ANINDYA
ILLUSTRATOR
PHOTOGRAPHER
FILM MAKER
VISUAL DESIGNER
Tree of Knowledge?
I was playing with a mass of pen ink. Uneven blowing let the ink spread over the paper. Wherever the ink spread it left behind its trail. Surprisingly I found it was taking a shape of a tree with branches flowing around! Adding a few elements could lead to a meaning. Isn’t it?
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Is it really a blank space?
I believe invisible forms are generating and vanishing in every moment within this enclosed space. My work is to give visibility to them.
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CONTENT ABOUT ME RESUME
MDES. PROJECTS
BFA PROJECTS
1. An Ordinary Day (A Short Film)
15. Campaigning
2. Future of the Image
16. Poster Design
3. Silver Screen
17. Calender Design
4. Design Research Project
18. Illustrations
MINI PROJECTS
MISCELLANEOUS
5. Bronze Sculpture
19. Painting
6. Short Films
20. Photography
7. Documentary
21. Personification
8. Sand Animation
22. Design Thoughts
EXPLORATIONS 9. Visual Interest 10. Visual Relationship 11. Studies in Typography 12. Character Family Design 13. Abstraction for Children 14. Pen & Ink
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About Me
Resume Educational Qalification
• MDes in Visual Communication, IDC IIT Bombay in 2011 • BFA in Applied Art, Rabindra Bharati University in 2009 • WBCHSE, Rahararamkrishna Mission in 1999 • WBBSE, Bhatpara Amarkrishna Pathsala in 1997
Professional Course Attended
• One year certificate course in Commercial Art, Academy of Fine Arts in 2005 • Multimedia course, Arena Multimedia, 2003 - 2005 • Mechanical Engineering, Jadavpur University, final year drop out, duration 1999 - 2003
I was born in a small town near Kolkata. I am a pure Bengali guy, even my accent will tell you that I am a Bong. During my study in Ramakrishna Mission I learnt that the world is not only for me, we have to think of others. When I joined Mechanical engineering in a renowned institute, gradually I felt that I was becoming self centered thinking of money, good job and reputation all the time. So I left the course and attended BFA in applied arts. Here I learnt to observe, even an insignificant object can give us many ideas. Later my study at IDC,IIT Bombay opened many doors I had not been aware of. Here I learnt ‘what is Design’ and the past, present and future of design both in India and abroad. I wish to proceed ahead along with the wealth i got from IDC.
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Participation and Activities
• In a Planet of Our Own – A vision of Sustainability • Designing for Children – A conference held at IDC
Software Skills
• Photoshop, Paintshop Pro, Corel Paint, Illustrator, Corel Draw, Flash, Indesign, Adobe Premiere, Final Cut Pro, Motion, color, Soundtrack Pro, After Effects
Basic Skills
• Film making both digital and analog • Illustrations and paintings in several media, Studio and Outdoor Photography
Professional Interests
• AD film making, Installation, Illustrations, Conceptualization, Print Media, Brand Identity
Other Interests
• Reading books, Films of different genre, Listening to different countries’ music, Sketching, Painting, Photography, Travelling, Researching in unexplored areas of arts and crafts of India
Other Interests
• Email ID: asbiswas@gmail.com • Contact No. +919433841288 (Kolkata), +919757413428 (Mumbai)
An Ordinary Day (A Short Film)
This film is all about the protagonist’s dream where his psyche gives life to an imaginary character of his story that he left unfinished years before. It is an endeavour to explore the non-linear structure and different visual appearances of film language.
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Storyboard
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Storyboard (Contd.)
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Future of the Image
I have taken video art as the medium. Instead of showing them on a two dimensional flat surface I have taken the challenge to project them on three dimensional geometrical objects. Thus the canvas and the way of seeing have been changed.
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Future of the Image (Projection Mapping on 3D Geometry)
Giving an idea of the future of the image is not an easy task because millions of artists have been practicing contemporary arts across the world since long ago. From numerous media video art has been chosen as it is quite new compared to traditional image making process and has the potential of audio visuals. The video is ‘mapped’ on three dimensional geometrical objects without any distortion. The content is designed in a manner that gives it relevance when split into multiple dimensions. Parallel events projected on different planes let viewers see many perspectives simultaneously, thus allowing nonlinearity. The project’s motto was to grab and hold the viewers’ attention.
A block with sides having 1:1, 4:3, 4:3 ratio
Final physical block with 3 videos mapped
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The block with 3 open surfaces to be seen at most
Silver Screen (internship)
This one and half month full time internship with a popular Bengali Television series was a great opportunity for me. I was allowed to visit both the floor and editing house. The entire unit helped me a lot to understand the work flow of a daily soap.
