30 Days of Akuru 2023 - Day 01 - අ
Sinhala Alphabet Character අ

30 Days of Akuru 2023 - Day 02 - அ
Tamil Alphabet Character அ

30 Days of Akuru 2023 - Day 03 - කු
Sinhala Alphabet Character කු

30 Days of Akuru 2023 - Day 04 - கு
Tamil Alphabet Character கு

30 Days of Akuru 2023 - Day 05 - රු
Sinhala Alphabet Character රු

30 Days of Akuru 2023 - Day 06 - ரு
Sinhala Alphabet Character ரு

30 Days of Akuru 2023 - Day 07 - එ
Sinhala Alphabet Character එ

It's now or never
Come hold me tight
Kiss me my darling
Be mine tonight

Tomorrow will be too late
It's now or never
My love won't wait 
No it can't wait
Coz now you are here

30 Days of Akuru 2023 - Day 08 - பௌ
Sinhala Alphabet Character பௌ

பௌர்ணமி is the full moon.

Just asked the almighty Ggod for words starting from the letter பௌ because I was too lazy to struggle for an idea of my own. 

And it is high time that I remind her who spent countless moments watching பௌர்ணமி with me for the last fifteen years ❤️

30 Days of Akuru 2023 - Day 09 - ම්
Sinhala Alphabet Character ම්

My mom has an allergy to chocolates which developed in her 60s. Since I also have a sensitive digestive system, whenever I eat chocolate, I worry that someday I might also get that allergy. So I'm somewhat greedy with chocolate now, since I feel like I only have about a few decades, if I live long enough, to enjoy that taste without a hassle. Not that I worry about it, but if I listed the very little things that I worry about, this will be a top item in that list.

30 Days of Akuru 2023 - Day 10 - டி
Sinhala Alphabet Character டி

Have you heard about the pouring chain fountain? It's what they call the motion of a bead chain falling down to the ground from a jar sitting on a higher plane. When the chain is pulled from the jar to the ground with force, the chain doesn't free fall as we usually expect but forcefully jumps off the jar to the ground. It's complicated for me to explain. Just look for 'pouring chain fountain' on YouTube and there's a perfectly explained and demonstrated video by the actionlab.

It's this phenomenon which I tried to create here. Of course, the chain needs to be in a jar to behave like that. I only took the motion of the chain to create this character.

The sound clip is from freesound.com

30 Days of Akuru 2023 - Day 11 - ඳ
Sinhala Alphabet Character ඳ

There's nothing fancy here today. The letter ද is a submission from last year's akuru season. I just added the gliph so it is now ඳ. Since the design of the type is chubby and massive, I thought of them as blocks of magnets and implemented the magnet movement in the animation.

Sound clip(s) from freesound.com

30 Days of Akuru 2023 - Day 12 - ணி
Tamil Alphabet Character ணி

One of my favorite features of the android Google keyboard aka gboard is, you can add as many languages and seamlessly switch between them very easily. Gboard is one of the reasons which helped me in my Tamil class. While my teacher writes, I search for the meaning of the word and get some extra ideas. But without being used, all the Tamil I know is slowly fading out. It's 30daysAkuru which brings the urge to practice Tamil again. Even just for the project itself during the akuru month.

I knew there are no words beginning from ணி so I didn't search for any. There were no earlier submissions which I could modify, so this ணி I drew on paper with a ballpoint pen from scratch. Then took a picture, vectorised using Photoshop and animated. Here I've implemented one of the 12 Disney principles of animating, which is 'Squash and Stretch'.

Sound clip(s) from freesound.com

30 Days of Akuru 2023 - Day 13 - ණ
Sinhala Alphabet Character ණ

You all know the story! 

It's not about a single person or event. It's about corruption and injustice spreading to every corner of the country. And using emotional things like religion to manipulate people towards embracing it. There is an uncertain future for all of us, so if you are going to stay, better find ways to stay morally uplifted!

