SURES KUMAR'S BLOG

Lebara TV Unboxing

2013-08-12T11:55:00.000-07:00

Inspiration (Ink and Brush)

2012-08-23T10:07:00.000-07:00

Spent an evening sketching few inspiring figures.

Steven Spielberg (Film Maker)

Woody Allen (Film Maker)

Pablo Picasso (Artist)

Jean Baudrillard (Philosopher)

Christopher Nolan (Film Maker)

Akira Kurosawa (Film Maker)

Satyajit Ray (Film Maker)

Marshall McLuhan (Media Theorist)

Ink and Brush

2012-08-07T04:29:00.000-07:00

I did not know that alcohol markers are not supposed to be used in imperial sheets. Apparently they should be used in really thin papers (like less than 80 GSM). The imperial sheets kind of sucked all the ink in few sketches :-( no worries, I have friends to help me refill it :-) Thanks to Vidhi again. But meanwhile I was little restless and thought of trying water colors. Using water color for portraits was easier than markers or pencils. It was fast and effective. More than all, I loved the feel of it..

Dhivya Sharma, Kanchan Malhotra and Ritika Agarwal

Pen and Marker

2012-08-07T03:28:00.000-07:00

Tried my hands on sketching portraits using black pen and alcohol marker. Thanks to Xavier for leading me to buy those amazing black pens and also thanks a ton to Vidhi for giving some cool tips on how to use those markers. These are the first few sketches using Pen and Marker.

MP Ranjan

Vaibhav Jain

Ira Ivanova

Interesting Packaging of Filter Coffee

2012-03-29T01:46:00.001-07:00

Who is the author of C?

2012-02-09T03:49:00.000-08:00

Inspired by Ramu

The New Madras (in SOHO, New York)

2011-06-07T14:16:00.000-07:00

Teaching light painting to my niece

2010-11-25T07:01:00.000-08:00

Taught Light Painting to my 11 years old niece yesterday. Was an amazing experience. She has no idea about photography so I have to draw analogy between eyes, memory, painting, writing etc to make her understand how a camera works. And explaining concepts like shutter speed and focal length etc were quite challenging. To my surprise she learned it very quickly.

After teaching any concept, she will ask me to click a pic with those settings. She learned it by seeing it working. Was interesting to observe. Remembered how we struggled in NID to learn the same concept with loads of explanations and ray diagrams :-)

These are few light paintings painted during the session.

Memories.

2010-11-15T08:54:00.000-08:00

Was cleaning some old stuffs and came across these old floppy disks, CDs and HDDs.. I have a special attachment with these stuffs. I still couldn forget the day I bought my first CD. Its a Office 2000 disk. I used to literally sit and count how many floppy disks I have to stack to compensate the data capacity of one CD. Later came Windows Me. Slowly CDs became a common thing. Those days, apart from softwares there was nothing to store which will occupy this much capacity. Movies / Songs were not quite common in CDs. The only files I could possibly generate were tally files, word files and html files saved from internet which all put togeather wont exceed even few 100 MBs. Then came mp3 songs. slowly my 4 GB HDD was full. Then I moved to 10 GB followed by 40 GB which stayed for a long time. My first Comp had 32 MB SD-RAM with which I could play only NFS II. My first customer gave an order for an PC with 64 MB RAM. Whoa! It was a day for gaming. NFS III requies a minimum of 64 MB RAM. So played NFS III for one full day. Today we have 4 GB RAMs but still I see my friends complaining "System is too slow, I think we should upgarde the RAM".

The first boot disk I created.

First CD bought for Rs. 500.

Now its all crap ! :-( (and is getting thrown away)

I have seen the shift of technology from wordstar (WS) to microsoft word. DOS to Windows 95 - cursor with program manager. Dave to Wolf 3d, Quake 3d, etc... LOGO, GWBasic, Foxpro to C, C++, VB, Java, Oracle. Lotus123 to Microsoft Excel. B/W CRT serial monitor to 14" Colour CRT monitor to 21" TFT Flat monitor. 16 MB RAM to 4 GB RAM. 300 MB HDD to 1 TB HDD.

But still I am preserving few memorable things.

Cannot forget the days without Google, Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, Orkut, Linkedin, YouTube, Torrents, IRCTC, CD, DVD, Blue Ray, mp4, divX, USB port, Pen Drive, Wi Fi, Bluetooth, Photoshop (to my access), DSL connection and the list goes on...

play

2010-11-08T06:33:00.001-08:00

Projection Mapping Prototype

2010-08-14T03:21:00.000-07:00

This video is a documentation of the prototype done for the course "Embedded Systems and Interaction Design" at National Institute of Design, India.

