The book “How to Draw Caricatures – Evolution of a Caricaturist”…

This book could be a starting point or a mid-journey reflection point for an artist who is inclined to do caricatures. I am grateful to everyone who left their reviews for the book. As I mentioned in my earlier posts, I completed my work when I finished writing the book and made it available on Amazon. I am first an artist, then a writer, and finally a learning-facilitator; I am not a marketer and I don’t know the first thing about “getting” people to write reviews, so I am really glad that some readers of Evolution posted their thoughts on the book.

The book “How to Draw Caricatures – Evolution of a Caricaturist” is available on Amazon, and regardless of the device you own, you can download the eBook and read it. I hope you find it interesting as well as useful 🙂

Click the book icon to reach the Book-details page on Amazon.

 

And here’s your tool-kit to experiment with the art of caricature-creation, without drawing 🙂 Click the icon to download Toonsie Roll – a free photo-to-caricature app on your iPhone or iPad.

Click to download Toonsie Roll into your iPad or iPhone.

 

Now off on a short trip to Pluto, the planet of artists.

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Toonsie Roll – The Intuitive Caricature Maker App for Everyone’s iPhone and iPad…

is now on the App Store. Download it at: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/toonsie-roll-make-caricatures/id921958679?ls=1&mt=8

Toonsie Roll – Toon ’em All!

Now you can caricature everyone in a nice, easy, and fun way! All the caricatures that you see in the following image have been created from scratch to finish in Toonsie Roll…just using observation, intuition, and tapping! If you like the app, leave a rating…and tell me if you’d like a FB page for Toonsie Roll to share your creations.

 

And to discover how easy it is to caricature using Toonsie Roll, check out my previous post “How to Create Cool Caricatures using the Toonsie Roll App.”

Now I should get back to sculpting some caricatures in a mountain…more on Toonsie Roll later.

 

How to Create Cool Caricatures Using the Toonsie Roll Caricature App.

UPDATE:

Toonsie Roll is available on the App Store as a FREE download 

It’s almost here! Toonsie Roll debuts on the App Store this Saturday…on November 22, 2014! So when you wake up this Saturday, checkout the App Store and download the smartest Caricaturing App (I’ve worked really hard to make this app as intuitive as possible, so please forgive the vanity ☺)

Toonsie Roll – Toon ’em All!

 

If you think you might forget, and you’d like to put me to the task of reminding you, please use the contact form on this page, and I’ll send you an email with the App Store download URL.

Without mincing any words, Toonsie Roll is an app that helps you intuitively create cool caricatures from photographs!

For the experimental reader of my blog, here’s the process in a nutshell.

Just get a picture in Toonsie Roll (shoot from your camera or import from your Albums,) crop it to center the face (give the face about 1/3 to 2/3 space in the picture,) and hit “Toonify.” Toonsie Roll Toonifies the picture and presents you with 3 toonified options. You’ll intuitively know which one’s the best. If you like one – tap that toon; if you don’t, then tap the “More” button to get more options. When you tap a toon, Toonsie Roll takes it as the picture that you now want to toonify further, and then presents three more options based on the selected toon. This is how you continue – until of course, you are done with tooning, and you finalize the image to “Artify.”

And now, for my details-oriented audience, here is the process – Step by Step, screen-by-screen!

Download Toonsie Roll to you iPhone or iPad and tap the icon to open it. (Don’t rap me on the knuckles for being cheeky. You wanted it step by step!)

You get the following Opening Screen.

 

Just tap anywhere to load the “Get a Picture” screen, shown below.

You can get a picture into Toonsie Roll by either importing from “Photos” or by shooting one then and there, using your device camera. (The second option is pretty useful when someone in your group is being a real nutcase.)

Now move and adjust that red-rectangle on the image to select the face. It’s a good idea to keep the face centered (you get interesting results by being off-center, but when you are starting, it’s a good idea to stayed centered.) Also, let the face occupy about one-third to two-third of the final cropped image area.

