Emergency

This serie also appears on 'Longest Strip-Comic spree' of FKN2012. I do really want revenge for my failures at the strip-comic spree.

Then one interesting question comes up, am I going to revive Burd after a long year hiatus? Let's see.

Festival Komik Nasional 2012

Hi,
Long time no see. I realize time flies really fast and it's end of the year already with the new rainy season in Indonesia. Jakarta is -again- sinking as it used to and Yogyakarta is being flooded by tons of cars and tourists from all over Java and other islands as well.

People ride their wide-cars and jamming the traffic almost everywhere it makes transjogja buses stuck and late. It sucks when we should wait at the bus stop for half-and-an hour for a ride.

I like this city when it's quiet :D.

An Indonesian comic festival marks and celebrates the new year at Jogja National Museum (JNM) which runs from 27-30 December. It's quite festive, comic lovers and artists from all over Jogja are crowding the scene, enjoying the wide range of comic style presented there, and also eagerly waiting for any seminar and launching the festival has arranged.

Fellow artists were launching their books, such as Apriyadi (Ganes TH's remake Si Buta dari Gua Hantu), Kurnia (Koel dalam Galau and 9 Ciri Negatif Manusia Indonesia), & Matto (Wokwok Magazine - Lesehan Studio). I came on one of them, though I didn't quite like the launch ceremony.

Wokwok Magz mascot, the moderator, and Kurnia at 'Koel dalam Galau' launching

One of the events at the FKN 2012 is 'Longest Comic Strip spree', it consists of at least 134 comic strip artworks from 134 different artists. I found it appealing before I started doodling on the page with a broad-soft-purple marker the organizer provided and it appalled me (yes, you suck, FaberCastell :D ) ...

I tried to whittle the marker but it worth ink dribble all over the place I had to do the outlines faster.

look at the crowd! :D

the crowd and the artists

different styles

an interview with Hasmi

they're using their own tools T__T

watch out! we have a ninja over here :D

look,  it's Burd!

Yet it was fun to see other people drawing at the same room, within the same page format, and with the same tools (some people used their own marker and had better results, damn you LOL), and saw a lot of different outcomes. And I saw an interesting scene where this 7 or 8 years girl wrote and signed her name on the artist list with her LEFT hand!! I wonder which was her artwork. LEFT hand! You don't often see someone drawing with his/her left hand right?

Despite all of the fun, A LOT of improvements should be considered. I couldn't find the events rundown list other than the ones announced the morning before events in facebook. The world is NOT only facebook and I think people need schedule to read and to plan their visiting time before D-Day and H-Hour.

Secondly, the delayed events. It happens a lot especially in FKN's comic launchings and colloquiums. I think FKN 2012 needs some kind of, I don't know, a show off or attraction to appeal people come to the events on time or toys or whatever. I think one good suggestion is costume-play (cosplay). With hot girls dressing as heroines or bunnies and perhaps, tits bouncing all over the place. People will LOVE it a lot :D ...

Nevertheless, today is the last day of FKN. If you happen having the new year vacation at Jogja, be free to come over Jogja National Museum and enjoy the comics!! 

The Deadline

Time flies really fast. Sept, 30th is coming already, new project awaits us in the morrow, and we're not finished with the Leyak and Lost Lollipop. Today also marks the end of our campaign with wujudkan.com, thanks to all of you who helps us with our 72 days campaign, we're running the compose and mixing at these weeks. So you wouldn't wait the release for long.

Big thanks to Lisa Kresnawan, she had helped us spread the words of this campaign on its initial days.
Special thanks to Andreas Hery Saputra, whose Kolam Bebek community helped us promoted Rara and The Ricketies at the Jalan Sesama event.

Thanks to everyone at wujudkan.com for helping us promoted our project, I hope our project had promoted your site as well :D ...

enjoy!

Today's Paint

What would you do if you were too bored to do your current works?
I'd do a doodle. This time, it took about 3 hours to complete and in fact, I need more references on how to paint the hair, though.

How To Do Them

Good evening!

