The Owl

THE OWL is a short story by Mr. Ratnakar Matkari. Its translated into english by Yogesh Chandekar for our ongoing short story festival on our FEAST website...This story will be uploaded in few days...I loved the mood and the backdrop against which the story is told...I just wish we adopt it for comic book format...would be super fun i am sure.

Here is the link to the website. You can catch the earlier short stories in the archive section. Enjoy and share with all your friends as well.
http://www.wix.com/thefeast/enter

GQ assignments for MAY 2010

Hi guys, stuff done for may GQ...new feature has been started that is ACTIVE...good for learning the right way to exercise...i am enjoying it for now. All the roughs and final pieces for you to check...Had loved the guy with a candy for style shrink, was rejected...but i liked the way the rough looks...MOBY was the model i was following for that piece...

Zoom in

These were done long time ago. This set of illustrations were done for JWT. Its for a booklet for nikon zoom lenses...Idea was to create a seamless zoom in kind of effect...so from a very wide shot of the city we are zooming in and the scene keeps changing as the sequence progresses...I enjoyed illustrating these. The effect is more evident if all these images play in a slide show format.

GQ Assignments for APRIL

These were pieces for GQ april issue.
Sex talk spoke about how there is no perfect 10 when it comes to sex...Good looks might not mean great sex...True...So i did like 3 roughs for it exploring various ideas. Shrink was very straightforward...So here are the roughs and final illustrations for you to see.
Starting from april i am doing few infographics for GQ...these are real fun to work on and sometimes very very challenging...Such was the case with the illustration for one of the article...basically it spoke about packing your suit butler style...I did some roughs but those were not what the art director wanted...Finally they suggested we go extremely simple and do it in one frame rather then doing multiple or two frames...
so this was it...
Check and leave your comments

Qukie

Its a great stress buster...Draw what you like...Just a quick sketch and colour in between hectic work for money. Hope to do a finished version of the same sometime soon...there are few other thumbnails i need to refine those...Hope to learn a few tricks from doing these pieces more often.

BATMAN

Just an exercise to loosen up with my drawings/inks. This one was inked traditionally on paper and then coloured digitally. I love TIM SLAE's art a lot as it is heavy on mood...I need to get a lot of it in my work...I hope to work on more of these.

GQ assignments for FEB 2010

This time i got to work on some tiny HOW TO illustrations...The size of these illustrations was very small. Earlier i had done similar stuff in different style but now the art director wanted to add some colours to it...Was really a good opportunity to explore stuff from a minimal colouring style method...I have figured out a few things while working on these pieces..hopefully i might be able to use it in a bigger artwork...Lets see till then have a great time and keep coming back.

2 weeks, 4 directors, 8 films, 172 frames

As i was tied up with LIQUID COMICS project for last few months i was not accepting any assignments...It was almost 3 months since i did any boards. I was called many times but i kept refusing assignments...As liquid comics project was nearing its completion i got a call from SODA FILMS...they were working on two films and subject matter was interesting...I was tempted... First two boards were done for SODA FILMS - Director : RAJESH KRISHNAN...was good experience going for location recce and blocking shots...I should get to do that more often then i can perform better and upgrade my work...After that i did two different boards for 30 SEC OF FAME - Director : UZER KHAN...He was working on LG film and had got a storyboard made but was extremely unhappy with the quality as it did not capture any bit of what he wanted to do in his film...The LG board was done in 7 hours straight. Its mainly because the shots are mid sots and a lot of tilt and swing lense shots...then one more garnier film for UZER...after that 3 films for FOOTCANDLES FILMS - Director -AYAPPA...for the first time i did three films all for one client - one campaign but three different aspect ratios :)...may be the director wanted each film to feel different so this decision...then one more fair and lovely film for FOOTCANDLES another team Director - HIREN...Usual Unilever stuff so many things to take care of in that one...

all in all it was around two weeks, 4 directors, 8 films and 172 frames in total...
I have pushed myself to deliver frames upto all the directors vision for their films...It was great fun...more then the process of drawing/finishing the frames i love the process of brainstorming / decoding the film with directors.

