Website: Ravi Udyawar Films online

After a lot of work, edits, and revision, the spankin' new website for Ravi Udyawar Films, one of India's premier ad-film production house, is finally online.

Click Here Or On The Image Above To View The Website

Logo designs for the Project C initiative

Two tentative logos I created sometime back for the Project C comic magazine that's in the works.

Option A: A custom-made font, composed of blocks. The logo can be extended to comfortably accomodate info like the issue number, date etc.

Option B: The circles on top can be seen as a depiction of the half-tone process used in a lot of color printing (though, truthfully speaking, this could use a little refinement).

Mind-bogglingly awesome poster designs

UK-based designer Simon Page created 10 space-themed retro-feel posters for the International Year of Astronomy 2009 campaign.

My favourites: 1st and 3rd on top; 2nd and 3rd bottom. Brilliant.

You can purchase these prints.

Link via David Airey.

Out phishing

I check my yahoo mail today morning, and I get a mail from twitter - We detected a link in your profile (bio, URL or location) pointing to a phishing site or other harmful material that we identified as malware. We removed the link from your profile. My site's gone bad!

A quick google search returned the following message - "This site may harm your computer."

Well, I'll be damned.

I contacted my web-hosting ppl, who shot off a quick mail with some clean-up instructions. Blah blah, I had my newly upped site scanned by http://wam.dasient.com and http://www.unmaskparasites.com, both report it's clean now. So it's been submitted to Lord Almight Google for its approval.

COMIX.INDIA - The self-published black & white comics anthology

It's an exciting time to be involved with the local comics scene. There's a new comics anthology on the cards, and it's titled COMIX.INDIA. It's being edited by Bharat Murthy from the CDBi forums, and designed by me.

(download a hi-res printable image here) 

The magazine's features are:
- Black & White pages, with a color coer
- Size: 7"x9"
- Page count: 250-300

This is a completely fan-driven venture, with no commercial backing. Anybody can contribute content. It won't be available at the shops. It'll only be available online at Pothi.com, a print-on-demand site. Since there's no initial investment needed here, there's no real risk of commercial failure.

Get more details at the CDBi COMIX.INDIA pages.

The Tin Man's Broken Heart - Work in Progress

EDIT: This design is up for voting on Threadless!

It's a slightly modified version of the design below.

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New t-shirt design for threadless! Being critiqued here.

"...when the Tin Man went to the land of Oz, and asked the Wizard for a heart, he didn't think of all the bad things that would happen to him. He never stopped to think, if you have a heart, you'll also experience a heartbreak..."

I've visualised it as the Tin Man going on a city-wide rampage. Him being godzilla-like is largely a symbolic thing.

Two things I'm debating:
1) Should I keep it completely monochromatic?
2) Does the city need more elements like cars, fire-hydrants etc? Maybe some people running about in terror?

Uninteresting Basterds

I used to like Quentin Tarantino. His movie were in a league of their own. Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction wer, and still are, brilliant. He was also a great writer of dialogues and scripts, and I enjoyed From Dusk Till Dawn and True Romance all the more for it. I haven't, however enjoyed any of his recent works. Kill Bill 1 and 2 was an exercise in self-indulgent, and the first half of Death Proof was a crashing bore. So I wasn't really expecting much from his supposed "World War II epic" Inglorious Basterds, and that's a good thing, because I left the theatre less disappointed for it.


What I liked, a somewhat idiosyncratic list:

Hans Landa: Wow. Just, wow. I haven't seen a more chilling, creepier villain in recent times. He was an outstanding character, and fantastically brought to life by Christoph Waltz. He's going to storm hollywood oon, having already landed the role of the villain in the new Dreen Hornet movie. Awesome! He rightly deserves his Cannes best actor award.

Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz: The only interesting Basterd. Which is ironic because he wasn't even one of the nine of the original American squad. He's a German recruited in Germany. A traitor, really. Til Schweiger did a fabulous job, and would have single-handedly destroyed the rest of the Basterds in Mortal Kombat. Hah!

Bridget von Hammersmark & the clandestine basement operation: A very short, yet pivotal part, played out way better than deserved by Diane Kruger. it certainly helped that she was absolutely gorgeous! This Clandestine Basement Meeting was hands-down my favourite sequence in the movie. It so aptly demonstrated Murphy's Law, wherein anything that can go wrong, will. It was an incredibly well written scene, that reminded me in some ways of the what-if car-crash sequence in Benjamin Button. Anyway, this scene also had one of Tarantino's directorial trademarks, the Mexican Standoff, and the shoot-out at the end was simply fabulous.