Wujudkan.com has had us attend some kind of small dialogue this evening, to talk about Rara and The Ricketies project. One of the questions is - and we found it intriguing - 'which character do you think unique most? And how to draw it?'

Then, here you go! We compiled how-to-do Wolai and Balak, yet the language is Indonesian. I suppose the drawing explains a lot. Otherwise, you'll need Google translate.

Wolai Speed Paint

Good morning everyone! 

Guten morgen!

Ohayou gozaimasu, minna!

Selamat pagi!

Goede morgen!

Bonjour!

Work Boost...

Two of our recent morning speed paints training. 

We somehow need to do this more often to enhance our works.

The Starks are right. Deadline is coming. :D

Artwork Giveaway

Hello,
Did you enjoy our Indonesian's Proclamation Day's artwork? We have something to offer. We're having a campaign over our miniseries at wujudkan.com. We need you to support us to fund our project of Rara and The Ricketies miniseries.

We're going to make 3 short series of Rara's adventure, 3 up to 5 minutes each. It's going to be fun, of course. We'll be having Leyak and The Lost Lollipop at the end of September no matter the outcome of  the campaign. At least we're sharing and having our fun together! :D

This A5 artwork is going to be yours should you support us there.  Enjoy!

67th Independence Day of Republic of Indonesia

Good afternoon!
It's been a while since our last post. Yep, we're dashing the second gag along with the assets creation of Leyak and Lost Lollipop, and we thought, 'we've forgot the updates, let us post something at August 17th'.

I think today is very special day for Indonesians and its Moslem people. Why? Because this is our Independence day, the 67th and this is the last Ramadhan's Friday for Moslems and in two days, there will be Ied al Fitr for them.

It's not very festive though. The students are having their field ceremony as always (not to mention the ceremony always lasts half an hour longer than usual), TVRI broadcasts the palace ceremony as well (and relayed by other national TV channels), our neighborhood is not making any contests like sack race, pull-the-coins-from-a-fruit, pinang climbing, and a question always occurs in every 17th: "have we been free yet?"

A tricky question, however. There are thousands of ways to answer that. Perhaps, "Well, there are poor people, millions more than last year. We're not free yet." or "A lot of potential corruption cases are still nowhere to be seen, free is still out of our reach" or "No gold at this year's Olympic Games. We're not free from pussies!!" etc.

It's easy to find others' faults, or the cracks on the wall. It's also easy to points then blame at someone's failure than admitting ourselves' flops. I admit there are a lot of stuff need to be done and a lot to learn. So let us learn, work, and keep moving on the next challenge ahead of all of us. I think those are our best way to keep this freedom our predecessors gave, alive.

Layouts sheet 2

 

Yay! Another sheet of layouts we're working at Rara and The Ricketies project.

Let's crank it up!!

Layouts sheet 01

These are few of the layouts we're working at Leyak and Lost Lollipop. It's really fun in working at it...

De Stille Kracht

Good afternoon! It's time for another update for our Leyak and Lost Lollipop.

Rara reads books a lot. This time she's reading 'De Stille Kracht' by Louis Couperus. The cover design is taken from original published book at 1900 by L.J Veen company. It was in Dutch (since the Netherland colonized East Indie at that time), and I think that was one of first books told about ghosts and superstitious matters in Java.

Potjong, jailangkung, and Kuntilanak was mentioned there as unique culture product of East-Indie inlanders.

De Stille Kracht was republished and translated by Oxford University Press in 1992 as 'The Hidden Force'...

Special Blend

"It's my special blend. Can't guarantee the flavour though. It's different each time." - Baron Humbert von Gikkingen

The quote comes from a cat character appears on 'Neko no Ongaeshi' (The Cat Returns). It was the scene when the cat baron served a cup of tea to his female office's guest, Haru. When she (Haru) said, "delicious!" the cat replied, "then you're lucky." 

Kind of cool way to be very confident about your odd works. If it was good, the guest is lucky, and if it was lousy, you would just need to apologize to your guest and get rid of the 'blend' then move on to the next 'blend'. Either way, the guest has already sip your blend :D ...