When you are satisfied, hit the Toonify button to arrive on the “Toonify” screen, which is shown below.

 

 

This is the screen where you get to play around with different possibilities. The original image is at the top-left corner (Selected Picture). The other three are the Toons that Toonsie Roll has generated. If you aren’t satisfied with any of them, tap the “More” button. If you like any of the three toons then select the one that’s closest in likeness to the original subject, and one which you’d like to caricature some more by tapping the face in the toon. You’ll see that the tapped toon moves to the top-left and replaces the original and now becomes the Selected Picture. Now this picture becomes the image to be toonified further.

As all of us have been blessed with the intuitive ability to determine likeness (whether the caricature looks like it belongs to the subject) and funniness (whether the caricature/joke/situation looks funny or not,) just by tapping, selecting, and tooning, we can create cool looking caricatures.

When you are satisfied with one of the toons, tap the green tick on that toon to finalize it. When you hit the tick mark, you get the chance to crop the image once again (if you’d like to) and then you arrive at the following “Artify” screen where you can enhance your artwork with 20 artistic effects.

I’ll be posting a separate tutorial on how these effects can be used individually or one-after-the-other to create interesting artistic effects. At this point, my recommendation is, “play with the effects.”

When you are done…tap the “Personalize & Share” button at the bottom of the “Artify” screen, to arrive at the following “Personalize & Share” screen.
On this screen you are presented with a photo of your toon.

On this screen you see three ways to personalize your creation.
• Sign your creation (Actually write/draw your unique signature – all great artists sign their work.)
• Add an emoji (from a cool collection of 75 emojis.)
• Add a witty caption to your artwork (In the above screen, “You know you are famous when the Internet explodes with your caricatures,” is the caption added by the artist.)

Once you are done with personalizing the artwork, tap the “Share Your Creation,” button and share your artwork on a social network – Facebook/Twitter etc. of your choice, save it to your iPad/iPhone, or email it 🙂

So the countdown has begun…and we are all set to become Toonsie Rollers on November 22 🙂

UPDATE: Toonsie Roll is now available for download on the App Store

 

Blast from the Past: The Caricaturist Travels through Time and returns with the Funny Man!

Meet the Funny Man. I did this caricature last year, and if the date on the page of my 2013 diary can be relied on – it was done on April 15th – more than a year ago.

This drawing was done with Staedler’s Luna Pencils – the only color pencils that I had until I discovered Derwent. I had bought that set of pencils way back in 2001 or 2002, when a dear friend of mine and an exceptionally good artist told me that even grownups use color pencils. He had accompanied me to an art-supplies store (there weren’t many good ones in the city back then) and we had a bought a set for me, which unlike his set, didn’t come in a tin box (I still remember the slight twinge of disappointment that I had experienced then – so it must’ve been important for me back then. Today it won’t matter.)

Anyway, the point is, I drew this Funny Man with those pencils.

An Awesome nose on an awesome face…la…la…la

Then we started working on Toonsie Roll – a Caricature maker App that harnesses your intuition and your power of observation to help you tap out cute and cool-looking caricatures. Now everyone who’s got a smartphone knows that apps have icons…and I really wanted this app icon to cute, funny, and cool…and if possible, I wanted it to be intuitive too. So I sketched stuff out and we evaluated the sketches. We did everything that all the great artists do. We squinted, we walked backward to stand at a distance and look at the sketches, then we scanned them and zoomed them out to see if they were too cluttered. They passed the tests but they could make our hearts beat faster, because they all lacked the spontaneity that we were looking for.

Then we heard from some people who wanted me to create a few drawings for them…in the funny man style. So I went back to the post and checked it out – and when I looked at it, I knew that this guy could represent the spirit of Toonsie Roll. If it was a drawing app, we’d probably have gone ahead with the color-pencil drawing, but Toonsie Roll stays with the realistic photo-feel, so I painted the guy. Now he appears on the icon and also on the Splash Screen (I’ll share it with you soon.)