Shoshanna's plot: The only parts of the movie that felt like a cohesive story. If Tarantino had elected to completely edit away the rest and make the movie only about Shoshanna, I couldn't be happier. Infact, if I will ever get 'round to watching this movie on tv, I'll skip through all the frivolousness and just watch her scenes.


What I didn't like, an unfortunately more complete list:

The Basterds: The movie title is misleading, because the basterds are hardly in the movie. but I'm not complaining, because this uninteresting bunch of rag-tags felt more like charicatures, than serious characters. Brad Pitt's Aldo The Apache talked and behaved like a redneck hick (which he probably was, seeing as how he sold bootleg liquor, and apparently escaped a mob lynching), and was a very bad choice to be the face of the movie. The Bear Jew, supposedly an important character, was reduced to a symbol that played out in exactly one scene, and spent the rest of the movie merging in with the scenery. And the other seven in the squads, heck they were faceless cannon-fodder.

Old wine in a new bottle: That's what Tarantino's direction felt like. There really wasn't anything fresh or exciting here. It just felt like he was recycling his older tricks, with less success. Quirky characters that turn out to be inconsequential, older American Music totally out of place in a movie set in Germany, a half-baked effort to get in some retro graphics, and so on.

The Score: Seems like Tarantino can't look beyond his favourite record collection. I was expecting some really good German music, or something suited to a World War II movie, but no, we get some more retro American stuff. Which in itself isn't bad, but an absolute misfit here.

Character Treatments: All through this movie, major characters are built up, and then do absolutely nothing, and something totally out of character. The Bear Jew appears as a terriying baseball-bat-psycho in exactly one scene, and does nothing for the rest of the movie. Aldo The Apache shows no realy leadership abilities, nor does he do anything that really distinguishes him. Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz is the only Basterd who gets an awesome back-story, but is once again reduced to mere cannon-fodder, and knocked off without real glory. Worst of all, is what happens to Hans Lands. His ending was atrocious, and a major disservice to him. The whole idea that he would even consider surrendering to the Americans seemed kind of lame. He just didn't seem like the traitorous or turn-coat types to me. Basically Tarantino built up his character, and had no idea what to do with him, so he got one of the worst endings possible. Pathetic.


In closing...

This is a juvenile escapist fantasy, and not a very interesting one at that. I am, ofcourse, in the vast minority that didn't like it, as most of my other friends seem to act as if this movie is the cure for cancer. Cure for insomnia is more like it. I think Tarantino ought to stop hyping himself so much, and maybe skip directing for a while, in favour or writing. That's his strength, really. As a director, he's lately been just too self-indulgent.

A.I. Ailment

New design up for voting on Threadless!

What do you prescribe for a sick computer? A binary feed, of 1's and 0's!

I got this idea sometime last week, when I was sick and admitted to a hospital for a few days. So I guess something good did come out of that illness!

Twitter bgs

Hmm, I meant to post this before, but it slipped my mind. I whipped up a quick twitter bg for my uncle's twitter page.

A custom bg for my twitter page too. Whatdya know, it's raining bottles!

Two designs up on threadless!

Kickass, I got two designs up for voting on Threadless.com, for their "Threadless Loves Horror II" competition. It's a pretty tough show, and I don't have any delusions about winning, but it was a thrill entering anyway!

Design One - Don't Be Fooled By The Smile...

A bunch of smileys representing various horror monsters and icons.
Vote for it here:

Design Two - Past Its Expiry Date..

Zombies = bad blood = not good for vampires.

Vote for it here:

Tracer Bullet!

Two wallpapers in accordance with last weekend's hangover:

...

Tracer Bullet: An all-percussion symphony was playing in my head, and the acoustics were incredible.

Forgive me Bill Watterson, I mean no harm.

Smashing September Calenders!

It's a new month! Which means it's time for a new set of wallpapers! And this month, Smashing Magazine has a gorgeous set.

Some of my favourites this month:
S for September - Gorgeous! My favourite this month! Luka, do one for every month!
Prelude (I love wallpapers with a single hue or color scheme)
Upside Down World Map (again, nice colors and concept, but I didn't like the typography)
Neon House Spirit (nice minimalistic color usage)
Field of Gold (great image and placement, but bad typography)
Curiosity and the Rose (love the image!)
Smashin September (very bold, interesting typo)
Septypo (nice colors and typo)
September Colors (the colors, hah)

OrneryBoy!