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Silver Screen
(Summer Internship) “Silver Screen” is my exposure to the audio visual medium - how it is planned and how it is executed. It was for Star Jalsa a new TV channel from Star Group India in Ravi Ojha Production House. Fortunately I was able to see the on set shooting and post production procedure. Though the time is very short to understand the whole workflow, I have tried hard to get more and more information. During my internship I learned how many lights, accessories, devices are used for a professional shooting. I studied the lighting arrangements of each set and what they contribute in the final production. Here I have given one sketch of the lighting arrangement and the actual photograph of the set. This exposure helped me a lot while making my own film in my final project.
Title Card
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Night Scene at Lalita’s House (sketch)
Night Scene at Lalita’s House (actual)
Design Research Project
As the name suggest it is a research work on story telling methods and styles to develop a story for a short narrative fiction film. I had to research on different methods of story telling, how an incidents is shaped into a short film. Areas of research are given.
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Design Research Project In this project my areas of exploration are as follows: • Storytelling - Different Aspects • Analysis of Films • Realism in Film • Short Film • The Script • Film Based on True Story • Character Development • Building a Character Based on a Real Incident • Film Ethics • An Ethics Checklist
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Structure of a film script Identification and breaking apart of the main character for detailing. Development of the main character taking a true story from a newspaper as a case study.
Mini Projects done at IDC
During two years at Industrial Design Centre we did a number of mini projects. Some of them were in the form of assignments and some of them were free projects. We learnt a lot from them both in terms of visuals and communication.
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Bronze Casting Tradition in
Kumbakonam
The rich cultural heritage of Kumbakonam has a unique tradition of producing bronze sculpture. During a brief visit to that place I experienced the elegance of those marvelous figurines. I have documented a few authentic examples from Tanjore museum and sketched the full process of bronze casting. The same old traditional methodology has been followed till now. Through this small project I wanted to share a tiny part of our vast cultural treasure.
PS: Most of the images and textual research have been used by Ms. Nimisha Drolia who has compiled a book on Kumbakonam in her Design Project II at IDC.
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Bronze Casting Tradition in Kumbakonam
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Front and back cover One full spread of the booklet
T
he metal sculptures are called chalabera or the moving images in contrast to the sthirabera or the fixed deities. They are meant to be carried out in procession around the ambulatory of the temple as well as they are taken into the village, into every street by turn, stopped at every door to bless every individual devotee. In south India five metals were used, panchaloha as the admixture was called, composed of brass, copper, silver, gold and tin. For contemporary bronzes; copper, brass and lead are the three main ingredients. Copper contains small amounts of gold and silver so technically today’s bronzes are four metal bronzes. Copper is a necessary element in bronze because copper offers more malleability than other metals.According to early Chola inscriptions there are two types of images: solid and hollow cast. The technique used to create south Indian bronze sculpture is called lost wax process or cire perdue. As described in Shilpasastras this process is called madhuchchhishtavidhana. A narration of it is described in a chapter of Manasara and also in Vishnusamhita. But a clearer picture can be seen in Manaollasa. 8
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Short Films
Planchette Four college students want to do planchette. Accordingly they arrange props and prepare the environment. One of them makes fun of the others. When the three students leave the first one experiences someone’s presence behind him.
Tallash The protagonist continues searching for his parents in every under construction building. When he was a little kid he lost his parents in such a building and he became mentally abnormal. Later it reveals that every thing is a plot from a story written by the same guy.
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Prof. Nadkarni
The vision and the Man Professor Sudhakar Nadkarni is a living legend in the world of Indian Design. As an inspirational figure to a whole generation of Indian designers, he has fearlessly devoted himself to the cause of design in India amongst innumerable challenges. In this 40 minute documentary film my goal was to portray him through the words of his past colleagues. Digitization of old celluloids was another hectic part of this project.
Right: CD Cover of the film Below: Frames from the documentary
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Sand Animation Sand animation is one of the difficult media used in animation. Our task was to make four seconds of animation synchronized with a given music. We had to start from a point left by the previous team. I did the drawing part of it and i realized how problematic it is to handle sand as a medium. I turned a dancing and growing branch of a tree into a human face.
Right: Close-up of the face formation Below: Frames grabbed from the film
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Explorations
This film is all about the protagonist’s dream where his psyche gives life to an imaginary character of his story that he left unfinished years before. It is an endeavour to explore the non-linear structure and different visual appearances of film language.
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Visual Interest Visual interest in increasing order. first with photographs then transferred into typography.
