Beneath the streaming coldness of an AC vent, with a cup of lemon tea by his side, Roshan kept crafting his own characters in the little time he could manage in Bangalore where he had a hectic job.
Meanwhile, Kishore Mohan who was working with a reputed IT firm in Thiruvananthapuram’s Technopark decided that it was time he chased his dreams. Sinu Chandrasenan, who has been sketching Hulk and Spiderman since childhood, wanted to explore his artistic inclination.
It took courage, conviction and confidence to quit well paying jobs and form Libera Artisti, which started as an informal group and went on to become a successful creative unit based in Thiruvananthapuram.
Libera Artisti is a treasure-trove of unique stories that not just exists, but breathes and lives within each of these three. Each has their own way of fabricating stories and moulding characters but it is their diversity that makes Libera Artisti unique.
“In addition to comics and graphic novels, we’ve been designing characters and worlds for animated films, doing storyboards and visual development for both animation and live-action, and also illustrating children’s books,” says Kishore who is also well known for his weekly comic strip, ‘Marcus and More.’
Autopilot, a traffic novel, is the first of a comic mini-series which will be coming out in ten volumes from mid-2012. “We are scheduling an early pre-launch sales of the first volume sometime in February. Autopilot is a fun adventure story of an autorickshaw driver who ends up becoming Yamaraj’s chauffeur,” adds Kishore.
They introduced the idea of commission sketches during the Comic con, an annual fest that promotes art in the form of comics and graphic novels. “The idea was to sketch impromptu stuff on request during the fest and that pulled a crazy crowd in and we sold every single thing we drew,” says Roshan who wanders around wearing a self-designed Libera artisti tee shirt.
“Though we did not have much material to showcase, the response from the crowd was amazing,” says Sinu, who feels proud that he quit his job as business presentation specialist to follow his fantasy.
Though they have three thousand followers on Facebook and thousands of ardent fans, they know that Libera Artisti has miles to travel.
“In the coming years, we are hoping to start a publishing house that will act as an outlet for some unique comics and graphic novels and an in-house animation studio with a few hand-picked creative people to bring out our home-spun animated series,” adds the trio.