So this is how the Funny Guy got selected, got painted, and got framed! Toonsie Roll will soon be on the App Store for everyone who wants to create cute and funny caricatures (of friends, foes, or yourself – for a caricature avatar perhaps,) using a stylish app on their iPhones or iPads 🙂 I’ll keep you posted on this – so if you want to know when you can grab a copy of the app, just leave me a note using this contact form here.

Click to Read about Toonsie Roll.

This week I need to sketch a cute ex-President of the United States. I am looking forward to it…but today I was totally booked for Toonsie Roll!

You keep smiling while I rock and roll with Toonsie Roll 🙂

A Toonsie Roll Caricature of Hrithik Roshan…

…Who Goes Bang Bang this Thursday, Despite his Health Problems!

This post is the result of Hrithik’s interview that was published in today’s TOI. At the onset, I must tell you that I am not a fan of Hrithik the Bollywood Actor. In fact, I’ve seen just one movie of his (one of the Krishh’s, and I’ve forgotten which one.) And yet, now I have become one of the biggest fans of Hrithik the person behind the actor. I like brave people, and I think that bravery is an attribute of the human mind. It doesn’t depend upon anything external to a person – neither their station in life, nor their physical strength. Some people are brave, others just aren’t; they whine and cry and want the whole world to understand their problems, without ever taking the first important step, which is realizing that they are the only ones who can solve their problems and all that whining actually drives the right kind people away from them.

( Note: The above caricature was done using Toonsie Roll – A Caricaturing/Caricature-making iPhone/iPad app.)

In my estimate, Hrithik Roshan is one of the bravest celebs that clutter our waking moments. He is someone who is an inspiration to many who battle chronic illnesses and debilitating pain. Almost all his life, he has lived with excruciating pain and with bones that broke on the slightest pretext. He has been suffering from arthritis from a very young age, and when he was a teenager, his doctors had told him that he had the skeleton of an old man. He was advised against becoming an actor. In Bollywood, you can’t be a star if you don’t dance (yes, pelting your pelvis as far as you can in all directions and gyrating on the beats of a raunchy number – stuff that is really really bad for your back); or  if you don’t do stunts (toss yourself up in the air with your limbs flailing and hitting ten goons at once)! So Hrithik, the boy with a spine that was proclaimed geriatric by the medicos shouldn’t have done any of what he did. Instead, he should’ve stayed home, watched dvds, ate potato-chips, grown corpulent, started a blog, and talked about how unfair life was.

But Hrithik did something different. He looked at the hand of cards that fate had dealt to him, figured out a strategy to beat the odds, and stayed in the game. Yes, he came from a fairly affluent family. Yes, he could get a doctor’s attention whenever he needed it. But nothing could’ve made him the star that he is today – nothing except his own determination to beat the odds.

So far, this year has been terrible for Hrithik. When he was shooting for Bang Bang, he got ill because there were blood-clots in his brain and he had to undergo a brain-surgery. His backache, his companion of 27 years, has been troubling him so much that he travels in a convoy of three cars, because he can’t sit in one position for more than 30 minutes. On the personal front, he has filed for a divorce from his wife, who he confirms, has not asked for an alimony of 400 Crs. (The amount sounded ridiculous any way,) and when the divorce is through he may lose the custody of his two sons to his wife. That’s a lot for anyone to handle – and yet he handles it all so well. The boy whose was advised not to be an actor, is the one who has made Roshans a recognized name in the Indian Film Industry.  He’s an excellent dancer, he looks muscular in his movies, he does all those stunts that movies require him to do – and I think he is able to do it because he has a beautiful mind.

