Sketch notes

The iconography is simple.

Sketched in shades of brown, a man looks out from a teal background, the lines on his forehead dominating his heart-shaped face ensconced in grey, wiry mane. The bright yellow typography over the face reads: THITHI.

Even if you didn't watch the Kannada movie that made its way to cinema screens recently, chances are, you would've taken note of the movie poster: it's elementary style and lack of dramatics a sharp cry from the loud and larger-than-life, air-brushed depictions of Bollywood A-listers. While Thithi's poster stood out for its fully illustrated visual, Raam Reddy's award-winning movie is just one among a growing pool of regional films to have relied upon the old school technique of hand drawn, illustrated posters. There was the poster for the 2014 Marathi movie Ajoba, about a leopard's journey from Malshej Ghat to Mumbai; Tamil director Karthik Subbaraj's Jigarthanda, whose pink glazed posters pay tribute to the cold milk beverage of the same name, National award-winning cinematographer Rajeev Ravi's 2014 Malayalam movie Njan Steve Lopez; Punjabi drama Bikkar Bai Sentimental and the Aparna Sen-starrer Bengali thriller Chotushkone. And, of course, Court, India's official entry for the Best Language Film at the 88th Annual Academy Awards last year. Director Chaitanya Tamhane got four different designers to work on not one, not two, but... (wait for it) five different posters for the movie — all of them either entirely or heavily illustrated.

"I'm a big fan of illustration, and knew from the very beginning that I didn't want a live-action poster for Court," says Tamhane. "It's also a matter of sensibility. Court is a multilingual film. It has no stars. So what are people going to relate to when they see a poster? Illustrations stand out, they also give a hint of the artistry."

The five posters were made by four different designers or agencies at various points in time, adds Tamhane. "Designer Somnath Pal did two designs and Polish illustrator Mieczyslaw Wasilewski made one poster, which we used for the movie's premier at the Venice International Film Festival," informs Tamhane. The other two posters — also the most visible ones here — were made by Mumbai-based agencies: Pigeon & Co designed the manhole themed poster used for the movie's national release, while Aaiba Design designed the illustrated-cum-live-action poster used for the Marathi-speaking audiences across Maharashtra.

Considering the kind of film Court is — slow and abstract — it was a risk for Chaitanya to let us do an illustrated poster, admits Vipin Babu of Pigeon & Co. "The film had finished touring festivals and the award circuit by the time he approached us. It was time for the audiences... the producer wanted people to watch the movie," says 29-year-old Babu.

Babu's partners at Pigeon & Co Saurabh Malhotra (29) and Aishik Sengupta (31) add that the decision to do illustrations was born out of the need to depict the satire that's rife in the movie. "No still from the movie would've done justice to the humour in Court. Also we don't see anything wrong with illustrations... in fact, illustrations help add a layer of how we interpreted the film — the amusing side of a courtroom drama," says Malhotra. And Sengupta adds that the illustrated poster helped break the stereotype of a movie about the judiciary.

A sneak peek

Time was when a movie poster was the sole paraphernalia that bridged the gap between publicity tool and an iconic collectible. But with digital platforms taking over from the print medium, the movie poster today has been relegated to a silent cue, a prompt at best, to remind potential cine goers of a movie. "In the past, the poster was the sole snapshot of the movie... it was the very first image of an upcoming movie," points out Hinesh Jethwani, founder and head of Indian Hippy and Bollywood Movie Posters. "The poster was consumed everywhere, at tea stalls, on street walls, got featured in magazines and newspapers. It would build anticipation. Now that function is being performed by trailers, video clips and stars on reality TV shows. The poster has lost its value as a marketing tool."

While most would agree with 35-year-old Jethwani, poster designers aren't hanging up their boots just as yet. In fact, this phase is a period of evolution — a time to experiment not just with Adobe Photoshop, but with ideas and approaches even if it means going back to sketching, contends Nitin Menon of Oldmonks Design, the Kochi studio behind the illustrated and evocative posters for Njan Steve Lopez and Liar's Dice. "A poster is like that famous skirt, which exposes just enough," notes Menon. "The job is not to make the poster look like the movie. It is to make the poster feel like it."

The exploration is so eclectic that designers have invoked everything from shadow play to embroidery. While designing for National Award winning director Srijit Mukherjee's Bengali movie Chotushkone, a thriller about four characters one of whom is wearing a mask, Grinning Tree Productions relied on Cubism — an early 20th century technique developed by artists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. "The basic methodology employed by Cubism is a reduction or a simplification of figures and objects into geometrical components and planes that may or may not add up to the whole figure," notes Grinning Tree's Shamik Chatterjee. "In the 21st century, Cubism has lead to the development of various sub-forms, poly art being one of the derivatives that we used for the Chotushkone poster."
 

