines or newspaper.

“Its a beautiful morning, slightly drizzling which makes the morning even more beautiful. A person wakes up and decides to start the day by sitting in his veranda which gives him a view-to-die for of the beautiful ocean and having a hot cuppa of coffee.

But he is surprised to see that someone has already made his coffee and his lying on the dining table. He is pleasantly surprised, takes the coffee and walks towards his veranda. He is comfortably settled down and savors the beautiful morning view. He takes a sip of his coffee but is taken aback. The coffee is very bitter. He is so comfortable that he feels very lazy to go and get some sugar and a spoon to make his coffee sweeter. So he decides to have the bitter coffee itself. He is clearly a bit unhappy but then that’s the choice he has made.

He has finished his coffee half way thru, when the next sip totally surprises him again but this time in a positive way. The coffee becomes a bit sweeter this time.

He notices that the nearer he reaches to the end of the cup and finishing his coffee the sweeter it becomes. Now he is almost reached the end when he sees something and starts laughing at himself.

At the bottom of the coffee cup there were sugar cubes. All he had to do to make it sweeter was to stir. ”

Now it may seem like any other story with a good funny pay off but its a beautiful analogy to relate to each and everyone’s of our life.

The coffee is our life. When you have reached the end of the cup and can see the base, we have entered the twilight zone of our lives. We all search for happiness, peace, calm around us and by running over other material stuff like money, fame, prosperity, recognition, attention of others and so on, but we fail to realize that the real happiness lies within us all. All we have to do is stir.

So before its too late, stir and seek inside yourself and i can assure you that, you WILL definitely find whatever you are looking for.

@|b