He says that he always tried being a nice person, but it didn’t work, because when you try to be nice to everyone and not hurt anyone, you try to achieve the impossible and end up hurting yourself; so you must try to be a good person instead. A good person does good whenever he or she can, but doesn’t try to please everyone. I agree – totally.

So that’s that about Hrithik. I wish him the best and I hope that he continues to win the battle that he is fighting with his illnesses. Another braveheart that I want to mention here is Shubhpreet Kaur Ghumman. This post isn’t about this one-legged brave beauty, but here’s the link to her Facebook page.

I’ll be writing a set of tutorials on How to Create Caricatures with Toonsie Roll, so do return.

 

Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas with the Colorful Artworks of “Bigsaw Xmas”

My Dear Visitors,

Let me share with you my favorite Art Assignment ever 🙂

It’s Bigsaw Xmas! It’s got Santa, Santa’s elves, Snowman, Snowmom, Reindeers (Rudolph too,) Snow, Pets, Holly, Mistletoe, and everything else that just builds the festive mood.

If you like picture-puzzles don’t think twice – just go to the App Store, find Bigsaw Xmas and download it into your iPad…and the biggest news ever? You don’t have to pay to play…rather you can play to pay and open all the puzzles in the game!

BIGSAW is perhaps one of the most exciting picture puzzle ever – and if you haven’t already discovered it, here’s the link for you to download it FREE for your iPad on the Apple App Store.

FREE Download

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bigsaw-xmas-go-beyond-jigsaw/id769951884?mt=8

Here’s a Screenshot from my iPad…

I’d like to thank everyone who motivated me to create these illustrations. I think they are some of my favorite artworks. Oh, and if you liked these, you can find more colorful illustrations for kids in Bigsaw Classic and Bigsaw Designer.

Bigsaw Classic – Download Free on your iPad – Play and Open all Pictures!

Bigsaw Designer – Create and Manage up to 100 Bigsaw Albums with up to 10,000 custom picture puzzles!

While Bigsaw Classic offers you 64 picture-puzzles that you can open by playing and earning Bigsaw Coins, Bigsaw Designer doesn’t just offer 100 pictures in 10 Bigsaw Albums (one of them is for kids and another comprises caricatures) it gives you awe-inspiring ability to create and manage 100 custom albums that can contain 10,000 images of your own!

If you are a Photographer, I heartily recommend Bigsaw Designer to you. Make your photographs/artworks interactive and play with them.

Wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Very Happy New Year!

Pencil Knight can now be downloaded Free on the App Store – Download, Tilt, Balance, and Challenge!

A short quick announcement 🙂 You can now download Pencil Knight from the App Store. It’s Free to download and offers five cool new pencils as an in-App Purchase.

Click the following icon of Pencil Knight to download it from the App Store. 

Click/Tap to download Pencil Knight into your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, from the App Store.

 

Tip for making fabulous scores in Pencil Knight:

Don’t let the pencil fall and swing it a lot!

That’s all…now click or tap, and start tilting 🙂

 

Pencil Knight Reveals his identity :: More on this Cool Tilt-and-Play Game of Balancing Pencils.

Friends,

Thanks for voting.

Of the total 9 votes, 6 were cast in favor of option D “Balancing a pencil on his finger tip.” (I wonder how they knew.) I don’t know if you can hear me, but right now I am clapping for these 6 voters. They got it right 🙂

Available on the App Store now. Click/Tap to download it Free from the App Store.

Here’s the full image – the opening screen shot of the game in an iPhone, and we can see that he’s indeed balancing a pencil!

(Pencil Knight is a universal iOS Game, which means that once you’ve got it for any of your devices, you’ll be able to restore it to your other iOS devices too.)

Concentration, focus, a steady hand and some practice…will make you the Pencil Knight.

Pencil Knight can be downloaded Free and you can play with the Yellow Pencil forever and ever, on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch; and when you are done playing with the Yellow Pencil, you can unlock 5 new pencils for 5 mint-fresh balancing experiences.