Hardware: Sharp XR-10S DLP Projector
Software: Autodesk Maya and VPT 4.1

Team members:
Sures Kumar
Promila Roychoudhury

Acknowledgments:
Khakhar Jignesh
Nagar Bhaumik
Panchal Ujjval
Pathan Arshad

FRAMEWORKS

2010-08-08T02:00:00.000-07:00

FRAMEWORKS is an interactive installation based on the principle of mixed reality, which tries to enhance the meaning of an architectural space. We tried achieving it by developing a game, where a virtual character plays with the real space, walls and depth.

This video is a documentation of the display for the course "Embedded Systems and Interaction Design" at National Institute of Design, India.

Hardware: Arduino duemilanove - ATmega168, 3 axis Accelerometer, 1 axis Gyroscope and Sharp XR-10S DLP Projector
Software: Processing 1.0 and Autodesk Maya

Team members: Sures Kumar and Promila Roychoudhury
Project co-ordinator: Jignesh Khakhar
Guide: Ujjval Panchal and Bhaumik Nagar
Electronics guidance: Arshad Pathan

Microcosm - National Institute of Design, Gandhinagar after a rainy day [HD]

2010-07-22T06:03:00.000-07:00

Location: National Institute of Design, Gandhinagar (PG Campus)
Date: July 2010
Camera: Sony Cyber-shot DSC-WX1/B

VR Glove Prototype v 2 0 Ping Pong Game with Physical Boundaries

2010-07-18T08:31:00.000-07:00

This video is a documentation of the prototype "Ping Pong Game with Physical boundaries on an architectural wall" done for the course "Embedded Systems and Interaction Design" at National Institute of Design, India.

Hardware: Arduino, 3 axis Accelerometer and Gyroscope
Software: Processing 1.0

Team members: Sures Kumar and Promila Roychoudhury
Project co-ordinator: Jignesh Khakhar
Guide: Ujjval Panchal and Bhaumik Nagar
Electronics guidance: Arshad Pathan

VR Glove - Prototype v 1.0 (Navigating in 3 dimensional space)

2010-07-07T08:21:00.000-07:00

This video is a documentation of the prototype done for the course "Embedded Systems and Interaction Design" at National Institute of Design, India.

Hardware: Arduino, 3 axis Accelerometer, Gyroscope and Force Pressure Sensor (FPS)
Software: Processing 1.0

Team members: Sures Kumar and Promila Roychoudhury
Project co-ordinator: Jignesh Khakhar
Guide: Ujjval Panchal and Bhaumik Nagar
Electronics guidance: Arshad Pathan

Now Google in Erode !

2010-05-25T01:58:00.001-07:00

Yes! believe it or not.. Google has opened its new cafe named as "Google Systems" in erode, tamilnadu ;-)

Infosys Mysore Campus

2010-03-27T03:34:00.000-07:00

Recently I had a chance to visit Mysore.
Met Manikandan after a very long time and he took me to Infosys mysore campus.
I loved the campus... Here are few pics..

For more high res pics click here

Sound Design by Rajivan Ayyappan in NID, Gandhinagar (PG Campus)

2010-02-02T02:55:00.000-08:00

We had a Sound Design Workshop by Rajivan Ayyappan. We were exposed to concepts like soundscape, sound mapping etc.. In the first few days, he made us roam around the campus and near by areas to observe different kinds of sounds generated naturally. Further we were asked to collect any waste / useless material from campus and explore various possibilities of generating unique sounds from it. Initially we were trying to make sounds with patterns which were sounding good but he encouraged us to get rid of the patterns and generate sounds which are absract in nature.

In the end of the course, we did a 10 minutes performance in Bubble Square, NID Gandhinagar Campus. Even though none of the students from other departments understood what we are trying to perform, they gathered around, enjoyed and applauded.

First milestone achieved in my multitouch project :-)

2009-12-04T22:43:00.000-08:00

This video was shot when the blobs were visible for the first time after some 4-5 days of hardwork :-)