GQ Assignments for Feb 2010

Hi people, I have been busy with work for Liquid comics thus there are hardly any updates on the blog...I am not taking up any other assignments then GQ. These were the pieces done for February month...Sex talk talks about planning a birthday surprise...Style shrink comments on if your shoes and tie need to match or no...
I had loved the style shrink piece but i saw the issue today...in print a yellow patch has been printed it covers all the tonal values and its killed the simplicity of the illustration...Don't yet know if its a layout mistake or layout requirement.

Anyway here its all with the roughs so have a look and post your comments if any.

GQ Assignments for JAN -2010

Hi All, A very happy new year to all of you and may you guys be more alert and sensitive towards environment this year onwards...This is a bunch of assignments done for the january issue. Sharing with you all the roughs done for the same...I wanted to work on the chess board don for the style shrink and for the sex talk i so wanted to work on the movie poster image...I should start playing with some other medias like ink and paint pencil on paper then just this digital thing...

I am tied up with one comic book project for LIQUID COMICS hence no uploads lately.
This year on i want to work on some proactive stuff. Lets see how it goes.

The Feast Website

Hi All, hope you guys are doing fine. Yogesh has assembled a website for FEAST and other visions of malevolence. Here you can get complete info about the idea and creators associated with the project...We will be starting to work on the pages from January 2010 and then on will keep uploading previews/behind the scene stuff online on the wesite. So bookmark it and stay with us on the journey we are about to begin.

Hope you guys like this
http://www.wix.com/thefeast/enter

GQ Sex talk for the december 2009

This month the article spoke about the combination of sex and luxury. How the most expencive hotels are made for great sex. For this one i wanted the piece to have a grand and lavish feel. As i did some scribbles i felt strongly for the one that was set in a rajasthani palace. With just the rough drawings i wanted to quickly do some colour test to jsut see how the feel can be enhanced...I don't know why but images from Tarsem Singh's 'THE FALL' were coming to my head...the strong colours against wide open spaces. I added red curtains and then some candles. Here i am sharing the roughs with the final piece. Hope you guys like this. let me know your thoughts.

The Feast and other visions of malevolence

character explorations and four final pages from the story "The Feast". I will be working on three stories "The Feast", "The beckoning" and "Good Boys Come Home Before Dark"...we are discussing few technical details of the project with the publisher...We shall reveal the details once we finish the contratual formalities...And we have few other thoughts by which we want to make these stories available to wider audience...Just wait for some more time and we shall share further details with everyone here and on our website.

GQ sex talk November

For the month of november sex talk was the opener of the section so for the first time i had lot of space to use.This assignment took some revisions and lot of realisations. The article was very very bold talking about various aspects of making love with explicit refrences to various positions. I felt it can be explored as bluntly visually too. Did the first round of roughs and it was approved...i finished the illustration...but then it was election time here and the editor did not want to take any chances where any political party can exploite the opportunity and attack their office...he felt it was too LOUD...could have been bold but it was Loud...I did realise he was right..i did a quick revision and the entire piece was redone as a different illustration. I liked it better.

Here are both versions. let me know what you guys think.

GQ Sex talk for October

This article talked about how 90% females are unsatisfied by their male partners and still do not protest about it just so male ego is not hurt. It talked about how a man can know his woman had a great or good time....and so on.
i thought no matter how well built or sleek the guy is if he is going to fail 90% of the time is satisfying her then he is just a play thing for her. I wanted her to feel and look like this nature godess who is not really impressed by him. so the concept was explored in two sketches and then taken on to final.
I enjoyed working on this one and learnt that i have to keep my eyes wide open while drawing next time i draw her foot. Shes become a bog foot here :) there is never a next time and i screwed it up here.

PITCH FOR PICTURE THIS

This set of 40 illustrations was created for PICTURE THIS PRODUCTIONS.I was working for them for the first time and they wanted to make images to convey their film. The entire first pass was done ina storyboard manner but soon the directors felt that it was not communicating what they wanted to say. They took some time and came back with the idea of getting rid of the backgrounds in most of the places and keep the focus on characters and expression to that the focus will remain on the story.
It was a good learning experience for me as well as i did feel the approach they followed was spot on. I liked working on the drawings as it was the most fun part then on its all technical inks and colour.