Here’s why you are going to play this game with everyone you know…

Simple, intuitive Game-play!

1. Just hold your device flat and then tilt it left and right to balance the pencils.
2. Swing the pencils more to accumulate bonus points.

Traits required and honed!

∙Quick Responses
∙Excellent Eye-hand coordination
∙Strong Concentration and Unwavering Focus

Features of the Game:

∙Uses accelerometer to simulate the feel of balancing a pencil on your finger.
∙All the six pencils have their own leaderboards to help you compete on level ground with others.
∙You can challenge your Friends by emailing them your balancing-times and highscores.
∙And…you can unlock 5 New Pencils. Each new pencil is superbly crafted and smartly engineered for a new exciting balancing experience.

Some screenshots of Pencil Knight from the iPad:

And here’s one of the Five New Pencils…the Floral white…she’s mercurial like me…difficult to manage 🙂

You can look at more screenshots here, and download Pencil Knight Free from the App Store here 🙂

It will be in the App Store tomorrow…check it out 🙂

Pencil Knight – An Addiction that doesn’t Kill…keeps the Caricaturist away.

The caricaturist was gone again.

She wasn’t thawing in a polar bear’s belly, nor was she whisked off to Atlantis; and no, she wasn’t invited by her double in the parallel dimension either.

She was with Pencil Knight.

I won’t say a lot more for the next 36 hours, but here’s a picture of the gentleman I am talking about.

That look in his eyes…oooooh…
That smile on his lips…mmmmm…ah!

Now the question.

In 36 hours you’ll know the right answer. (Hint: All the analytical reader has to do to arrive at the right answer is, find the clues hidden in this post)  In any event, I’ll be posting again…tomorrow 🙂

Happy Valentine’s Day! The Latest News: MLMV-HD listed as Top 5 Valentine Apps by PadGadget – and the Caricaturist returns in Color!

Phew!

That was a long title for a post!

Important things first:

The reason that kept me away from you was, in a nutshell, Love! I’ve been in love for a rather long time, yet when I wake up in the mornings, it’s like I have just fallen in love with this very handsome, suave, and intelligent guy who mumbles in his sleep, “is it morning already?” Now, how can someone who is as bright as he is, not know the answer to such a simple question, is beyond me.

But these three months, this caricaturist had transformed into a love-artist, for everyone – or more specifically for everyone with an iPad. Here is the link to the love Game we created 🙂

MLMV – One of the Top Five iPad Games for this Valentine’s Season!

The good news that I want to share is that PadGadget has listed My Love My Valentine as one of the top 5 Valentine Games for 2013, and right alongside Where’s My Valentine (by Disney) and some old strong horses such as M.A.S.H (which made waves last year) and Flower Garden (the forever app!)

Now, to another news byte…and try to believe it.

Color Caricatures by a Black-and-White Caricaturist!

The Caricaturist has changed. She’s become colorful. Perhaps its the impact of this game, or the impact of a fantastic magazine read by really serious kind of Americans – but she’s now going to be making color caricatures. She’s just survived creating three of them at a speed that would make a Maglev blush! Can’t share yet – because the issue is not yet in the stands – but in time I will 🙂

and now,

A Happy Valentine’s Day to you!

Oh, and yes if you have an iPad, download MLMV HD, face the love-assassins and send your messages to your sweet-heart… and win him or her over! If you are a girl and you don’t have this game on your iPad, you are missing out on a lot of sweet romantic action!

But if you’d like to try it out, check out the Lite version here.

About Hypnotoy Lite and other Stuff that makes me feel creative :)

Dear Readers and Chance-visitors who I hope will come back again 🙂

Recently, I’ve been working my tail off (sorry, picked up that figure of speech from my dog,) which for me means multi-tasking – and everyone who multi-task knows how stressful this multi-tasking demon can be. It’s easier on me when I earmark a day only to draw, and then I really, actually, practically stick to “drawing” and nothing else; or when I decide only to write, and then I just write and not draw that day – but unfortunately, such days are very rare.