Widescreen wallpapers from crazy drawings

2009-11-29T08:25:00.000-08:00

Hi guys..
Its been a long time since I blogged..
Was involved in an animation project (link). Will put a blog post explaining that very soon..
Recently I have been learning a lot about art history and stuffs like that.. I have always wondered what all those great paintings mean and why they are valued soo much.. in short I was basically trying to learn “art appreciation”
Saw Pollock, Frida and Incognito and was truly inspired.
From my childhood, I have always been trying to replicate scenaries, potraits, cartoons etc on the name of drawing.. have never really tried to create something on my own.. in fact no one really appreciated that in my environment.. the more a potrait looks real, the more people appreciated it.. now after watching all these great artist’s works, I came to know that all these guys had their own style… I mean its very unique. Some trying to express in a new way.. some trying to create a new language and all that..
Then after long discussions with my room mate, I dedided to discover whats my style or way of expression..
One of my very good friend presented me a camel soft pastels. So started exploring by drawing crazy drawings daily… I really enjoyed this process.. had no aims as such.. no rules.. no one to impress.. I even went to the extent of pouring odomos ointment, soap and mud over the canvas.. was really awesome.. felt like a kid.. you wont believe, most of the drawings were having elements what I already know.. I mean there was hardly anything new.. felt very disappointing.. but didn give up.. kept drawing again and again.. in diff moods.. tried to express anger, passion, love, hunger, irritation etc.. was a good excersise I guess..
In the later drawings, slowly something new started popping up.. I really got excited.. but again it was very less..
Nearly after 3 weeks, now I am understanding how difficult it is to come up with a unique style in art.
Did some photoshop works on these drawings.. was real fun.. loved those bright colours.. have never really enjoyed drawing and colours like this till now.. created some widescreen wallpapers from the drawings. Have listed few of them… will keep adding.. my exploration will never end until I figure out my own style…

These are some of the original drawings from which all the above wallpapers were made.. all are drawn in camel soft pastels (something like crayons)

Garba and Durga Pooja in National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad

2009-10-03T10:51:00.000-07:00

Here in Gujarat Navaratri is celebrated in a very grand manner. People dance every night in large gatherings. A very powerful music is played (using Indian percussion instruments). Both men and women usually wear colorful costumes while performing garba. The girls and the women wear ghaghra choli, a three-piece dress with choli on the top and ghaghra as bottom, made of cotton with beads, shells, mirrors, sitars, and embroidery work, mati, jhumkas, necklaces, bindi, bajubandh, chudas and kangans, kamarbandh, payal, and mojiris and dupatta tucked in the Gujarati manner. Boys and men wear kafni pyjamas with a kediyu - a short round kurta - above the knees and pagadi on the head with bandhini dupatta, kada, and mojiris.

Here in NID, Garba is celebrated in a very grand manner. The first 8 days were usual garba dances where people from different parts of Ahmedabad come and joined. Every student gets a pass to bring in 4 guests. Thus a lot of family members, friends and “friends” join the dance. People really have fun.

The last day is celebrated in a very special manner.. There is this “Diya Dance” where every student carries two diyas and dances Garba. All the lights nearby were switched off. The ambiance was amazing ! totally dark and hundreds of people dancing with lights in their hand. Heavy Mystic Music. That experience can never be shared or explained.. It can only be felt.. I am thankful and happy that I attended and was a part of it.

These are the Diya decorations in the entrance.... nearly 20-30 such installations were made..
It gave a very warm welcome to everyone..

Long distance view... (with slow shutter speed)

Durga pooja installation in NID

Visual Design Principles by Mr. Rupesh Vyas in NID Gandhinagar (PG Campus)

2009-09-23T11:22:00.000-07:00

Hello all, Its been a long time since I blogged. Got stuck with loads of assignments and “Garba” ! We had Visual Design Principles by Mr. Rupesh Vyas for a week. We learnt about colour and compositions. Did a lot of hands on exercises too. We also had a short intro to Typography and Semiotics. We had a visual thinking and brain storming session where we were asked to communicate only through drawings for half a day. I had great fun in communicating with the chai walas… When it came to discussion using visuals we really had a hard time. But at the end of the day I was surprised that communicating nouns and action related words were very easy when compared to words like “hi.. good morning..” “How are you?” “Bye..” etc.. We were not allowed to use numbers or any form of language during this exercise. In typography we were introduced to type face, family and classification. Then we did Typographic Amalgamations where we have to take two characters and combine them with the set of rules to bring about a good looking composition. It was challenging. The most challenging part of the assignment is that we have to portray three different characters of a person in 15 different styles from his / her name. Oh god.. It was soo difficult… but when we started playing with the letters we understand a lot of meanings involved in it. Putting hours and hours of hard work in it was worth it. Mr. Rupesh Vyas gave enough freedom to play around with our creativity and then he will comment on the work instead of telling everything as a “step by step procedure”. This made everyone to come up with something new.

Here are some of my works..

The Making shots...

