Jumpy Underground Media - Interviews

Jumpy [Underground Media] - : Name?.

JZ: “duboya mujh ko hone ne .. na main hota to kya hota?”

My birth name’s Aijaz, ‘gifted’ to me by my grand father, it means, “the one to do some new” .. my official full name is Mirza Aijaz Ather, Ather being Dad’s name, and Mirza being the Family name, that translates to Prince …

… at the age of 2 days, I got the nick Jazi, that in time (thanx to text messaging) became JZ. I’ve been known with different nicks by different people, AJ, Cowboy, Ajju, Baba and Black Prince.

Jumpy: Profession?

JZ: I serve the hugest electronic media network of Pakistan, ARY, as a Head of Graphics, at their in-house advertising agency, ARY Creative Workshop.

Basically, I’m a motion graphics designer, but the job responsibilities swing over from Concpet and Copy writing, to doing or monitoring the voice overs, composing or arranging music, Designing graphics (motion and still), sometimes substituting art director at the shoots, Managing a crew of about 8 talented individuals, yawning at the meetings and providing guidance to who ever requires it.

Jumpy: Hobbies?

JZ: My hobbies can be traced back to Sketching, writing Poetry and Prose, Web Designing, Motion Graphics Designing, Remixing songs, Dancing, Playing Guitar, Composing Songs, Sequencing Drums and having all the insane information that no one would ever want to have. Sleeping is one of the favorite hobbies of mine, but I only get to sleep at Sundays from my busy schedule. One might say, my hobbies are my work and vice versa.

Jumpy: Please tell us your favorite software & tools?

JZ: Ah .. I don’t know, they keep changing the versions all the time, and new ones keep popping up. These days I work mostly at Adobe’s Photoshop 7, After Effects 7, Vegas 6.0, Sound Forge 4.5, Flash MX 2004, Director MX 2004, Dreamweaver MX 2004, File Zilla, Real Player, I Tunes, Fire Fox, MSN Messenger, Adium. At work I use Mac G5 system having OS X Operating system, and at home I got an Intel 4 machine with Windows 2000 Professional (yes, I hate XP).

To me a software is just like a canvas through which one could convey the desired message.

Jumpy: How has your experience with Pakistani media been so far?

JZ: The Pakistani media unfortunately is at its early evolutionary stage, fortunately, the evolution process is pretty fast. The thing that slows the process however, is the illiterate audience, and inadequate funding. We still lack the right equipment to produce the desired outputs. Perhaps that’s just one of the reasons that our artists gain popularity as they cross the border. The buyer doesn’t know what quality product he should buy, and the seller doesn’t know how to market the quality product. I suppose not more than 6 years back, the formal media education started to make its place among the common MBBS and BE degrees. Still at most of the institutes, the instructors their selves are not sound enough to deliver the knowledge, most of the people learn stuff at their own with experience.

Jumpy: What about your computer education?

JZ: Hmm … what about it .. lol …. Well, I guess it was back in 1997 that I felt the urge to tame the beast, I was at my Summer Vacations (BS Electronics) and I joined this computer hardware shop at Shola Market, Alkhobar - Saudi Arabia. I would like to mention my mentors Tariq Bhai, Alvi Bhai, Farhan (one of my best friends), from whom I learned about every single chip there at the mother board. The software were pretty easier to handle than the hardware that I mostly managed at my own.

Formally I have done my BS in Electronics with Computers Major from E.M.U., Cyprus-Turkey (1996-2000), and my MS IT majors in Multimedia from Hamdard University, Karachi - Pakistan (2001-2002).

Jumpy: Your imaginations are natural or you develop it time by time?

JZ: Interesting question. I guess imagination has a lot to do with the references one perceives. At times when you are onto doing something, your imagination just flies from one point to the other, and sometimes, there is a dead line at hand and you are blank up in the head! that’s where references come in handy.

The thing is whenever doing something creative, either drawing a sketch, making music, writing words, or designing an animation, one needs to align one’s self with what he or she is doing, but the mind is not a machine, and it has this bad habit of wondering off. Once you align your self with what you need to do, you end up creating a master piece!

So I would say that despite being gifted with creative imagination, I also find the need to enhance my visualization capabilities from time to time.

Jumpy: What we can expect from "Mirza Aijaz Ather (JZ)" in the future?

JZ: I don’t know, never really thought about my Future. Perhaps never gave life a serious enough thought about what to do tomorrow. I live at a day-to-day basis, don’t hit the bed till I finish the day’s chores.

You could expect me designing the most ‘out of this world’ motion graphics and animation, and you could expect me making music. What I don’t expect from me is fitting in the so called Pakistani Culture, having a married life with children and all. Well, I don’t really know, I usually suck at expectations.

Jumpy: Sources of inspiration?

JZ: Sketching: The beautiful curves of the human features.