It's awesome to have Ghibli's works as our huge references (alongside with Pixar's), the way the characters move, jump, enjoying every nook and cranny of the scenes and see the beauty of hand-drawn animation into life.

We're not trying to be like Ghibli though. We learn a lot from them. And we're just noobs trying to make something good. We know our blend wouldn't be as awesome as you expected, but it's a huge honour for us you're watching our works.

enjoy!

The Dark Knight Rises

“I'm sorry, Master Wayne, I failed you...” -  Alfred J. Pennyworth

Okay, an off topic post from Rara and The Ricketies posts but, I think I need to jot it down.

I've always been waiting for a week after a particular movie was on theatre screen. I have had three main reasons why. On top of all, I'm too lazy to get into a very long queue and wait for another hour to see the movie. Other reason is that I'd prefer a more vacant auditorium than its premiere week-shows. And last, the ticket is always cheaper than its premiere. Haters gonna hate, haha!

Well, this time, it's The Dark Knight Rises (TDKR) I've been waiting for. My sister and brother had already watched it and they really adore how thrilling it was. Thank the gods, I also always expect less than other people talked about, it's just to make sure that it would blow me off and make me cheering or otherwise, I wouldn't disappoint too much (consider the movie really sucks). My expectation comes while the film is throwing premises. Clues. At least if your expectation was wrong, you'd like to be surprised and mind-blown in an entertaining way.

OK, haters gonna hate, with all due respects to Chris Nolan whom has had us great times with Inception and The Dark Knight, TDKR is ill-favoured. Perhaps The Dark Knight and Inception has had me subconsciously expect that TDKR should be like them or... I don't know.

Why do I claim so? Spoiler alert, mate. So please stop and close this note if you haven't seen the movie yet. Otherwise, you would have your expectations ruined by my utter nonsenses.

First of all, as I have claimed before, I always expect less. I don't want epic car-chasing or bullets whooshing around or explosions or some superheroes kick some arses. I just want the movie or particular scene has you GET INTO it. You want to feel the thrill, the joy, being fun at, the sadness, being punched or hurt by the villain, or you-name-them.

On the opening acts, we see Bane has an awesome mission (at least that was stuff I felt when I see how Bane hijacked an CIA aircraft). And also until Bane brings Wayne into the pit, I was hoping he will bring Gotham into chaos, panic amongst the residents of being cut off of the world. I wanted to feel like one of Gotham's resident, being in confusion and fear perhaps, because there were blasts all over the city, the 'Bastille prison' is happening, and a 'French-revolution-wannabe' starts.

Alas no. None of the feeling was present. Instead, I just saw the newsmen and football spectators gawked, watched Bane talking gibberish about a nuclear bomb at the stadium and reading Gordon's letter on top of some accustomed bat mobiles. What if the bomb is a fake? What if the letter is phony? What if...  -Okay you're thinking too much. Just enjoy it, yeah?-

Then we see Wayne was exiled into a godforsaken pit at an Arabic desert after being beaten to pulp by Bane in the Gotham sewer. Wayne was stripped off of his bat costume and left to die, both his soul and his body. It's a cool way to torture a person as naïve as Wayne though. No ID, no gadgets, no smartphones, no shoes, no Lucius Fox, and no Alfred while seeing Gotham's being destroyed slowly (for 5 months! Whoaa!). Yet Wayne conquers the tests and managed to escape the pit after about four months and dozens of efforts climbing the pit. Actually this is a good message to make you rise from failure!

But how the hell does he manage to get into Gotham in less than 10 hours and pops out then meet Selina???!? From Arabic desert? No ID? No smartphones? No Fox? No Alfred? Blablabla?

My possible explanation is that Wayne has had the auto-pilot codes patched into 'The Bat' software six months before and then helps him get out of Arabic desert. But how the hell does he call it?? He was stripped off of his bat costume (and of course, his gadgets) for gods' sake!!