Experiences with Kyoorius Design Yatra ’09 (KDY)

2009-09-07T10:37:00.000-07:00

Every thing we decide, atleast in a friends / college group starts with a “brainwashing session”. Even the same happened here… Students from arts background gave a good hype about this event. Actually I think this is the strongest form of marketing for Kyoorius guys (just kidding). No one from engineering background was ready to go initially due to many reasons. One among it was the cost involved and secondly no one knows about the speakers and bla blaa... But finally due to peer pressure, one by one started signing up. More than the regular conference, students were more interested in the workshops. They paid 500 to 1000 rupees extra for these workshops.

After registering through the website, we got a call (by the next afternoon). The Kyoorius Design Yatra Team (KDY Team) was asking for the registration confirmation and then the regular procedures followed. Later we all got an invoice via email.

The problems started from here.. One student who wanted to attend a workshop signed up for it. But they (KDY Team) said its full. Other student who signed up after this student got that workshop (how do you explain this ! ) This created a lot of disrespect to the KDY Team and few students were even completely irritated by the way the telephone calls have been answered.

Everyone paid through diff means and one student didn’t get the invoice till the last moment. When called, they were like “we will check and respond” kinds. Lots of phone calls / confusions in booking train tickets etc were going on. This student got completely pissed and decided not to attend the event.

I really don’t know how much time will it take to generate an invoice and send it via email. At the max 5 mins? They delayed it for more than 2-3 days… actually you will be surprised to hear when the invoice reached : - ) let me tell it later.

Then the next problem. We (4 students) deposited the money from a single account to their bank account. Then sent the scanned deposit receipt via email as per their request. No reply / acknowledgement from their side. (Fine… I thought they will be busy with their last min arrangements)

After 3 days someone from KDY Team calls and says “4 students haven paid the money yet”. Then again we sent the receipt to the newly mentioned email id. Then after few mins we get another call from a completely new person telling that we haven paid the money and when we mentioned that we just mailed it to kavitanomulwar@tafp.in … he is like… “its ok you please send it again to bharatgosia@tafp.in”. Then again in few mins another call.. “hey you send the receipt details to nehaltantia@tafp.in also”. In between I even asked, “cant you ask your colleague bharatgosia to forward it ?” the reply is like “you please send it as soon as possible, if you want to attend the conference”.

For gods sake.. it’s a single email with a single receipt copy. We explained this to all the people who called us. They are not even in a position to listen to what we were talking.. at last its like.. “its ok sir.. you please send that email again to bharatgosia@tafp.in"

Even that’s ok.. after a day one more new person called and asked the most dumb questions possible. Its like everyone has selected different packages. So the cost to be paid also varies. All that is clearly mentioned in our email. Moreover all these details are available in their invoice itself. The lady asks “Why is that this particular student paid extra?” I mean why will someone pay extra? either she could have referred to the invoice sent to that particular person.. or why all that.. it’s a simple guess. It’s a rounded amount 500 or 1000 extra.. its so obvious that he / she has paid for the workshops.. When I explained her this, she was like “ohhhhhh ok ok ok ok I got it…” I really felt like I am talking to a customer care person who doesn know anything about the product !

What to doooooooo ????? We have paid the money… We followed whatever was instructed to us.

At last we were all set to go.. We also successfully went to Mumbai.. Mumbai welcomed us with a huge rain. Have heard a lot about Mumbai rain.. but for the first time I experienced it.. (no words to explain!) it was pouring literally… that too the funny part was, it rained exactly from morning till afternoon and stopped after that… generally I have seen either it rains all through the day or it will start in the evening and will continue all through the night.. this rain pattern was quite new to me : - )

I stayed in Thane - Ishwari Vakhariya’s house. We got wonderful hospitality. Great food! Something which I can never forget for sure… That too all new varieties… I tasted every single dish with full excitement. Stay in their home was a real awesome experience.

There I met this wonderful gifted girl “Rucha” – Ishwari’s sister. She is doing her applied art in J.J. School of Arts, Mumbai. She has made some wonderful paintings which were soo hard to differentiate from reality. We truly got inspired by her quality of work, the amount of patience and creativity involved in it.. Was a real good inspiration to all of us..

I started from Ishwari’s house in Thane and reached a place called “Mulund Check Naka (west)”, which is the separator of Thane from Mumbai. The Auto Rickshaws which are running in Thane can’t enter the Mumbai premises due to some legal issues. Thus we got to get down and take a new auto (in that heavy rain). So I got down.

I had three options. Either I can take a taxi or auto or bus.

Obviously I didn’t take taxi as I thought it will be beyond my budget. I didn’t take bus because I have to find the nearby bus stand and even if I find it.. it will take time.. I hardly had some 1 hour for the conference to start.

