2nd Edition of Comic Con India was a three day affair filled with launches and announcements. Here is a look into some of them.
Campfire bringing back the real heroes with ‘Sindabad’
Campfire Graphic Novels introduced their upcoming title ‘Sindabad’ which follows the legendary hero of the high seas in his new adventure. With this title Campfire wanted to bring the tale of a real hero to the Indian audiences. Campfire strongly feels that comics and graphic novels are not limited to spandex clad superheroes and there are many more super hero stories to be told. With Sindabad it’s bringing one such neat story to the readers.
ACK & Turner’s ‘Sons of Ram’ to release theatrically in August 2012
ACK Media’s Kushal Ruia who is also the Director of “Sons of Ram” showcased the trailer of the 2D animated film along with sneak preview of their upcoming animated series “Suppandi Suppandi!” He also announced that “Sons of Ram”, which is a co production between Turner and ACK, is going to be ACK’s first theatrical feature film and that too in Stereoscopic 3D. The film will be released on the 10th August 2012.
Munkeeman hits Kanpur
The second title of Munkeeman comic was announced by its creator Abhishek Sharma (Director of Tere Bin Laden) at Comic Con India. Munkeeman follows the story of a monster who thinks he is a hero. Born as a result of a scientist’s failed experiment, Munkeeman is the only urban legend monster says Abhishek. In the second title, Munkeeman resurfaces in Kanpur after his sudden disappearance in Delhi.
Chariot Comics Launches VRICA
Chariot Comics’ Aniruddho Chakraborty and Aditya Dhaniwal launched their upcoming titles ‘VRICA’, ‘Damned’ and ‘Eklavya – Godslayer’. Aniruddho shares that the focus of Chariot is completely on the digital medium and they want to bring about the consumption of their titles through internet, apps and various other digital platforms. On the same lines Chariot Comics would also be launching its website Awesome.0 soon.
Designing Characters for Games
This session by Lakshya Digital’s Divyendra Singh Rathore and Kshiraj Telang had insights on the character designing process that goes into gaming. The duo shared that games have a variety of characters from the light hearted tongue in cheek ‘Cool Characters’, the funny looking disproportionate ‘Goofy Character’ to Bad Ass hypersexualized ‘Tough Characters’ and rounded cheerful ‘Cute Characters’. Characters are the skin through the players experience the game and hence character designing is a very crucial element of the game development cycle.
Pop Culture brings the 80s character ‘Timpa’ back
‘Timpa’ the popular comics of 80s earlier published by Indrajal Comics is now being reintroduced by Pop Culture Publishing and the first title in this series ‘The Red Hooded Gang’ was announced at Comic Con India. Timpa is more or less the Indian version of Tin Tin and is about teenage detective boy from Calcutta, who along with his grandfather solves mysteries.
Stupid Guy Comes to India
Stupid Guy Goes to India, an English translation (by Kumar Sivasubramaniam) of a 2002 non-fiction manga by Yukichi Yamamatsu was launched by Blaft Publications along with Yukichi at Comic Con India. The book describes Yukichi’s travels to India (without knowing a word of English, or any other Indian language); his attempts to translate classic Samurai manga into Hindi, self-publish the books, and sell them on train platforms; his hilarious experiences at a brothel and at the racetrack; and much more. Yukichi shared that in his journey in India he faced many ups and downs and at one point he was even selling noodles on a cart on streets of Patel Nagar to make ends meet. But he still wanted to bring Manga to India and didn’t give up.
Comics Lend to Games
Showcasing the trailer of the popular game title ‘Batman Arkham’, Jayont R. Sharma, Chairman & CEO, Milestone Interactive shared with the audience that comic titles often lend themselves to games because of their strong characters. Other examples of games using comic book elements would be Infamous 2, Spiderman etc. Jayont urged all comic book creators and artists who have an existing comic IP which can be developed into games to contact Milestone as it is in the process of launching a new initiative Game4u.tv. Not revealing much about Game4u.tv Jayont said it will be a platform for casual games.