Nina New Cover

See no evil, say no evil, hear no evil.
Nina meets some monkeys in Jodhpur.
These 15 pages were epic...very foolishly I agreed to do a 15 pager whilst on holiday in Goa.You can imagine the rest...I spent every day in Goa NOT doing anything and then almost killed myself over the weekend to finish aforesaid 15 pages.Luis, the editor was sending me messages like "the clock is ticking" and towards the end simply "WHERE???!"
Will post some more images as soon as I catch up on some sleep.

Jooba Concept Art

Here is where it always starts...from a sketch.
These are the most critical part, as its been my experience that people react most viscerally to a sketch.Either your character has appeal or it doesnt...showing the sketches around at this stage establishes the whole feel and characters of the world.

I do fast b/w sketches and color them later in Photoshop, also the design of the characters does change from medium to medium, as the final Flash animated figures did come out slightly different.

Jooba!

Wow, 4 months of dev. time and finally I can talk/show what we have been working on.

Its ACK Media's first product in the pre-school age group and is about a bunch of kid's characters in a fantasy land where they have tons of adventures, explore basic learning concepts such as alphabets , numbers and shapes/colors.
We also introduce Kalia and Doob Doob, two popular characters from Tinkle as the MCs of the show as well as some live action dancers.
Its a very India themed show, as Samir Patil, the producer of the show has always stressed the demand in the market for such a show.

The entire show is a mixed format 22 minute episode that can work as a TV serial or 11 minute episodes.I conceptualized the world, designed the characters and with the help of a very talented team in Bangalore and Mumbai ,directed the 4 DVDs that we are releasing in September.
It was an exhausting effort as we had to do design and production in 3 different formats, to wit Live Action, Puppetry and Animation.
We ended doing all the post-production ourselves as well and have learnt a lot from this experience, with a number of team members learning entirely new skill sets to push the bar.So enough with the blabber, here's the work, starting with the concept stills...

Nina Look Development

Im going to post some look development work that I did on Nina before she got published on her first story.Sadly,I didnt get as much time to polish the drawings as much as I would have liked as we were involved in a massive video production at the time(ill post about that development later).
So here are some raw pics.....just ink pen and paper.

Suppandi and Shikari Shambu Reboot

We recently updated the look of Shikari Shambu and Suppandi for Tinkle, they are definitely one of the most loved characters in the Tinkle ouvre and we started by doing
a couple of 15 second interstitials in 3d using their new designs.Take a look...

Amar Chitra Katha Look Development

Old work getting a dusty airing out....this is a bunch of stuff we did for Amar Chitra Katha.
Little did I realize then, but this would be the last look development work that we would do as an indpendent studio,soon after this the buyout occurred and we became Amar Chitra Katha.

Some of these look dev. works actually made it as posters in Crosswords and Landmark, as well as bookmarks.Im hoping to get this look in the Mobile content that we are developing currently as well...take a look!

Nina:Lost and Found

Nina's adventures are set in 1950's India and she follows her Dad around on his job.
Her mother is missing, since she was a young child and a longer story arc that explores
her mother's mysterious disappearance will add a deeper sub-plot to her stories.

The first story is set in Nepal, where we join Nina and her Dad on a road tunnel survey.Before big engineering projects are started, Nina's dad is called upon to make geographical and geological survey maps of the area.On the way to the survey site, their jeep breaks down and a snowstorm descends.They discover a plane wreck which has been uncovered by an avalanche and go to investigate...