Actually I was really hoping TO SEE Wayne outwits Bane get off the deserted land and get into Gotham after all the premises the movie had thrown at me. Batman is not Superman. He has gadgets, skills, determinations, fortunes, and above all, wits. He already did it when he escaped the pit without gadgets but... -Okay you're thinking too much. Just enjoy it, yeah?-

No, mate! My mind is blowing in an uncomfortable way! There are more stuff I'd like to talk about but I think it would be too long to read. Some of them are: Batman suddenly popped out of nowhere to save Blake,  Batman fire logo on the bridge, and there was a tunnel to go outside Gotham and apparently no one knows about it but Wayne and two members of League of Shadows (euh, I'm not sure about the name, CMIIW yeah?)...

If you let me compare this with TDK - despite some flops on its editing and I don't actually like or adore any superheroes – I could feel how evil and insane Joker was, more than anybody else told him so. Daggett clearly said, “You're pure evil” to Bane, but it sounded wrong. I suppose he did it as his loyalty to his duty, to his organization, to Ra's Al Ghul's ideology, and to his master, Thalia Al Ghul.

I think another comparison comes from Pixar's animated movie, Brave. It was hillarious, heart-warming, and I was nearly burst into tear, really. There were also two female college students sitting on my right, laughing a lot and having their eyes wet and their noses full of tears after the movie ended. These small clues brought me to conclude that 'Brave' has successfully had us GET INTO its world.

I know some of you would suggest that I shouldn't compare Brave and TDKR since they have different genre. Alas, genre is genre, a movie is a movie. If you went to see a thriller movie, you'd want to be thrilled. If you went to see a romance movie, you'd want your heart thumping and hold your-someone-you-love's  hand. If you went to see a horror movie, you'd want to be freaked out and had the ghosts of the movie terrorize your sleep.

But hey, I think Alfred left Wayne was a memorable scene of the movie, though I didn't really like the way he went emo.  I suppose Batman/Wayne needs someone to cling onto, an advisor, and a friend who mocks him gently when he fails and says, “Why do we fall, Master Wayne?” (okay, I forgot the next line - I think it's "so we can get ourselves up"? :D) instead of someone who leaves when having some different opinions about life and stuff. When Alfred left, Wayne lost another part of his soul, perhaps like he lost Rachel, and made anger conquers Wayne that leads him to failures.

And perhaps... 'failures' is one of TDKR's tag names.

Rara and Balak

This is Balak. A Sumatran elephant (Elephas maximus sumatranus). He's strong, quiet, and remembers almost everything he had encountered. He's actually kind-hearted but lazy for most of the time and sleeps a lot :D ...

I'm really enjoying an elephant character from a children magazine, 'Bona', which has pink skin, wide ear, and a very extensive and retractable snout. It's very attentive and somehow always appear in my mind when I created an elephant character. But no, Balak doesn't has a retractable snout and a very wide ear, but he has an incredible strength comes from his snout and body.

Aaand, this is Rara, our heroine. She's an adventurer (FYI, she hasn't taken an arrow to the knee yet :D ) and a researcher. She's looking for a thorium mineral to find the future's energy source for humankind and to redeem her incredible prosthetic left hand. She likes reading a lot and her color is green. "Green is good. Green is refreshing, and it's friendly," she said.

She also laughs a lot and wordlessly couldn't stand of being lonely venturing across the Insulinde, so it's a blessing in disguise when the rickety Wolai and lazy bum Balak joined her adventures though they frequently cause troubles for the gang.

You might want to download the images of Wolai, Balak, and Rara as your desktop wallpaper, I had them in 800x600 (Balak and Wolai) and 1366x768 (Rara). Please be free to do so. We're happy to have you gladly have them and enjoy our works.

enjoy!

Wolai The Yaki

Good morning!

We want to tell a bit of story about Wolai, a yaki from Sulawesi. Yaki is also known as Maccaca nigra. It's actually total black, but we chose blue as its fur color, simply because I like it blue. I think you've rarely seen this species eh? Neither do we.