Or... better create your own bubble!

The idea for the audio given by @maleemsg

Since I couldn't find a proper clip with the exact tone, even after going through about 50 YouTube news clips, I had to voice it myself and alter it using audacity.

30 Days of Akuru 2023 - Day 14 - ஏ
Tamil Alphabet Character ஏ

ஏகாந்தம் is the word for solitude. I guess many of you here with an artistic mind are fond of that. It's not that you are sad, afraid, hateful or ignorant. You just enjoy being solitude. Have some time for yourself. Thinking of everything or maybe mostly nothing. A personal moment. A me only time. For the enjoyment of ever easy nothing box. Just for the fun of it!

Sound clip(s) from freesound.com

30 Days of Akuru 2023 - Day 15 - ස
Sinhala Alphabet Character ස

ස is for සමනලයා (butterfly) and the letter's near symmetry resembles a butterfly almost perfectly. I thought this animation concept would freeze or lag my low spec laptop because there are a lot of nested vector objects. But it held up nicely. 

Sound clip(s) from freesound.com

30 Days of Akuru 2023 - Day 16 - தை
Tamil Alphabet Character தை

This character design is from 2022 Day 18. Just designed த to replace ம.

This animation is a reborn one. That means I changed the direction of it after rewatching the once finalized animation a few times. So first, it was two black objects moving around and forming the characters. That animation itself generated an idea which I then developed. So, as said, it regenerated itself.

Let's say these objects are sentient living beings who are in an erotic dance. They interchange their genetics half way and get impregnated. In the end, they are both bearing a next generation being. So what if they are genderless and impregnate both the participants? I don't know whether such brings exist. A quick search showed there are some animals who can give birth without mating. With some animals, the whole gender thing is not a thing at all. So, here in the animation, it's just both parties becoming pregnant. Maybe you've heard about such species in sci-fi.

What if it's the case with humans too? I bet some of you might not like the idea. But if it is the case, the whole human civilization will be built on that and maybe every person will have the same importance without even considering the gender.

Sound clip(s) from freesound.com

30 Days of Akuru 2023 - Day 17 - ඞ
Sinhala Alphabet Character ඞ

Today is all about ඞ but ං aka අනුස්වාරය has a huge role in it.

I remember in my childhood the name of the BOC was ලඞකා බැංකුව and we were confused. I still rarely see very old signs featuring ඞ. It's a dying character of the alphabet in modern times but is still there because I think the Sinhala alphabet is used to read and write old languages.

Sound clip(s) from freesound.com

30 Days of Akuru 2023 - Day 18 - ற
Tamil Alphabet Character ற

When scientists studied human expansion all over the world, they noticed that as soon as humans arrive in a specific region, the large mammals of the area vanish. Understanding the fossil remains of large mammals reveals the era when human expansion happened. And it's used as supporting evidence to map the journey of humans. The extinction of large mammals happened after human arrival. Most probably, they were killed for food until extinction.

Then humans learned to co-exist with a lot of animals. Then they evolved to be more humane and understood the importance of diversity.

Some animals we use to work for us, some we eat, some for our pleasure, and some to express our pride.

Elephants are a sensitive subject there, and I'm still trying to find the middle ground, if there's any.

Sound clip(s) from freesound.com

30 Days of Akuru 2023 - Day 19 - ශ්‍රී
Sinhala Alphabet Character ශ්‍රී

ශ්‍රී is used to show the nobility and sacredness, which can only be perfected by removing the internal monsters. Cleansing yourself from the demons inside you. It's hard and nearly unachievable, but not impossible.

For a long time, since my childhood, I never believed in traditional methods of healing with rituals like 'thovil'. Then I happened to experience a few of such events and I understood that it's a totally different system of healing. Ancient people had reasons to create monsters and demons alone with stories to make people believe them. They also developed systems to lure them out and banish them. Those rituals are actually treatments for mental conditions where other medical treatments fail.

