Animators by the week, warriors by the weekend!

En route to San Diego, Adi stopped us at a place called the Vista (sp?) Point, it really fun feeding nuts to the squirrels, they are so big in size compared to the ones in India.

And then in San Diego, we went to the US Midway musem which was on top of the Midway Warship. Really thrilling to watch those war birds up-close and even go inside some of them.

We even went in to a fighter plane simulation and it was really funny going 360 degrees inside it...haha! So you see this trip, I truly feel like a warrior-fighter with the horse ride and then this simulation. :)

Some more KFP merchandise...

Some fun fan-fare on the day of KFP release in the DWA campus

They had a booth put up to take pictures with the Panda and get it instantly framed...pretty cool

Some uber-cool KFP merchandise....Panda stuff was really adorable!

The Universal Studio fire, right down the hill to where we are put up at, there was some serious fire-fighting then for the next 6-8 hours....

Lovely pictures at the lovely Laguna Beach.....but seriously if not for Adi (who has been our frontman for the trip, teaching us to drive in LA (some guts you need to teach someone), taking us to the coolest of places, sight-seeing, shopping....been a great great help in all...

Horse-back riding for three and half hours was one of hell of an experience....riding on edge of cliffs, maneuvering your own horse all the while, over-taking, it was simply the best experience I have had in adventure sports....On our way back, the sun had set and it just so amazing to look at the city from a distance atop a hill, where the only sound is of the hooves. I felt like a warrior (Kurosawa's Ran came to mind) riding it...Awesomeness! Huge thanks to Joe for taking us there and even riding along with us.

Chief at work, the DW India team with DW Indian Team at Glendale,

Me doing some serious shredding, am sure you can tell with the expression...

And then there was the mother of all experiences, being invited to watch the crew screening of Kung Fu Panda, very entertaining movie and am sure it will go a long long way at the box-office, but what was more special to me was the feeling of seeing everyone's names at the credits and the applause with that, had a huge lump in my throat the entire credit sequence. Animation wise, man, some serious action stuff in there....always wonder what the animators producing such qualilty work eat.

Looking at this picture, reminds me that most if not all of these pictures of us has been taken by our animator friend Shajo John (jojo for us all), (if he had a choice to hold on to a chute or his camera, he most certainly will go for his camera)

at the Americana theater, Joe Aguilar took us all for the Indiana Jones movie, totally entertaining stuff

minutes before the house went full...

With Joe, at the Griffirth Obeservatory, nice view of LA from the top....

ahhhh! the sign of entertainment....

The houses by the Venice Beach side in Santa Monica look really pretty...

Tons of color and style in Venice Beach, it surely was one of the highlights of all the places where we visited so far...

hmmmm....we looked and looked...but we could'nt spot her...

playing paddle tennis at Venice Beach...team building if you will...good fun

one thing for sure, esp if you are new from a place like India, LA has some really really sexy and mean looking cars and bikes....it is just so fascinating to keep staring at them....

DreamWorks India - pictures, fun-stuff with the trip so far...

the DW goodie bag (there was lots foodie stuff too...India meal, fruits, veggies in the fridge, candy's),

making the most of the Kitchen (which usually was Aayush's room), Pramod and Mira are two people going to be most thankful to, for cooking some lip-smacking Indian food which we all miss so much,

Oakwood, the beautiful place where we are currently, this place is on a hill and feels just like Ooty or Kodai as the weather is really nice and cool.

DreamWorks Animation India

I joined DreamWorks Animation India's dedicated unit last May 15th. Since then, there has been a sea of activities going on in my life.

-relocated to Bangalore from Mumbai, schooling for my son, new apartment,
-within a week or so flew out for the six-week training at DW's Glendale studio (using this weekend to blog this out)
-in a nut shell, the hospitality is great, the schedule for training and entertainment on weekends has really kept us super pumped up with the whole trip.
-Like I mentioned earlier about reading good things happen to new employees in the animation world as a young animator, all of that has been super-seeded with all the hospitality we have been given.

Moving On with my Animation Career!!

It was tremendously satisfying experience having spent close to five years with Tata Elxsi, VCL. It has always had a great working culture as a company. I am totally thankful to all the super cool oppurtunities I had been given and for that would want to thank Pankaj Khandpur (the creative and business head), Indraneel (the operation manager), to my supervisors (Shrirang, Suhael, Mandy & Jitu bhai), to my close buddies in VCL, Subbu, Ravi Datla, RajeshV, Malli, Anil Singh....and to my amazing team and the other leads on Romeo, Bhavesh, Deepak Ganguly (Dada), Ritwik and Jaywant. You all rock!!!


Immediately post completing my assignments at VCL, I accepted what many in the animation world would call it as, 'the dream offer' to work for the dream team of DreamWorks Animation. What more! The coolest thing about it all was, it was all going to be set up in Bangalore, a place I call home. Sweet!!!

(when I was young as an animator, I would read about 'the phone call' a lot and today I can totally relate to it, you can't hear better news than that)

Roadside Romeo

Just to simply put it -

I hold the animated movie (which is currently in production ) Roadside Romeo by Yash Raj Films & Walt Disney and directed by Jugal Hansraj, the most dearest to my heart. I am very fortunate to have animated and led a team of immensely talented animators and along the way have made a bonding relation-ship with every one who worked within the team.

Personally, the best part of being involved in the movie was the free hand that was given to us all about coming up with ideas and presenting it to the shows anim directors. If it excited them, Jugal would take a look at it and give his views. And Jugal always knew what he wanted from every shot in the movie. I remember the first time he narrated the story to us at Tata, he almost enacted every character out through the narration.

Here's wishing good luck to the entire team working on completing the feature. Can't wait to watch it kick some serious @$$. :)

Been really long, but good to be blogging out again!

After days of delaying, i think i will hibernate out a lot of stuff that i have been wanting to share, mostly with whats going on with my animation life.