TEENTA
3 Naga folktales in comic form
Teenta is a trio comic of the legends of the Naga Folklore. The folklore selected for Teenta were from a book of short stories.
The Nagas have a strong belief in their myths and the morals from it. Almost all the stories have a nature element in the plot (nature is worshipped within the Nagas as God). Most of the stories guides the reader to introspect and follow good deeds.
My work in this comic is the last of the three stories-‘TWO BROTHERS’. The story is about the two orphans who live happily isolated in a forest. As the time passes by, the elder brother gets married. Eventually his wife starts hating the younger brother because of his childish nature and a lack of belonging towards the kid. Series of events lead to the elder brother making a decision of asking his younger brother to leave the house. With time, the tables turn and the elder brother suffers misery with his wife. Coincidentally they meet the younger brother who thrives with his family where he shows an act of mercy. The elder brother’s wife gets back to her bad deeds, which leads her to her death. That leads to the end of story as the fruits of karma.
The story depicts most of the stages in human life and is tells about repaying of the karma. This concept of karma explained by folklore have a huge impact on human behavior. This can be very well cultivated and nurtured in young kids. To do this a comic will prove to be more playful and efficient for children.
One of the main aspect of the comic was to keep it simple and have a childlike illustrative style. A black and white style is used for simplicity while some pencil shading is added to give a bit of depth. The illustrative style of human anatomy is intentionally kept very minimalistic. This leads to more scope for imagination and kids tend to relate to the story. Initially the plan was to have an illustration comic but later dialogues were added at the ambiguous places.
Process:
First, the story was read thoroughly. Then it was broken down to scenes based on sets. Further, a script in form of dialogues, narrations and sets was written down. Then a few illustrations for the same were tried out. Later paneling was done for an A2 white sheet. The page limit for story was restricted to 4. After the paneling done, the decision of length of scenes was made based on the speed and importance of the scenes. Further, the placement and type of illustrations i.e. to have birds eye view, close-ups, silhouettes, wide, etc. were decided. Pencil sketches were made and then markers were used to ink the illustrations. A touch of pencil shading gave some depth and mood to some panels. These A2 sheets were then scanned and dialogue boxes were added to some panels.
A sincere thanks to Subir Dey Sir who gave his time and effort in guiding and making of Teenta.