Nowadays, we have knowledge, developed by other systems, to understand mental conditions. We now have knowledge of experience from earlier people who happened to write stuff. So we can now easily understand our inner demons and destroy them. With practice, we can even identify them when they start to act.

Amila Sandaruwan kindly allowed me to use a part from one of his newer songs, ඳඟර ගැහෙන හිතිවිලි කඳු - Mountains of Spiraling thoughts. I truly respect his humbleness.

This song has been stuck in my head for a few weeks and I must have listened to it more than 100 times. With the idea, words, music, singing, expressions and visual treatment, I think it's a masterpiece.

Experience it, link in the bio - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0b4T1BjJvc

30 Days of Akuru 2023 - Day 20 - வு
Tamil Alphabet Character வு

I searched for words starting from வு but seems there's none. In a video for children, they teach வு with திறவுகோல் (Key) and கதவு (Door)

Sound clip(s) from freesound.com

30 Days of Akuru 2023 - Day 21 - ය
Sinhala Alphabet Character ය

ය is for යගුලිය aka shot put.

I have only touched a shot put ball at interhouse sports meet selection sessions at school. Never tried to throw it, but it was fascinating to touch a metal spherical ball.

This animation is done by rotoscoping over actual footage.

Sound clip(s) from freesound.com

30 Days of Akuru 2023 - Day 22 - பி
Tamil Alphabet Character பி

பிறந்த நாள் (piranda nal) is the birthday. It and இறந்த நாள் (iranda nal) the 'day of death' are two words I never forgot from the Tamil class because they rhyme perfectly.

I first planned to morph the cake into the letter பி but then thought of doing this instead because I was exhausted after yesterday's sleepless shot put rotoscope.

Sound clip(s) from freesound.com

30 Days of Akuru 2023 - Day 23 - ළ

Sinhala Alphabet Character ළ

ළ for ළමයා, ළදරුවා aka kid

ළ is one of the weirdest characters in the Sinhala alphabet for me. Not from a linguistic perspective, but with its shape, it doesn't fit smoothly with the design language of most of the other characters. But if you think of it again, there are many characters in the alphabet that feel alien.

Sinhala is a language developed by adapting many other South Indian language characteristics over time and, hence, has very diverse shapes for characters. ළ is a specific character like that, but we don't feel it as alien because we've seen it among other characters for a long time.

That's something I consider when thinking about all the cracker sounds about introducing a special character for the sound of Z to the Sinhalese language. I've seen many social media posts arguing about it and seen some hot shots saying there's no need for a special character and a simple alternation of the letter ස is enough. Yah, I'm even OK with that. In fact, I now think it's better. But when thinking, a special character will feel alien at first but will smoothly blend in over the years.

Another thing about ළ is that Sinhalese do not pronounce the sound correctly. That's something I learned from Dr. Bertram Gregory Liyanage's lectures. He says ණ and ළ have different sounds, and even an ordinary person who speaks Kannada can sound that correctly. We've received the characters from India, but not all the sounds it seems. ළ sounds exactly like ල. There're even proper separate ways of how the tongue behaves when pronouncing these two characters. But we speak them exactly with the same sound. Maybe that's why the නණ ලළ is greek to most people who are not language nerds.

Sound clip(s) from freesound.com

30 Days of Akuru 2023 - Day 24 - ஐ
Tamil Alphabet Character ஐ

ஐ has an authentic relationship with the number 5. When searched, the words I found were mostly related to number 5. Like ஐங்கோணம் (ainkonam) for pentgon and ஐவர் (aiwer) for five members.

This animation of the hand is from another project I did in the past few months. Hope I'll be able to share it soon.

