Tribal Museum- A Narrative

As a second outcome of my earlier assignment, based on the Tribal Museum, I thought it would be nice to have something that tells a narrative with turns through a paper format.

I decided to go ahead with a piano fold style, hand painted version of the narrative. The narrative is through the eyes of a young boy who is looking at the Museum as though coming to life.

There were quite a few pencil explorations and I finally settled for poster painted, Pithora styled illustration on a textured brown paper, for an earthy feel.

Here is how it looked finally:

                          

So much fun doing this!!

Colour for this chappal: Earthy brown!

Picture Books

Part of the visual narrative course, where an assignment involved creating a story within 5 frames, I initially struggled with coming up with a story, but finally managed to so.

The brief was to pick up five natural and five manmade objects and create a story around them. They had to be two different stories and without text, had to convey what was happening.

My initial attempts were not even close to being successful, but gradually things looked up. The assignment stopped at making just the frames, but I was keen to take it forward, so I developed them into printed picture books. Thats what I think does a little bit of justice to a story!

Here are my final frames of my stories.

The man-made object story is titled ‘Why is Paula Scared’ and is the story of a young girl who is haunted by her imagination but is also surprised by it!.

The natural objects story is titled ‘Trees of Life’ and is an attempt to tell one how time can change things for anyone.

Here are how the final books looked like. They were a joy to make. Printed to line textured yellow paper, 170 GSM.

Oh what fun! and what joy!

Colour for this chappal: Pale shades of watercolours!

The Tribal Puzzle

A recent assignment at NID, part of the Visual Narrative course was to come up with a narrative for a specific place in Ahmedabad.I chose the Tribal Museum in Gujarat Vidyapeeth and decided to do a narrative on it.


The Tribal Museum is a world of its own. Its like a secret that you’ll never think existed! Situated in a small corner of the Vidyapeeth, its greets you with a tribal features and architecture. There are enclosures that showcase the life of the Gujarat tribes and the way of their living. These enclosures are inside and outside. The interior is a two storied building done neatly and carefully. The museum gives information pretty well about the tribes. Their lifestyle, everyday living, objects they use etc are all shown with various installations. 


If you’re lucky you’ll get a guided tour too! 


To take this assignment further, one of my approaches was to see it through the folk art that is practised by these tribes. I decided to have a narrative that is interactive. It would be great to try a game or a puzzle of sorts so that the viewer is actively involved. After much thought, I decided to go ahead with a folk art style puzzle that showcases  a day in the life of a tribal village.


The concept is pretty simple, with a narrative of the village through folk art, almost like you are entering the village in its full fervor and life! The execution has been done on Mill Board (4 ply) and then hand painted with poster colour. The entire process was more fun than ever and it was great to see it getting built. The whole idea of putting a story together was something I was aiming at.




To make the Puzzle look slighty more interesting, I decided to put it in a bag, so I custom made a jute bag for the puzzle. Although, slightly rough, the bag is to be used with a paper envelope for the puzzle pieces. It fit well and served the purpose too!


Pictures of the final executed puzzle and the bag

The entire exercise was fun and AWESOME!

Special thanks to: Soni Bhai, Roshini, Alpika,  and Jaimeen
Super special thanks to Manasi for the help and the photographs

Colour for this Chappal: Earthy brown