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| Teaser cover image |
Thanks to the amazing folks over at the creative power-house that is Holy Cow Entertainment (HCE), we have an extra, EXTRA special treat for you.
Not all that long back we had a special, exclusive interview with Ram V., the writer for the very-in-the-news series titled "Aghori" which is being teased as one of the intended flag-ship books/characters in the Holy Cow universe of comics.
Now, we have something more and even better : the first four full pages of the Aghori #0 with commentary from both Ram and Vivek Goel on the development of the series as well as insights into the creation of this first glimpse into the world of Aghori, before the highly anticipated launch of the series itself!
And so, keep reading for all the latest Aghori awesomeness! (And remember - CLICK TO SEE EACH PAGE IN IT'S FULL GLORY!)
It was Vivek who originally came up
with the idea of doing an Aghori preview issue. My brief was to write
a story that would get people interested in the series. It had to be
small enough to follow ViMoh’s Ravanayan 6 and still have enough
juice to hook people, both in terms of art and story.
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| Page 1 - click to enlarge |
I came up with a couple of ideas and
finally decided on doing a ‘ghost story’ of sorts - the kind of
tale you’d hear around the campfire. That fit in because the
preview was to be suitable for all audiences, whereas the Aghori
series is for a slightly more mature audience.
With page 1 and 2 you can see we set up
the premise for our story, where the two kids end up walking into an
abandoned shack. I tend to use captions only when they contribute to
the style of story telling in some way or they’re a internal
monologue. I prefer story development through dialogue because it
lends more relatable quality to the characters. I like the
character’s mannerisms and speech to define them and reveal
information about them. The only things the captions do is add to the
mood.
From the art perspective, the only
thing I told Vivek was that we wanted a moody, dark feel to the art
something that is reminiscent of a good scary story told among kids.
He took it from there and as you can see he builds mood well with
dark tones and shadows. Something that was quite different to what he
had previously done.
Pages 2 and 3 build the plot further.
We introduce our protagonist Vira for the first time. We wanted to
show him and yet keep his looks a mystery to the reader. So there is
a great use of shadows and the hood from Vivek.
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| Page 2 - click to enlarge |
Page 4 is one of my favorite pages in
the preview.
It is a story within a story. This is
where I feel the captions worked nicely to narrate without
interfering with the visuals. We also did away with the panels, which
I think lends to an ethereal or dreamy feel. Yogesh’s coloring
really added a lot to this page.
I wrote the captions here as parts of a
rhyme, thus adding to the haunting feel of the narration.
Vivek Goel - Artist and founder of HCE
Aghori came as a surprise in my artistic career. It had been more than a year and I had constantly been drawing mythology and this project offered me something totally new.
Aghori short story was specifically made to give readers a small glimpse of what we have in store for them post Ravanayan. When I read it, I decided to draw it myself. It appeared very tight and gripping to me.
Horror/supernatural demands a level of shadows and a level of literal darkness in them. Fortunately, I draw using very dark shades but they were not suited to horror as the language of drawing is very different for mythology, as are the requirements. And so, I started living the dark tones, it becomes very important for an artist to feel like batman when he's doing a bat book, that’s when you get into the characters.
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| Page 3 - click to enlarge |
My art started shifting towards moody black's and moment defining scenarios.
We moved to the 1st page where they discover a shack in wilderness and for that we needed a mood (which obviously came with colors from Yogesh) and I researched a lot of shacks so that i can draw one which looks like ages old, smaller elements like spare tires, weeds growing all over etc.
The smaller boy is constantly afraid and the older one is pretty confident and growing in it as if he knows what he his doing and about to reach his destination. We needed to show a very gradual increase in the levels of fear and confidence on the boys face. Another aim with this story was also to play with emotions and expressions on the faces.
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| Page 4 - click to enlarge |
We now jump on to the 3rd page which gives us the 1st (kind of) complete appearance of Vira but in complete shadows and in such a way that the moment you see him, it is awe inspiring. Also, since this book is all about supernatural/horror and I come from the school of superheroes, there was quite a bit conflict in my thinking and Ram's as I am from mainstream comics and he's from Indie and both of them require a different type of storytelling. I kept drawing superhero type poses and he kept nagging me that we needed to find out spookier and less superhero like shots. And no matter how differently we thought, we were on the same page (and still are) about the end product, we needed it to be the best of what we both are, and that’s how I got to the art.
Nothing much going on the fourth page as the story is just getting warmed up, Vira tells Vineet a story of a boy just like them. It was a montage sequence as he's narrating a story and so we decided to break the panel boundaries and manage the visuals according to the narration. Not a big use of blacks in this page as I wanted to nail the kids and what’s wrong with them.
These moody pages would not have been completed without my partner in crime and longtime collaborator, Colorist Yogesh Pugaonkar. We needed a totally different palette of color, way different from bright mythology. He too challenged himself and we decided to take fresh and cold colors so that it enhances the story's visuals. I think he did a great job. He had an even bigger part to play in the forthcoming pages and until Aghori 1 I thought this was his best work!
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So there you have it folks!
Hope you enjoyed this first glimpse into the wickedly cool world of Aghori - stick around and be back in a week for more as PART 2 of our exclusive Aghori pre-launch madness continues!!
For all things comics, both Indian and international, ComicAddicts is where it's at!
Aghori is available at:
Homeshop 18 - http://tinyurl.com/AGH1H18
Flipkart - http://tinyurl.com/AGH1FLPKRT
and Infibeam - http://tinyurl.com/AGH1INFBM
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