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Understanding Visual Relationship If two objects are given how can we create such a relationship so that one should be seen first or both of them have the equal importance, was the assignment. Also deviating from obvious result was a challenge.
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PRE RAK
RA K
PR ER AK
PR E
PRE RAK
Previous page: First image - both of them have equal importance. Second Image - ONE gets priority to TWO Below: TWO gets priority to ONE Bottom: Visual order TWO-THREE-ONE
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Studies in Typography Studies in typography include understanding anatomy of fonts, font family, typeface, compositions with fonts, expressive typography, typeface design, etc. The goal of these is to gain knowledge in readability, legibility, norms, visual order and relationship while composing text matters.
Expressive typography The word itself expresses its meaning. Font used Univers.
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Hand-drawn transformation of a letter into an object within 12 frames. Font used Univers, P to “Panchi’ Ligature with the initials of my name. Font used Univers Typeface design under the guidance of Prof. Mahendra Bhai Patel. Font family: Extra Black
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Character Family Design The task was to derive a few characters from banyan tree. I did a lot of studies around hte campus for days. Random and careful sketches were done on the spot. When a large number of drawings were in my hand I started visualizing human forms from the organic shapes. Slight modification and additions gave a nice group of characters. My inspirations were Henry Moore and Ram Kinkar Beij.
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Abstraction of a Story for Children How far we can go to while making abstract illustrations for children; was the criterion. I wrote my own storyline and started exploration. On the scale of realism to abstraction I found a point that probably suit the children. Before reaching the point I did a lot of sketching and had gone through Semantic, Syntactic and Pragmatic versions of the same story.
1. Once upon a time, long long ago in the land of the writ were two kingdoms – Pencilan and Erasaria ruled by two kings – Pencilus, and Erasus. 2. One day Erasus decided to conquer Penciland and wipe out all the creations of Pencilus ‘s subjects. 3. Paperalus, the king of Paperia, heard of this and at once met both kings. He reprimanded both saying one was not perfect without the other – the pencil needed the eraser to correct its mistakes, and without the pencil, the eraser’s existence would become unnecessary. 4. Erasus realised his mistake and Pencilus accepted the importance of Erasus’ kingdom. 5. Thus, both kings in front of Paperalus decided that they would not never fight between each other but always work together to help create and maintain perfection in the world of the writ.
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Pen & Ink Pen & Ink is one of my favorite media. Long practice of watercolor made me understand the richness of black. It is very hard to play with the tint of only one color. I have 3 series of such paintings in my collection. Old black fountain pen ink on French papers gives me exciting results every time. i have also used camel red ink in some cases.
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BFA Projects
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Campaign for Google In BFA we were asked to design campaign for any brand. I took Google service. I did a magazine Ad, two Tee Shirt and a series of six posters featuring facilities they are providing.
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Poster Design During my Bachelor of Fine Arts in Applied Art I did lot many posters. Most of the were hand drawn and a few in digital media. The objective was to gain hand skills. Here I am producing a few of them. These are to showcase my concepts and hand skills. Dimensions are 20 in X 30 in, 30 in X 20 in, 30 in X 40 in. Base is mount board and media vary with the need. I have tried both conventional as well as unconventional materials.
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While I was a student of Rabindra Bharati university there was a mishap at Shantiniketan: a girl was shot dead. I read the news in a local news paper. I then decided to make a poster against Terrorism. Newspaper gives us the news of every day casualties. So I took newspaper cuttings as a medium.
While designing this poster I became minimalist to represent the message. I turned a leg filled with drinks. It tells about the attraction of the part: girls and drinks! Medium is Poster color on mount board.
This is an award winning poster in Annual Exhibition. Zed black against is used to show the impact of oil spillage. I studied how ink flows inside a stagnant fish tank filled with water. Medium is poster color on mount board.
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This was another tough job for me. The whole figure was executed with one stroke of a thick flat brush loaded with black poster color. The ink splashes were thrown very carefully to give shapes of hands and head. Before that i had to practice a lot. I am afraid that I might not able to do it again!
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My favorite vector illustration software is Adobe Illustrator. Here a close-up view is shown with wireframe structure. Mesh and Blend are used to construct the image.
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One of the Gmail Posters. They were created mostly in Illustrator - my favorite software. Here the ‘Music� poster is shown along with its mesh structure. It took hell lot of time but gave satisfactory output.
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Calender Design A six page calender had to be designed. I have used original fabrics over inked figure. At the right a poster was also designed. These were one of my experimental illustrations.
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Illustration These are two sample illustrations of a Bengali story. A fun loving uncle goes to fishing with his nephew; is the theme. Medium is Fuzi photo color, pen and ink on Fabriano watercolor paper.
