Gogi Studios - Garbage Monster Photochop Work

In my previous post I showed our latest additions to the ever growing Gogi Studios library. The Garbage Monster, now translated in Urdu and Pashto, will now be distributed in respective areas. Having a look through the book, we realized there were two pages with a semi naked mermaid in them that might not be looked favorably upon. The following is my photochop work...

Before

After

Before

After

Gogi Studios - Our Latest Book Publications

Gogi has a new book! Going Gogi - a compilation of selected cartoons.

The 'Garbage Monster'. Now available in Urdu!

...And Pashto!

Story of Younus - Color Boards

Color boards for the film, 'The Story of Younus' (commissioned by the World Bank) made together with Sabah Ingvarsson (Sweden).

Story of Younus - Character and Background Development

Commissioned by The World Bank to produce a 5 minute film on Open Defecation in backward regions around the country, I worked with my virtual team to deliver the film within the very very limited time given (less than a single month). My virtual team is spread out over various continents: Sweden, United States, Australia, Pakistan. Almost all the collaboration was done over the internet.

These are my notes over backgrounds made by Sabah Ingvarsson made over my sketches made over her color boards made over my doodles. *cough*

I tried to make the water girl sexy yet indigenously accurate. It wasn't easy.

Which is the friendliest looking 'Younus' available?

The final 'Younus' character.

Gogi Studios - Studio Space Development

Our Creative Room now has an accurate directional star on the ceiling!

I had to draw the compass star after a whole load of calculations while bending backwards at the top of a step ladder under the ceiling to get it right but I think it came out ok. Its very light right now because this is meant to be only an undercoat. We can now have fun with it and draw a face on it, a-la compass stars on treasure maps in shades of red or orange. As you can slightly tell, the rest of the walls have also been painted. The four walls are; purple, yellow, pink and green.

So far, the concept of this room is to break perceptions. To do that, I'm not having anything that lets you sit on the same level as you would on a chair in an office. You can stand, you can jump, you can lie down.

These are development sketches for the takht - a bed/table/stage like piece of furniture we are getting made customized for this room. Butt Bhai, Gogi, and the rest of the Gogi character line up, will be carved in relief around the edges of this takht.

I'm going to bring in a small trampoline. And a midi keyboard set up. And a surround sound music/dvd/images/etc. system (i.e. small tv, wireless dvd player, surround sound speaker system). Also need some white boards on the walls and maybe some more mirrors.

I still want to do much more with this room and would appreciate your ideas or opinions.
1. What should this room be called?
2. What else can I have in here to make it more 'creative'?

If you have any suggestions please leave some ideas in the comments link under this post...

Logo Design - YOUTHINK

Inspired by an illustration of her by Chanya Hetayothin, Nosheen commissioned me to make her logo for her news articles printing in the distinguished and international 'Dawn' newspaper.

I love the word play in the title so I think its good that the image is also intelligently playful.

This is the illustration of Nosheen by Chanya Hetayothin.

Sketches - Doodles

I'm too lazy to clean these up and post them properly. But one day you might see these removed and in their place beautiful colored versions of the same images. In the meantime if you have the patience (and if you dare), you can click on the images to see them larger and skim through to attempt to distinguish my thought process in these chaotic doodles. I've actually got a litle bit going on in these. Like a game of 'wheres Wally', I've got character development for my Magimals TV show idea, development of our Gogi Studios work space and some little sketches I tried to impress a girl with - who has a cooking show on a local television channel. I thought it might be cool if her opening credits were animated. Unfortunately we never really talked again since. Someone has to remind me not to make drawings to try to impress people.

Gogi Studios - Paperclip

Now that I'm Director/Lead Animator at Gogi Studios, I need to start thinking 'Gogi'. Here's a design I spun up for novel Gogi merchandising - paperclips!

TV Show - Preliminary Development Sketches

(click on the images to see them properly)

I've decided a TV show would be the best way to start animation on a large scale in Pakistan. I know it'll take time, but why wait til tomorrow what you can start developing today...

These are sketches from one of my TV show ideas, "A Boy and his Hair". It features a band of rockers of which theres an apathetic and lazy boy who's hair is alive and has the complete opposite personality than that of the boy. It also features his grandmother, who is a rock guitarist/drummer and may have been an evil super villain in her younger years.

Logo Design - Bilours Family Crest

To make a little pocket money on the side, I agreed to go back to my Graphic Designing roots and make the family crest for a friend's friend.

Moleskine - Random Selected Moleskine Sketches

Saw the theatrical play, "Dinner with an Idiot" adapted and directed by my good friend Faheem Azam and I was blown away to say the least. The story was a highly artistic adaptation of the French movie (of the same name) perfectly catered to the Islamabadi/Pakistani sense of humor - and in the Urdu language for once(!) Every actor was phenomenal and maintained full control over the stage. There wasn't a pause in laughing until the show was over. If there were any errors, they were all covered flawlessly.

The best part was that they didn't turn the lights down as they normally might in a play like this, so I had a great time quick sketching the awesome animated poses and expressions each strong character moved in.

An evening at the popular "Paper Microphone" and the ex tempo artist performances were great. I love places like these. I get to meet like minded strangers.

Just playing around with character development while thinking of how Gogi might be redesigned too.

The left side was sketched while at 'Hot Spot', a popular ice cream joint in Islamabad. The rest were scribbled while in a meeting at the Environment Ministry with the Minister of Environment (and a whole bunch of other high position people).

It's so much fun sketching at Jam sessions; looking at these sketches again reminds me that I want to go more often. Pretty good guy and getting to know friend, Uzair Jaswal is in these sketches too. I think it would be great to make an animated music video for him. I just feel like the songs I've heard of his so far aren't a perfect reflection of my impression of his personality and it would just be so much more fun to make a video with the ideas I have in my head instead of making a formulaic video without any feel.

After Effects Exercise - The Queen... in Vegas

Since this was an exercise in compositing images in motion using still images to practice on, I didn't 'allow' myself to use anything more than the pen tool to lasso images together.

Margalla Hills Signage

Time to crash course through the passed six months or so. I was working on a lot of projects in this time; I just didn't have time to post them here.

These were suggestions for signage along the Margalla Hills. I thought it would be good to add a little humor while I was at it. ...But why haven't they made these yet?