We were looking for an unique species from Indonesia as one of characters appears on the Rara and The Ricketies series when we stumbled upon an article about yaki at NatGeo Indonesia. We were impressed by its instinct and behaviour while they were struggling to be the 'king' of their own kin. They really look like us, humans. They can be found at some of national parks at north Sulawesi, although their numbers are decreasing rapidly. They were only 3500 untill last March (the NatGeo article which we were reading).

Wolai has three plumes on its head, a yaki typical punk-like hairstyle :D ... It's agile, swift, lively, and perhaps is the merriest. It's the type of, "Hey, let's do it now!" - while it's jiggling around - and clumsy, so it makes Wolai the real fun member of the gang.

RIP R.A Kosasih

We read a news that one of Indonesian comic artist legends, R.A. Kosasih has passed away early this morning. It probably one big loss for us, when we recall where we were at 2004.

It was one morning when I came to an animation studio next to a paddy field. The breeze was refreshing and the studio was unlike any animation studio I had ever imagined. It was just a small house surrounded by lots of paddy field and it seemed, quiet.

Urakurek Studio was having an animated series - which I didn't know  of before - and that was the first time I touched the works of Kosasih's after Urakurek showed me what they were doing. Not that I'd never read his works, I did some of the times, but I had never had the books nor touched them, I read it over the internet  LOL.

To cut the story short, I learnt how to animate from the series' project from zero to hundreds of tricks. Basic drawing, anatomies, etc. I also met Kurnia and Chito - whom I worked with in KOEBUS - on that project, we learnt together in it, read a lot about Kosasih's works. It was awesome.

Have some rest, Sir. We will always remember you.

Left Hand

Good morning everyone!
I think this is one of our great days since wujudkan-dot-com posted our first crowdfunding project.

Couple of days ago there's been a misunderstanding when we said 'okay, we like the mock-up page' they thought it was our green light approval to post it online and start the crowdfunding campaign. Some friends of  ours had also already seen the link, so they eagerly helped us put the link on facebook before we managed to recall the page and then re-post it today :D. Sorry guys, you must be very confused.

The animation process (for this gag) was finished at Sunday evening, so we decided to mix it up with songs and effects to make it more awesome in the morning while doing sahur and awaiting Imshak. Are you guys fasting? Personally I'm not, but the mosque next door succesfully wake me up every morning (hey, i'm glad someone - or something - rings an unstoppable morning alarm lol).

We cry rainbow after this 30 seconds short gag is finished this morning :D. Aaand... we do happily present this for you, enjoy it, and please help us spread the word for our Rara and The Ricketies project. We need more people see our works and enjoy it!

enjoy!

Friday Sketch

This is the first sketch for our independent projects that includes characters

from "Burd" comic pages and "Rara and The Ricketies". We can see the characters

are wearing steampunk outfits, the genre we're crazy at. And we've made

a lot of changes on "Burd" characters. I suppose they're more colourful

now and the design amplifies their personality more than they used to

in the "Burd" comic pages.

We're planning on "Burd" comic making based on these designs for the next couple

of weeks. Let's see what'll happen there!

We're also now working on three shorts which will end in November, supposedly.

It feels both fun and groggy realize that we've actually been struggling with

too many ideas, too few hands to work with, and too limited money to fund the project.

48 - Misguided

I have just realized, my last 'Burd' post was

only 3 days ago! That's okay, I want to have

fun with this... ^___^

enjoy!

47 - Artistic Ability

 

Lie? What lie?

Coret-coret Rara

Beberapa coret-coret konsep untuk Leyak & The Lost Lollipop, biar

Kalian engga mengira aku hanya bermalas-malasan XD (lanjut dota!!).

Bersiap-siap

Setelah sekian lama enggak posting Burd, aku mencoba menulis

tentang akhir jaman manusia (apaan sih??!).

enjoy!

Leyak and The Lost Lollipop

Aku baru saja mendapat ulasan dari Cak Ikin yang telah dengan sukses menyelenggarakan Cergamboree di Surabaya beberapa hari lalu. Ulasannya sungguh menggembirakan dan menambah semangatku untuk melanjutkan pembuatan "Leyak and The Lost Lollipop"...

Huzzah!!