OrneryBoy. What an awesome guy! And DirtGirl. Whatta babe! This is now officially my new favourite webcomic. It's got a crazy beautiful art style - vert vectorised. Which is no surprise, seeing as how the strip is actually drawn completely in flash! Which not only leads to a solid line-work and bold lively colors, but also, the occasional animated panel! And this isn'y half-baked animation really. It's very dynamic, and adds a lot to the appeal of the comic. I have hence compiled a list of every animated comic in the series:

(SPOILER WARNING - These strips are smack in the middle or storylines, so they may spoil stuff for you. I suggest you read the strip from the beginning, and use this as a quick reference guide. You have been warned!)

#255 Quick Get Some String - Cthulu monster's swaying tentacles

#257 Fountain of Filth - Stream of blood and bones

#258 Full House - More tentacles and raging sky

#269 Down The Drain - Walking zombie dudes

#270 Dance of the Dead - Zombie Headbangers!!! (my favourite)

#277 Down with OrneryBoy - Ornery falling down an open drain

#289 Who'll Fall - Hangin' Zombies!

#291 Sewer Scramble - Ornery and Zombie running!

#329 Shopping Block - Flashing Police Lights

#330 Hanging in the Balance - More Flashing Police Lights

#331 Dirty Bomb - THRESHER on the move!

#332 Explosive Payload - THRESHER's antennae, and the "bomb" explodes!

#333 Out of the Closet - Fumes and flies

#334 Bones of Contention - Dirtygirl screaming

#335 Necronomagain - Anti-zombie magic

#336 Prod Squad - Kids poke Mr. McMeddle's man-boobs with a stick

#342 Zombie Makeover - More anti-zombie magic

#344 Flames of Passion - Fire in DirtyGirl's eyes

#350 The MC stands for Melodramatic Cheese - MC Brian on the run

#356 Eye for an Eye - The cat chews

#357 Stabby-Go-Lucky - Self-stabbing action

#360 Cataclysmic Visions - Cat+flashbacks (look carefully, stare for a while)

#361 Depends on your definition - Cat pees on Ornery

#364 No Sauce Blues - Rain outside the window

#365 Soliloquy - More rain

#367 The Fellowship of the Flapp - Keyboard lights

#368 Hostile Takeover - Ornery on drums

Boli Lagao! India's first paise-auction site starts now!

My latest project to go live - designs for Boli Lagao, India's first paise-auction site. A friend of mine is a partner in the venture. I've created the logo for for their venture, and have also coded and uploaded their teaser website. Sign-up, and you can start bidding soon!

Fisichella!

Center align your webpage!

I recently designed a site that was self-contained within 950px by 500px. Looked real good as a photoshop template. Converting it to html however, was a bitch. Turns out, there's native support for horizontal centering, but no code whatsover to align the entire site vertically central!

So I turned to google, the first and obvious answer to each and every question. I got a whole lot people complaining about this, and rightfully so, but no easy solution. There were a few real complicated workarounds using a mish-mash of css, javascript, and flash, but those were a headache to decipher and adapt. I was rather surprised at this roadblock, because I was sure I'd done it before.

And then, it hit me. Flash. Hah! You see, Macromedia (now Adobe) Flash has this option where you can export your file directly as an html page containing the swf. And you can center-align the file! Awesome! So all I had to do was replace that code with mine, and I had a real easy solution to the problem!

Recapping:
1) Make a document in flash, any size.
2) Go to Publish Settings, check the html option.
3) Head over to the new html tab. Keep the "flash alignment: vertical and horizontal" options to center & center.
4) Publish the file. You'll get an html page, where the swf is centrally aligned, and a .js file.
5) Open the html file in notepad or Dreamweaver, and simply replace the swf with your desired code. Voila, centre-aligned! Works with IE, Opera, and Firefox. You can safely delete the .js file and the javascript too!

Welcome to me!

KAILASH IYER dot COM is live!

No more need to send across pdfs to prospective clients. It's all on the net!

Best seats in the house? At the Front Stall!

Front Stall Pictures is a-go!

Here's a preview of the site:

This design is a continuation of the design I used for the visiting card, meant to convey a sense of nostalgia for days of old, when movie tickets used to be stubs.