Coming to the topic of this post…

Stuff that makes me feel creative is often strewn around, difficult to find when I need it most.  Hypnotoy has been my creative anchor in such times. When I am tired and my mind begins to draw a blank (!) I find the Hypnotoy icon on my iPad and tap it. Those lovely Dancing Experiences help me relax and focus. I loved it through the process of its creation, through the sleepless nights, and through those daintily and painstakingly painted graphics; and now I love it as an App that beckons at me through its sparkling icon and opens its arms to embrace me whenever I tap on it. As the stress oozes out and comfort seeps in, I begin to feel creative.

What I want to share with you is the news that Hypnotoy- The Toy of Joy has now got its FREE version – Hypnotoy Lite! This means that I can recommend it to all my visitors who have an iPhone, iPad, and iPod. Try it out – see if it connects with you, they way it connected with me 🙂

Here’s the link. Click (or tap) the icon to reach the App Store!

Hypnotoy Lite is the Free Version of Hypnotoy – The Toy of Joy. Click (tap) to Download.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. I must get back to my tablet now…and yes, the third post on “Evolution of a Cartoonist” is due tomorrow 🙂 Until then, relax with your own Hypnotoy Lite.

Hypnotoy – Unwind and Relax with a Beautiful and Captivating App.

Hypnotoy is available on the App Store, and its icon is looking…oh, so beautiful. I don’t own jewelry but then what woman doesn’t dream of owning at least some. I own a piece of jewelry in my iPad, and it’s the Hypnotoy icon. I love it, and I really truly mean it.  (I do wonder somtimes whether it would look more interesting if it had my cartoon on it, instead of that portrait of Queen Nefertiti. While I think that she’s a tad prettier than me (all because she’s got a small, straight nose unlike my round, large one,) still I have a strong preference for cartoons!

Click the above icon to check out the App, its description, and its screenshots on the App Store.

Anyway, what’s important is, what do we find when you get that App into your iPad (1, 2, New) or iPhone (3GS, 4, 4S, 5 – whichever you own,) or your iPod touch?

You find a thing of beauty.

According to John Keats, “A thing of beauty is a joy forever: its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness.”

• You get 100 hand-crafted Dancing Experiences that enchant you with their beauty.
• You swipe and double-tap, and Hypnotoy entertains you by porting you away from your troubles, into a beautiful world of visual poetry, by changing the experiences and the dances.
• If you don’t want to even swipe and double-tap ,You can delegate the task of choreography to the Gremlins, and let the toy perform for you.
• You can select your favorite Experiences and create a Playlist, which either you or the Gremlins can control.
• You can photograph your favorite steps in the different Dancing Experiences to store or share.

More later…

And yes, Mitt Romney…I must caricature him with his foot in his mouth (before he becomes the President of the US!)

Stay happy, keep smiling 🙂

The Toy of Joy – HYPNOTOY, Coming on the App Store on October 21, 2012!

The count-down has begun…

It’s almost there on the App Store, raring to find a way into your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, and then into your heart.

If you appreciate beauty and art, if you like to be treated royally …then you should check out Hypnotoy.

So…what does Hypnotoy do for you, and how is it different from the myriad other apps out there? Here’s an excerpt…

“In Hypnotoy, there are no levels cross, no challenges to accept; there’s nothing  that will force you to perform. Sit back, relax; Hypnotoy performs for you. It waits on you. All you need to do is raise a finger, swipe and double-tap and it entertains you by presenting more than a 100 different Dancing Experiences.”

Please visit and Like the Facebook page of Grouchy Gremlins here.

Sneak a peek into The Toy of Joy – Hypnotoy here.

Until we meet again… (perhaps on the 21st,) I must return to my cluttered desk to caricature Governor Mitt Romney.