The Yali team has been busy, busy, busy. While Kala has been hard at work, tweaking and editing the story, I have been creating the artwork, one spread at a time. I thought it might be fun to share the process with you, dear readers. Here is how it is done at Yali HQ.
First, a rough sketch to position the elements of a scene. The sketch acts as a guide and more often than not, the final artwork evolves in a slightly different direction.
I have chosen to illustrate Bye, Bye, Motabhai! using a paper collage technique. I use textured, colorful scrap-booking paper and construct each character (and scene) by assembling them piece-by-piece. Â I draw out the shapes, cut them with my trusty knife and glue some of the smaller pieces together. My pretty, pink cutting mat is pictured below.
I then scan the pieces at a very high resolution in a .tif format to ensure that the details and colors are replicated without quality losses. I love how they look on the scanning bed, don’t you?
Finally, I work on Adobe Photoshop to assemble the little pieces into a complete artwork. I do this for a number of reasons. Photoshop allows me to play with the artwork, re-position characters, play with transparencies and clean up any small mistakes. One of my finished artwork is seen below. See how the elements further in the background fade a bit more than Pavan and Motabhai in the foreground. I also added some pen-and-ink sketches to the very far horizon for buildings, streetlamps and the like.
One down, so many more to go! Now, back to work…
-Ambika
The way you describe it, it sounds really simple once you know what you want. Interesting!!
WOW! Very very nice Ambika! Really very pretty work and I am sure takes a lot of meticulous work. Good work. And lots of best wishes.
Thank you so much! It is immensely enjoyable, it makes up for the intricate work that needs to be done. Glad you liked it!
Great job!!!
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