Sound clip(s) from freesound.com

30 Days of Akuru 2023 - Day 25 - වී
Sinhala Alphabet Character වී

This වීරයා is from the project I mentioned yesterday. His name is Colin, and he's a robot created to fight crime. He's a character I developed, and then I didn't like in the middle of the process because it took countless hours from my sleep to animate him. It was an exhausting 3 months from June to the end of August, but I managed to finish it with adequate success.

This animation also took a significant amount of time because I had to deal with so many layers of vector objects. Since Photoshop is not the ideal tool for animation, I had to compromise with my time. It would have been really simple with Adobe Aftereffects, which I'll probably refresh the study and work on next.

This super hero landing is called the three-point landing, and we see it in almost every super hero movie. But it's really a dangerous pose to speed land scientifically. It would literally break your spine. There's a whole video about how scientifically possible the superhero landing is on the "Because Science" YouTube channel. It explains how dangerous it is if you are not a superhero.

Sound clip(s) from freesound.com and freepd.com

30 Days of Akuru 2023 - Day 26 - ல
Tamil Alphabet Character ல

I thought there were words from ல but those kids videos on YouTube say otherwise. They only show words which the letter ல is included. One of those words was எலி aka mouse. That's why today one of the world's famous rats is featured.

We all know who Mickey is. He's the mascot of the Walt @disney Company that revolutionized the animation industry. So this is kind of a tribute to them, as the #30daysofAkuru 2023 is soon coming to an end. Without Disney, many of us wouldn't be animation enthusiasts for sure. And this year, #30daysakuru was a challenging, educational, and fun-filled project for me because of the process I chose.

When I thought of animating this, I had many thoughts about what shall I use as the tune he's whistling. After a few discarded ideas, I thought to go with Arjuman's 'Poosek' song, which I have adored since I first heard it about 4 years ago. @arjumann_dreams permitted me to use a part of the song. I recorded the whistle inside our bathroom because there was a lot of ambient noise. It's not completely successful even after running through an online de-noising tool, but it's bearable, I guess.

I know it's weird. A mouse whistling, 'පූසෙක් මං පූසෙක්'.

30 Days of Akuru 2023 - Day 27 - භ්‍රූ
Sinhala Alphabet Character භ්‍රූ

භ්‍රූ for භ්‍රූණය aka embryo. I had visualized this animation for a long time but couldn't do it in expected smoothness. The idea is clear enough, I guess.

Edit - seems this is slightly different from today's character. I have identified it as භ්‍රෑ instead of භ්‍රූ

Sound clip(s) from freesound.com

Reference for the embryo images - amapress.upf.edu

30 Days of Akuru 2023 - Day 28 - ஃ
Tamil Alphabet Character ஃ

You all know what it is about!

30 Days of Akuru 2023 - Day 29 - 𑇡 / ௧
Tamil and Sinhala Alphabet Numerals 𑇡 / ௧

I'm glad that the world has agreed to use indo-arabic numerals now. If not, we will have to learn the numeral systems local to the first language we speak, which will surely be a pain in the a!ss.

Matrix is one of the franchises I never get bored rewatching because each time I grasp something tiny I've missed earlier.

Sound clip(s) from freesound.com

30 Days of Akuru 2023 - Day 30 - fප
Sinhala Alphabet Character fප

This character is proof of the fact that Sinhala is an evolving language. With its applications broadening, new sounds are integrated. fප was introduced by advertisers, and after decades of argument and debate, we have now eliminated the intermediate fප and replaced it with ෆ.

And it's the end of #30daysofAkuru 2023, and now I have to find something else to hang on to 😛

Akuru season is, as I said in a previous post, the most active time of myself in social media. It's like when there's rain, the frogs come out and croak. And I see some of the artists/ accounts who are contributing to the #30daysakuru are in the same situation. Maybe it's me being active and seeing them often.

Whatever, thank you all අකුරු ගෙම්බෝස් who supported me by viewing, reacting and sharing my submissions. Thank you @30daysakuru for organizing this wonderful season. 

Sound clip(s) from freesound.com