Para Tokoh

Animatics udah selesai! Tapi aku akan memposting-nya di sini kapan-kapan.
Lalu lanjut ke bikin karakter...
Kali ini akan ada dua karakter binatang: gajah dan yaki (monyet dari Sulawesi).
Aku sudah telanjur menyukai karakter yang kubuat di Kolam Warna, jadi aku hanya sedikit memolesnya.

Ada yang bilang standar warnanya kok terkesan kusam ya? Hmm...mungkin selera warnaku kusam ya? Mungkin bila sudah digabung dengan latar belakang, kesannya akan berbeda. Nanti akan kuulik sedikit lagi bersama dengan beberapa desain latar.

Selanjutnya...

Hai,
Akan ada tiga hal menarik yang ingin kusampaikan di sini.

Hal pertama adalah, aku mendapatkan nama untuk karakter perempuan di 'Kolam Warna'. Ialah 'Maheswari Agni Rarasati', panggilan: 'Rara' atau 'Sati' atau 'Agni'... kupikir itu nama yang bagus, walaupun terlalu banyak 'i' di belakangnya :D. Trims untuk Ratna Galih yang udah membantu kami mencari nama untuk heroine kita.

Hal kedua, aku baru saja mendapat kabar dari panitia SAYFestville di stadion renang Senayan, bahwa 'Kolam Warna' mendapat ranking ketiga dalam program animated short. 'Hebring' mendapat ranking pertama dan yang kedua adalah 'Dewi yang Kesepian'. HUZZAH!

Mereka belum mengumumkan daftar pemenang di web, jadi mari kita tunggu saja ya (kan juga termasuk pengumuman hadiahnya :P)... Kami senang sekali dengan pemberitahuan itu walaupun udah enggak sabar untuk versi resminya, ha ha...

Hal yang ketiga, kami udah berencana untuk membuat episode selanjutnya. Sama seperti 'Kolam Warna', pendek saja, yang penting lebih dari 2 menit dan kami akan membuatnya lebih baik lagi dari sisi cerita dan animasi.

Kami memilih 'Leyak and The Lost Lollipop' untuk judul sementara. Tapi, kami masih sibuk pekerjaan yang melibatkan salah satu studio di Yogya. Jadi, kami mengadakan studi kecil-kecilan di tengah-tengah pekerjaan kami. Sungguh menyenangkan.

Berikut baru satu desain untuk Sang Leak. Desain lainnya akan menyusul kemudian.


Ini mungkin enggak terlihat sama dengan Leak yang biasa kita kenal lewat pertunjukan sendratari. Kami coba mengubahnya agar terlihat menyenangkan. Setidaknya enggak menakutkan bagi penonton karena kami mencoba untuk menampilkan budaya dari Nusantara dengan cara yang menarik dan enggak kaku (baca: sesuai pakem yang udah ada <-- itu membosankan, bukan?).

salam,
burd

Kolam Warna

Ini adalah salah satu varian untuk 'BURD', karena aku pernah bilang bahwa aku enggak sabar untuk melakukan yang berbeda untuk 'BURD'... aku bersemangat sekali dalam hal ini dan mungkin akan sering2 membuat film-film pendek seperti ini...
aku mengerjakannya bareng beberapa teman dan adikku, dan kami berhasil menyelesaikannya selama enggak lebih dari sebulan... sungguh menyenangkan dan menegangkan... aku sempat mengalami deg-degan yang parah ketika laptop sekenku tiba-tiba rusak setelah kugunakan untuk merender beberapa shot sekaligus @___@ ... dan menjadi menyenangkan karena kami menyelesaikannya dengan gemilang (huzzah!)
yaa, aku sadar masih banyak yang perlu diperbaiki, kualitas animasi, misalnya, dan poin kedua -yang tentu ini akan jadi kelemahanku sampai 5 tahun ke depan- kualitas cerita yang cenderung kurang menarik bagi sebagian besar pemirsa...



semoga Kalian suka
ps: untuk resolusi yang lebih nyaman, coba ke https://vimeo.com/album/1890159/video/39523914