Poojita Ki Kahani

facebook.com/aaapkipoojita
www.aaapkipoojita.com




A long time back me and Adhiraj had written a small spoof of the standard TV girl centric show ad  -

Aapki Poojita

AD: Aapki Poojita

The acting and setting will be very soaplike for this one

'ek aam ladki ki aam kahani'

in the start she's getting ready, we don't show her face, only her wearing the earrings, combing her hair, she picks up her books (we can have a small gag here by putting some strange book in there) when she hears her mother 'POOJITA', she turns back with her dupatta flowing and we see her face...

she rushes towards her mother, where we see that the mother and father with their clothes torn up a little bit, bleeding thoda thoda with blackmarks and the father holds a broken bottle, she asks both of them to say sorry to each other, which they do.

then she says that she's leaving for college, and she leaves home on a scooty wearing a helmet (kareena kapoor types)  (from inside we show her home as a small faaltu sa flat but she gets out of a big kothi)

then we show next shot of her honking outside a friend's flat, who comes out complaining that she isn't ready for the exams....poojita then asks her to relax because she already has the papers (she bribed the peon)...then she and her friend leave.

finally she stops to see her brother playing cards with goons, she goes to him...chintu (chintu will be wearing tight shorts and shirt) says 'didi aap?' and then she asks chintu  'haar rahe ho kya chintu?' ...chotu nods in silence, she then sees his cards and throws one, suddenly all the goons throw away their cards and chotu collects all the money while screaming 'thank you poojita didi'

then we have the final shot of Poojita, with her flipping her dupatta, while the super comes (with the VO)

aa rahi hai aapke ghar is sitambar, Aapki Poojita...

This was sometime in 2009.

This year - 2012, we were thinking of working on some concept together. This came back to us and we started work on it.

Spoof would limit us, so we changed the concept a bit - here the story starts after the show is cancelled.

So we wrote the concept note, which went like this -

Poojita and her family are the proud stars of a daily soap "Aapki Poojita" - but things change, ratings fall, and after 20 years of being on the top, Aapki Poojita is cancelled by the channel. The Aapki Poojita family are now forced to live in the *real* world - no slow motion entries, no palatial homes, no generation leaps, no more wearing saris and heavy jewellery everywhere, no shuk-shuk-shuk cameras on every character's face.

This strange new world - where things cost money, load-shedding is a daily ritual, and people use the toilet - is Poojita's new home, and she has to cope with all of that, and the responsibilities of the household. Whether it is taking care of the elderly Bauji and Ba, making sure her younger brother Chintu gets to school on time, watch out for Komolika's constant scheming, and figure out what went wrong with their pom Tuffy, who went from a supersmart TV dog to a mentally challenged real life dog. Oh yes, and she has to manage her 'woh din'.

Then we worked on few pieces of concept art #

Level 10 comics also agreed to partner to extend the concept further. For the time being we decided to develop the concept through webcomics.

We already had the script and basic idea of what the characters would look like, all we had to do was go into details.

When we were booking the domain I realised that purely by accident we had used the AAA's in Aaapki Poojita's logo which was funny because these TV shows commonly use extra letters in their names.

We bought domains, space and created a website with Pi (22/7), his uncool name is Piyush - a friend and techie. The website was designed by painter and yougn designer Shikhant Sablania, who at that time was working with me. I intend to write a detail post on his work later.

He made our new logo as well -

You can see some of Shikhant's work on his facebook page Choorma

Here is how the initial design looked -

 

We simplified it later since wordpress allows limited customization, but in the end it all went well, the buttons looked nice, the logo looked nice, and the about us page - I love it. for no exact reason. I love it.

You can check out the final website here - www.aaapkipoojita.com - remember three AAA's.

Since we were going to spoof TV shows, we deccided to follow the same routine, and till now we have made sure we stick to it.

At the same time we were working on a video, parts of which we used for out display picture and coming soon posters on facebook.

The coming soon posters - 

The video we were working on was made by using artwork I had drawn on watercolor paper and painted using Gouache paints, we finally finished it, part animated it and put it up as our 10th strip, it explains the complete concept.

The background score was what we had fun doing, it was mostly Adhiraj's idea. We wrote a script for it earlier  -

Theme Song Lyrics

Rishton mein pyaar jahan hota hai
Badon ka aadar jahan hota hai
Chhoton ko sanskaar jahan milta hai
Aur apaahjion ko bhi jhel lete hain
Jahan property dispute nahi hota hai
Aur kabhi koi nahi rota hai

Khane mein puri halwa
Peene mein chai-cola
Ne-ne-ne-ne-ola

Wahin rehte hain yeh loooog
Hum tum sab ke jaise yeh loooog
Wahi ab bas samajh hi loooo
Serial ka naam hai joooooo
Aaapkiiiii Poooooojiiiitaaaaaa!

Initially, I had trouble working in the small space of a daily strip, but then adjusted to it. I am still adjusting. Here's the latest strip -

We experiment with almost everything, like this embedding within the strip that we tried out on two or three strips, there are more experiments to come.

So all in all its going well, more than anything I am having fun using this small strip format.

Aaapki Poojita is owned, written and drawn by Adhiraj Singh and Sumit Kumar.

Update 2013 :
We've hit 100 strips and 400 likes.

Aaapki Poojita is not an instant success. We don't have huge traffic, but its good for 4 months. Important is we're learning new things about how content behaves in the online market.
One reason for less traffic is that for webcomics instant works, infact for anything online, anything which is about current events gets quick attention.
Other problem is that sometimes out stories get too complex for the reader, for an online daily webcomic, linear is better.

Shikhant has left for Bharat darshan and the talented Charu Chaudha has taken over coloring. We're paying her good and not doing the "you're a fresher we'll exploit you Bullshit".

We're writing stories, which might make the news tomorrow, day after tomorrow or never. We're working with only one thing in mind - Content is the king.