Pratibha Goes... :'(

Power Pritika

So, it was Pritika's birthday and I had been thinking long and hard about what to gift her, finally did this illustration, Power Pritika -

I added all personalised details -

the on/off switch - 

the dots on the face

and her standard haristyle -

The Pritika Gift Set included -

A personalised animation -



A personalised visiting card with her own logo!

Her own website concept, included her favorite designers Sagmeister and MC Escher and Alan Fletcher, visit it here - http://uonline.in/powerpritika/

AND A SWEAT SHIRT!!!

the uncle on the kinetic wants his own sweat shirt, sad man...

well yes, and there were lot of other gifts too, but his was the whole one concept idea. and she loved it!

best part is, her facebook image hasn't changed since then!

B-)

The Cartoonist is coming!

Kashmir Ki Kahani - Part 2 Teaser

The Google Doodle artist

The Artist who does Google Doodles! He's worked with Blue Sky Studios on Horton Hears a Who, Ice Age and Rio before.

His blog doesn't have much of his google work but you can see it here. 

Aggarwal Aunty's Atom Bomb

:-)

Kashmir Ki Kahani

Kashmir Ki Kahani started taking shape when I first read India after Gandhi.

I was like this standard boy, I had never known who Sheikh Abdullah was and I believed that terrorism  was a part of Kashmir right from the starting.

Than was the question of deciding the narrator of the story, basically an enveloping theme for the comic,
the last comic I did was TV Ki Kahani and in that the narrator is Shammi Narang. So since this was Kashmir Ki Kahani and Shammi matched Shammi, I decided to have Shammi Kapoor and Sharmila Tagore from Kashmir Ki Kali tell the Kahani.


First thing I did was draw Shammi Kapoor, in a simplified style, also his mating dance. For Shammi Kapoor I did use an interesting reference.

Then I storyboarded the whole sequence -

The scan is in greyscale, I don't use pencil, only the 5 rupees wala simple ballpoint pen. Then I drew the Drawings in detail.

And then there was the issue of coloring the initial sequence, which I wanted to match with the actual colors of the song - Kashmir Ki Kali.
Suri helped me with this and using the filters in Photoshop he achieved almost similar colors -

The Movie -

The Comic -

 The colors for the other pages were pretty simple.

It was sometimes difficult to find images of Kashmir of 1947, but not that difficult.

The other interesting part of the Comic was drawing Sardar Patel, also Iron Man of India. So we made him the Iron man. Had done this a long time back in Random Magazine, but there it was only a one image gag, whereas here it was a solid character!

Also there were some really mind boggling pages, which used the whole  idea of Vertical Comics superbly -

The Script took a some time too, but as soon as it was ready I jumped on drawing it... it went on for 2 months, before the Comic was ready.

Everybody liked the Comic and it was heavily shared, and read. It was one of the top read items on Newslaundry!

 And there was Andrew Whitehead, pictures from his blog were a key reference for the comic. I gave him credit and he returned the favor by posting about the comic on his blog.

P.S - Didn't know Andrew Whitehead that well, but after he posted the link, I got to know that he's a BBC hot shot. I now show off and mention this everywhere, at the drop or not drop of a hat, wuaah hah hah!

And here's a wallpaper of Iron man patel working in his office if you're interested - 

You can read Kashmir Ki Kahani here -

http://www.newslaundry.com/2012/05/kashmir-ki-kahani-2/

I am writing and drawing the part 2 now.

Update 2013: 

Part 2 and Media coverage.

Update May 2013:

Part 3

Rahul Gandhi's Illustrated Biography

During a discussion someone suggested to the editor of Newslaundry an idea, to basically do an illustrated Comic on Rahul Gandhi's life and career. 

his reply was - Huh?!?! His CAREER?!?!? In politics??!?! Not Rahul. There is no career in politics. There is no story to his political rise. His story can be three frames. Born – kind of grew up – became MP... And kind of growing up

Some weeks passed and I had to suggest a small, 7-8 page comic to them. So I suggested the Rahul's life again. Summary ? 

Born – kind of grew up – became MP... And kind of growing up

working on this with me was Suri Singh, and the style reference I shared with him was of this Children's story book I read a long time back, The Stonecutter, illustrated by Lee Cosgrove.

And we could do it in the time we had. I did the art and Suri created the illustration digitally in the style.

I did a Preface to give it the complete feel of a book, this panel in particular of the city took some time to complete...

I loved the finished product, moreover the Starting Apology Letter , which had my cartoon asking for muaafi - 

You can read the comic here - http://www.newslaundry.com/2012/04/rahul-gandhi-an-illustrated-biography/

Sailor and the Seagull

A brilliant piece of animation by UPA.

it sort of destroyed a very strong argument I had in my mind. Kya yaar!

A Cat in Paris