Thithi's young poster designer, Juhi Agarwal, employed embroidery in the make of her minimalist piece. "(Director) Raam had seen my final college project — an entire book of texile art. He told me at the outset that he didn't want a regular poster," recalls the 23-year-old graduate of the Srishti School of Art Design and Technology. After watching the movie, Agarwal put together a mood board referencing the characters, the movie stills, embroidery and illustrations. The two bounced a few ideas which culminated in the end result: a hand drawn sketch of (protagonist) Gadappa, transposed on fabric, which was then embroidered before being scanned for the final touches. "The embroidery happened in three different cities. The face was done in Delhi, the hair in Kolkata and the eyes in Bangalore," recalls Agarwal.

A second poster, used in Karnataka for the Kannada-speaking audiences uses multiple movie stills of the main characters against a yellow background. For this one, Agarwal first printed photographs on fabric, then cut each one out to paste them individually on a yellow fabric, embroidered them and then scanned the final output. "The posters received much appreciation. Textile art is common abroad but not here. To my knowledge, this is a unique poster in India."

Back to the drawing board 

Designers attribute the rising demand for illustrated posters to a two-pronged chasm: Directors demand "something fresh" to stand out in the clutter of digitally-enhanced design jobs while producers often cite lack of financial resources to depute a photographer to shoot movie stills or do poster-specific photoshoots.

"Invariably, there'll be a creative brief and a marketing brief," laughs Aaiba Design's Saurabh Chandekar, who has designed illustration-based posters for Court, Ajoba and the Sunny Leone-starrer Marathi flick Vulgar Activities. "Producers will likely want to show a star and the director will want to depict the subject." The 35-year-old adds that a lack of budget is really what gets a designer's creative juices flowing. Talking about Sujay Dahake's Ajoba, Chandekar says that for a movie with a leopard as it's main lead, it would be de rigour to depict a poster with the big cat in an aggressive stance. "Ajoba was bringing a new concept in Marathi cinema, that of docudrama. So we knew that a regular poster won't work and (director) Sujay didn't want to sell Urmila (Matondkar) to the audiences," says Chandekar. "So we found a middle ground by using illustrations."

Down South in Kollywood, director Karthik Subbaraj chanced upon Tuney John's caricature on the latter's Facebook page, and told the designer that he'd like to replicate the art for one of his movie posters. So when the time came to create a poster for his Madurai-set gangster movie Jigarthanda, John knew exactly where to start. "Karthik's brief was about unfinished art, which inspired the sketches. And the vivid pink tint on the posters reflects jigarthanda — a staple drink on Madurai's coast," explains John. "The concept was cleared in a day and took us a week to execute."
 

Jigarthanda's was not the first illustrated movie poster that John did. He says the turning point came when he designed the poster for the 2012 thriller Pizza, which sparked off interest in the industry for sketched movie posters. But while he has received much attention for this kind of work, John is quick to point out that audiences too have expectations. "The 'different' posters don't work for the 30+ year old audience. They don't recognise the stars if we don't use their photographs," concedes John. "So we do illustrations sporadically."

Reality check

Jethwani of Indian Hippy echoes John. "I wish illustrated posters were a trend, but it isn't quite so," he says, adding in a matter of fact manner that: "An artist can illustrate a star, but won't be able to get the same look as airbrushing SRK's eight-pack abs will or getting blemish-free, peaches-and-cream skin of a Katrina. Yet, illustrations work very well for emotive posters such as the one for Rockstar, starring Ranbir."

Chandekar, whose passion for illustrations and creating motifs from the scratch is his raison di'etre for taking on movie poster assignments, has the final word. "In India, we don't have the maturity to accept illustrated poster without star power. Audiences want to know who or which of their stars is in the movie. If they don't relate to that upon seeing a poster, they might not go for the movie."

Bollywood's record 

While star power rules Bollywood, there've been several directors who've walked down the illustration poster route for their movies. Starting with Imtiaz Ali's 2011 feature Rockstar, the poster for which was illustrated by Polish graphic artist Grzegorz Domaradzki, Bollywood has seen Rowdy Rathore in 2012, Liar's Dice and Aankhon Dekhi in 2013 and Detective Byomkesh Bakshy in 2015 with beautiful, hand-drawn work taking prominence in the posters.