I am almost wet by now : - ) no place to stand in that road. And here comes the real problem.
I chose to take an auto rickshaw. There are some 50-100 auto rickshaws coming in line in that road. There are some 100 people standing on the side of that road trying to stop those autos. Everyone comes nearby and the moment you say where to go, they will node their head and leave the place asap. What non sense ! they were literally treating us like shit.. People (Customers) are standing in the center of the road in that rain and literately begging at them to take in and they just pass by without stopping. I really got shocked to see this incident.

In Chennai when a customer is in need, generally auto guys will try to take it as an advantage and will charge him more. Here its not the case. Certain people were even ready to pay more, but the auto was not stopping. Even I asked many people around on whats happening.. no one had a clue… only few people (who are lucky) will get picked up by an auto. God only knows what was happening there…

Later when I was talking to one of the girl from the conference, even she told getting an auto takes atleast ½ hour in Mumbai. Its not that easy it seems : - )

Whats happening ? We keep hearing about unemployment and poverty.

I am seeing people in trouble and are willing to pay any amount to travel in emergency and no one is there to take them. Its even ok if they don’t take.. but atleast they can tell the reason na.. some 100 auto passed by and I am stopping all the 100 autos and bending down and asking in that heavy rain and they don’t even bother to reply me. I felt really irritated from inside. After half an hour try.. I gave up… I called Ishwari to ask for a suggestion. She suggested me to take a bus. Thus I walked to the nearest bus stand and took a bus.. I think it took another one hour to reach the place in that traffic.

At last I reached some 1/2 hour late as the conference itself started some 1 hour late.

We had Rob Wagemans from Concrete Architectural Associates, Markus Pretnar from 3Deluxe, Jacob van Rijs from MVRDV, Ole Bouman from Netherlands Architecture Institute, Ross Lovegrove, Raphael van Amerongen from Merkx Girod, Arno Twight & Jim Smith from QuA, Hugo Van Den Bos from Koeweiden Postma, Priya Paul from Park Hotels, Willem Woudenberg from Edenspiekermann, Shanoo Bhatia from Eureka Moment Design, Ben Terrett from Really Interesting Group, Rodney Fitch from Fitch, Paul Hughes from LAVA, Michael Wolff from Michael Wolff and Company, Jochem Leegstra from ...,staat, Richard van der Laken from De Designpolitie, Anthony Lopez from Lopez Design, Raphael Grignani from Nokia and Barry Schwarz & Koen Van Ovoorde from Addikt.

When I stepped into the conference hall, Ross Lovegrove was showing his works.. he showed his water bottle design, watch and a stair case in his studio. All his work were almost perfect (99.999%). He loves and achieves this one thing called perfection. Personally I felt his designs to be quite hypothetical. But it had a lot of creativity in it.

I liked Addikt’s work the best… Personality wise.. I liked Michael and Anthony. Michael has this powerful voice and the way he puts his stories were truly amazing.. reminds me of Steve Job’s speech in Stanford.

I liked the ambiance in Renaissance conference hall, Mumbai. The best part is.. when I saw the same work of Addikt in my laptop after coming back, I am not getting that “feel”. Its not just about the big screen and amazing sound.. ambiance really matters… and I liked it there !

My friends had a very bad experience with the event management people regarding workshops.. that spoiled the good feeling that we gained for the past 3 days. It is still to be sorted out.. if it doesn get resolved, I will come up with the next post : - )

This is the most funniest part. The conference is over and we all came back to Ahmedabad. If you remember, one student who got completely pissed off and didn attend the conference... her invoice reached :-)

To conclude.. I will say that a conference like Kyoorius with such amazing speakers can be organized in a much better way. For example proto.in - a startup conference was conducted 10 times better than Kyoorous by a very small team. I am not comparing in terms of quality. I am comparing in terms of organization etc.. and the lack of screening the crowd made the conference a quite unsuccessful one from my point of view. Apart from that, I enjoyed, got inspired and learned a lot from Kyoorous Design Yatra ‘09

A much better view has been shared by one of my most respected friend Mayukhini. Click here to read her view.

Official Website of Kyoorous DesignYatra '09 (Kyoorius Exchange)

(ADM) Apparel and Design Management's Colour and Composition Display @ NID, Ahmedabad

2009-08-29T13:19:00.001-07:00

Application of Visual Design Principles in Indian Cinematography for the movie "Boys"

2009-08-29T00:53:00.001-07:00

We learnt a lot about visual design principles. here are few good shots from the movie "Boys" by Shankar. Cinematography is done by Ravi K. Chandran