An old woman sketch

Making of Tom & Jerry

I was talking to a friend over dinner on how earlier days of animation involved thousands of hand-drawn sketches unlike today's computer generated pictures... how 100s of hours of effort was put into a 5 minute cartoon... so here is what I found on the web.

Every second of finished film consists of 24 frames, requiring 12 to 24 drawings, depending upon the speed of movement - faster movements need more drawings per second, slower moves can be animated with less, with three or even more frames shot of every drawing (from).

And here is a small sketch that I shud have made long back :)

How to play marbles (golis)

When I was a small boy, I did not play too many sports but one game that I sure did and was good at was playing marbles. There were 2-3 versions of the game that we used play regularly.

Here is one game which I liked and where I won lot of marbles from other players. It can be played with any number of players taking turns but here is the simple two-player version.

First, we etch a rectangle shaped box in the sand(called "the box"), with a readily available wall typically designated as one of the rectangle's edges.
Then, we draw a line, about 8-10 meters from the box, from where players have to shoot the marbles.

A typical round 1:
Player 1 and Player 2 pitch in one marble each.
Player 1 goes first. He throws 2 marbles into the box from the line. Player 2 has to select a marble (lets call taboo marble) which makes it tough for palyer 1 to shoot and hit a goal. Player 1 is now supposed to shoot and hit any marble other than the taboo marble. If he hits, he wins the two marbles. If he fails, the player 2 gets a chance till one of them win...

After this round, second round starts with two marbles each.

Notes: If any of the marbles fall outside the box, player 2 uses his index finger to push the marble into the box. He tries to push it closer to the marbles inside the box so that it'll be difficult for the other player to hit the goal marble.

I always had one or two favorite marbles which I used as shooter marbles. One lucky shooter marble once earned me about 40+ marbles.

If marbles are ever broken, the play is considered dead and it has to be restarted with new marbles.

One Dollar coin

So, a girl walks up to vending machine with the intention of buying a snack...
'a dollar bill' is inserted in...
'oops! my favorite cookie isnt there' says she...
'return the money' button is hit...
'Ding'- a dollar coin falls down...
'a dollar coin'- it is the first time she is seeing one ...
'...' - I don't know the word for that expression ...
here's my comic sketch for that... :)

My geeky friend

Talking to a friend...

Me: What's up?
Her: Hi
Me: You look different.
Her: I'm totally blank.
Me: Oh, when are you not?
Her: Really, I feel high...
Me: Hmm?
Her: I went for work-out in the morning... you know lot of exercise makes me high...
Me: (chuckle..)
Her: It's true... exercise releases Endorphin which makes people get high...
I: (faint)....

Can the world get any geekier? :)