Fahad Faizal, illustrator and animator, has illustrated two books - Unni's Wish and Fly in Space for Pratham Books this year. 

He started drawing at the age of three and hasn’t stopped since. He is married to Sunaina, his classmate from NID, and they work together from their cozy home-studio in Kochi calling it BABAKIKI. Fahad is a foodie, he loves cycling and tending to the plants in his balcony garden. But what he loves the most is playing with his son, Orhan.

 

 

Read Assistant Editor Zeba Imtiaz's interview with Fahad to learn more about his illustration process, approach, and inspiration.

You illustrated two books for Pratham Books this year. What excites you about illustrating children’s books?

The sheer act of drawing always excites me. It is a good break from animation, which is fundamentally the main thing we do. Unlike animation here I get to spend more time on one image. Exploring the details is always fun.

How did you decide your approach for each of these books?

I did Unni's Wish first. I really liked that story because I was able to relate to it somehow. And to add to that I took a trip to this place called Wagamon and stayed in a house like the one I drew. That was fun. I always enjoyed drawing black and white images. Just with shades of grey you can add a lot of depth and it’s not that common to see children's book in Black & White. The story supported it.

Fly in Space on the other hand, I took a different route of flat colours. In fact, fly as a character is something I did recently in an indie comic called Autobiografly. Though that was not exactly for kids. But here I tried to keep it simple. Even this story was really inspiring. I believe the concept is the king.

Do you think there’s a difference between illustrating for children and adults?

Fundamentally, there is not much difference between illustrating for adults or children! For both, it's the child in me who is drawing. The content makes the difference. Being a father of a 2 year old I think sometimes we underestimate kids. They are way more intelligent than us.

You have created some absolutely wonderful and memorable characters in your stories. Could you tell us more about the process for creating these characters?

Like I mentioned the story was my base, then I gathered all my memories of being a Malayali boy, and to add to that, the trip to Wagamon really helped. There we met a boy who helped us get back to our cottage through the coffee and cardamom farm. Putting all these together I drew Unni, a boy with little over grown curly hair, who wears an oversized shirt, who looks a bit like my son. What we are exposed to, is what we are.

For Fly in Space again like I mentioned the fly as a character is something I have been working on from my previous work. I tried to keep up the age.

 

 

Your visual narratives contain a distinct sense of humour. Is this something you consciously do?

Being in Kerala I am exposed to lots of uncensored humour. I think that is very important to be able to think free. I tried to be there in each of the frames I drew, say if it's Unni enjoying the wind from fan or drinking chilled lime juice. I was aware of what I drew by might not be with too much planning.

You run a studio called Babakiki along with your wife Sunaina Coelho, also an illustrator and animator. What sort of projects interest you?

We are interested in working on socially relevant projects. Anything that gives us an opportunity to create something new: idea-wise or technique-wise. We believe animation and illustration is a very strong medium that can communicate universally.

What do you most enjoy drawing?

That is tricky question! That’s like asking a foodie what you enjoy about eating. From time to time I immerse myself in studying anatomy, small details of structures or imaginary creatures inspired from what is there in nature. It is all connected.

How did you decide that you wanted to be an artist?

It's the other-way around, the artist decided to be me. I just went along. The sheer act of drawing always excites me.

You can read Unni's Wish and Fly in Space for free on StoryWeaver in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi, English, and Kannada.

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"যিদিনাই প্ৰত্যেক শিশুৰ হাতত এখন সহজে বুজি পোৱা অসমীয়া কিতাপ থাকিব মোৰ অনুবাদ সফল হ'ব"

 

"My translations will be a success when an Assamese  book with illustrations is in every child's hand."

When we told you in a previous blog post, that Rantu Moni Deka, is a man on a mission, we weren't joking. He's translated 15 stories to Assamese on StoryWeaver, and written the first, orginal Assamese community story too!

Rantu sent us a lovely message on International Translation Day which we wanted to share with our readers.

"First of all Thanks to Pratham Books StoryWeaver for giving us a platform for doing something for the lovely kids. Learning depends on the ability to read. When children have access to enjoyable, enriching stories in their own languages, the transformation in their reading skills are visible. The sheer joy of reading stories that are engaging and capture their imagination can make children become readers. Which in turn, makes them better learners. 

Assam Govt. students have access to libraries in school, but the books are not proper for them and so the children ofcourse are not interested in them. But they love StoryWeaver stories which have been translated to Assamese. The children feel so happy with the colourful illustration and a story that is easily understood by them. If these storybooks are available in their school library and also in the village library where the children meet together in the evening then my dreams will come true.

I will encourage others to use StoryWeaver and will try my best to translate more stories to Assamese so that children can read all the Pratham Books stories in their hands."

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Payal Dhar is a writer and editor. She writes on computers, technology, books, reading, games and travel, and has written on sport in the past. She also writes fiction for children and young adults, and has a number of books under her belt. You can read more about her on her website: http://writeside.net. Payal edited a number of titles from our set of STEM books, and we caught up with her about her experience. 

You commissioned and edited picture books that explored science, technology and engineering topics. As an Editor, how did you make these stories appealing for early readers?

Well, it’s probably fairer to say that we tried our best to make them appealing for young readers—whether we succeeded or not is quite another story. I was lucky to be able to entice a bunch of enthusiastic, eperienced and talented writers to work with, who understood what we were trying to achieve and were fully on board with it. That really made my work easy. The illustrators also played their role in making the stories well rounded and entertaining. I think that what we were all (writers, illustrators, editors and you good folks at StoryWeaver) completely clear about from the start was what we didn’t want, that is, no lessons disguised as stories. The rest was (relatively) easy.

What did you enjoy most about the process?

Figuring out a way to stick to a subject or broad theme without being that aforementioned lesson-disguised-as-story. The ones I enjoyed most were what I call the ‘fictionalised non-fiction’, especially Roopa Pai’s Bonda and Devi, Anil Menon’s Manikantan Has Enough and Richa Jha’s Gul in Space.

What were the challenges?

In the first year of commissioning I did struggle with finding a balance between keeping things simple and not making them simplistic because of the particular demographic that Pratham Books caters to. I couldn’t exactly say that I’ve figured it out since, but it has certainly become a bit clearer. The other challenge, of course, that always crops up in projects of this sort, was dealing with difficult authors. But that was a very small minority, so no blood was shed. :)

Which are your favourite STEM books for children?

Among others, Esther Porter’s Peeking under the City; the Nick and Tesla books by Bob Pflugfelder; and David Macaulay’s The Way Things Work.

The books that you’ve worked on are so diverse in themes, style and structure. Tell us a little about working with so many different writers and your approach as an editor. 

I was pretty privileged in working with writers who were already pretty experienced—you could say I had it easy in that regard—so there was little or no hand-holding required. Most of the writers understood the brief immediately and came up with brilliant ideas of their own. Most of them were able to self-reflect and improve on their own work as well, and this was critical in the revisions. All in all, despite a few roadblocks, I had a pretty uncomplicated time of it.

Read  our STEM titles in English and a range of Indian languages for free on StoryWeaver.

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