Fontmaster Havaldar Karmali

Recently on a chutti I went to an Army base where a friend of mine posted.

All the time I noticed these writing pads everyone in his unit was carrying. They had their names written on it in a beautiful curvy typeface. I was curious  and asked him about the font, funny was what he told me....

That was not a font but manual handwriting of a Havaladar of his unit who makes this pads for everyone in the unit.

I met Havaldar Karmali, sat with him, he taught me how he did it (in a single stroke without using an eraser) and I taught him some cartooning.

I told my officer friend that I could make font out of this, we could name the font Karmali and they could use it all across the unit. He agreed, we also asked Karmali saab, and he said he won't mind it, although he was a bit confused about what a font was - his fellow Havaldar - the guy who makes presentation etc tried to explain it to him.

I gave Karmali saab a template to fill, and as soon as I was back I got the filled up template from him.

I got to work and after a series of tweaks and changes managed the software - Hav Karmali.ttf

Download the font here! 

Interesting was that after a few days I got my own notebook from Havaldar Karmali !!! and he had made special effort for my notepad!

Yuss, I am a proud owner of my owner Karmali notepad !

Historical Tryouts

Always wanted to try out inserting cartoons in old photos.
Here are two attempts

Murder of Jinnah and Murder of Shastri.
Hope I get to use this style somewhere!

pictures from Old Indian Photos

HT Brunch comic

The sunday magazine of HT Brunch did a comics special, and asked few comic creators to send in one page comics.

P.S - they called the comics creators in the issue as the "best comic creators of the country". I think these were just the people who agreed, out of a bigger list of people they knew worked in comics, out of a bigger list of people who are more famous than their equally or more talented counterparts due to some inequality or other, out of of a bigger list of the actually best comic creators of the country.  

The theme was "Suviving in the big city"

After lot of to and fro we agreed on this final idea : 

And I drew a rough thumbnail for it....

But then I had the good sense to realise it was too much for one page. So I shifted to this other idea I had written for a long time for a small book - It basically included 10 lessons of life like "sab harami hain" etc. etc.

had space for only 3 of those.

So it seemed like good to all to fir hamne yahi kar liya.

It went well.

Here's the link to the version on HT website:

http://www.hindustantimes.com/Brunch/Brunch-Stories/Comic-Survivor-s-guide-to-an-Indian-life/Article1-1073045.aspx#.UbTfXeMuZjc.facebook