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Schizophrenia Schizophrenia is any of several psychotic disorders characterized by distortions of reality and disturbances of thought and language and withdrawal from social contact. I made a small booklet on the awareness of this disease. Here are some of the illustrated frames. Conte and Charcoal on tinted Fabriano 90 g/m2 paper.
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In this chapter a few of my works will be showcased. Those are not directly related to Design, i.e. behind them there is no such problem. They are just an outcome of free thinking. All the above typefaces are copyrighted to various brands.
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Painting (Watercolor) Watercolor is my favorite medium. It is most probably the hardest medium. From childhood we are taught watercolor at home. May be it is our ‘tradition’ in Kolkata to learn watercolor in local art school as well as in art colleges and universities! Whenever I go for field study i always carry watercolor and pencils. I like cityscapes at the best, but I am also quite comfortable in landscapes and still-life. I prefer watercolor as the medium for illustrations.
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Photography
Way to school
Taken at Shantiniketan. Two girls are crossing a river to reach their school. Most of the students in remote villages in India face such hard situation.
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Different people different faces A little kid becomes goddess “Kali” to get some money from the visitors. Next: a ‘baul’ is preparing to perform.
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I wish...
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I wish...
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Divinity on the wall
While traveling around Mumbai I came across a bunch of flowers hanging from a wall in front of a temple. Bathing in the morning sun beam they are ready to be offered. This is very common. But the background, the flowers and the morning light made me think to capture a frame somehow related to De Gas’s paintings. The background is so rich that no artist can replicate it.
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Light and shade
This was taken inside a temple of Kumbakonam. The light is falling through an opening at the ceiling. Everything was dark enough to make this column relief sculpture stand out. Note this not a black and white image!
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Offering
This is my India. Shot is taken in Kumbakonam. Our heads shall automatically bow down with devotion. Nothing is necessary to explain the image!
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Personification The Oxford Dictionary says, “attribute a personal nature or human characteristics to (something nonhuman)�. In may poems it has been represented. Here I have tried it with burnt out match stick. Close and detailed study of match sticks compelled me to think that they are not just what they look, they are something more. What happens when we see an object larger than its life size? My exploration was a try out of searching the answer. Their forms would make you think to look them as a human being.
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Design Thoughts As student of master of design we are taught Gestalt laws, figure ground relationship, visual perception, visual relationship and so on. We do some exercises and take projects applying those rules. But we hardly notice that around us nature has been following these rules from the beginning of the universe. Let’s have a look on our planetary system. The earth and the moon create a group. Saturn with its 62 satellites forms another group, even entire solar system is a giant group.
Solar System
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Saturn with its 65 satellites creates a group which is a subgroup of the Solar system, a giant group
Look at the sky. The big Dipper or Saptarshi is a distinct grouping of seven stars from immemorial. People of the northern hemisphere consider this grouping auspicious. What we follow to identify these seven stars collectively is Gestalt law of continuation.
The big Dipper Image Š NASA
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I was introduced to the study of semiotics. I did syntactic, semantic and pragmatic solutions in visuals of a same story. But when I look around I find we are using them in our day to day life without knowing the theories. One example I am citing here. In Hindu culture we offer wood apple leaves (Beal) to lord Shiva. It contains three leaves in a group as shown. This symbolizes the trinayan concept of goddess Durga. Isn’t the wood apple leaves group a semantics of trinayan?
Left: Hindu idol goddess Gurga Right: Wood apple leaves as a symbol of Trinayan or the three eyes of Durga
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We have numerous examples of great designs around us. Here i am citing a few instances from Bengal Terra-cotta temples. I have been documenting them for 2 years. Image 1 is a decorated corner of a temple. It is very fascinating to see how the sculptors intertwined figures in one composition. Image 2 is a temple frieze depicting Bastraharan by lord Krishna. Image 3 is a great example of circular composition. Theme is Raslila. Image 4 is not it a marvellous example of early fractals used in design? Petals lose their identity and give a shape of a lotus.
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This a view of Radhagovindjiu temple at Antpur. Terra-cotta panels of temple walls depict 18 Puranas. The period when the temple was built was curious. Muslim rule was ebbing out and the Europeans were making forays into the country. So we can see on the temple basement friezes a few examples of Muslims and European lifestyles. Most interesting is to see the utilization of space for all those compositions. Can we, the designers, make a better solution of that?
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A continuous panel just above the temple entrance. It contains different incidents of lord Krishna. Though it is continuous still we can identify separate groups. Also there is order of where to start reading the images.
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Graduating from IDC has opened up my eyes. Now I can not wait a moment to explore new things. This small booklet is just a beginning. I have to go far ahead.