Bhavana Vyas Vipparthi, has lived and studied in Bangalore all her life. Having finished a Fine Arts course at Srishti, School of Art Design And Technology, she went on to do a masters in animation film design at NID in Ahmadabad. Her mind is now consumed by her terribly talkative three and a half year old son and  perfect dog. She makes up a million stories a day to stay sane. You can find her work on https://vimeo.com/thestudiospaceman. She has illustrated two books for Pratham Books, 'A Cloud of Trash' by Karanjeet Jaur and 'Absent-minded Ajja' by Arundhati Venkatesh.
 

Graphic Designer Vriddhi Chaudhry had some questions for Bhavana about her work in mixed media, and her ideal 'art day' at home and shared them with her over email. Here are Bhavana's answers. 

1.How did you develop your personal style? Have there been any significant events or projects that led to this development?

I have always been comfortable working with mixed media. If given a free reign without any client restrictions on style and treatment, the mixed media monster always takes over the playing field. From my diploma project in Art School (a wordless picture book) to animation art-boards that followed , the wonderful play of drawings, cutouts and reality has always excited me.

2. What is your creative process like? Are there any practices you follow during when creating?
 

I usually always start visualizing any project, be it an animated spot or a book by making really rough thumbnails of the ideas that come into my head. Just quick doodles to get the initial images and scenes down on paper. Some pages in the book haven’t changed at all from that early initial doodle, while others have completely transformed.

After that I work out what the characters will look like, and their environment. This takes a lot of scribbling and ideating. When I have come to a place that I am happy with, I make a final storyboard of the book. Then I start to gather my materials. Different kinds of paper, leaves to be shot etc. The final page layouts are final drawings of the whole page, made from the client approved storyboards. They are made to the print page specifications, as this also works as my template of the cutouts. Using these as a guide I make cutouts for each page.  The characters, roots etc are made in parts, painted in, and I stick them onto OHP sheets to keep them organized by pages. Some parts are really small and tend to get lost. These sheets are then photographed, cleaned up and composited with all the other elements(backgrounds/leaves) on Photoshop.
 

3. What is the most challenging part about being a mixed media artist? 

I can usually see how the end result will look as I start to doodle. The challenge is to convince the client about your idea. Fortunately I had a wonderful editor who was not only incredibly patient, but also gave me her total confidence. I had a great time making the art for "Absent minded Ajja" thanks to Bijal.

4. What was your inspiration for Absent-Minded Ajja? How would you say your surroundings have influenced your work in Absent Minded Ajja?

When I read the story, I know I wanted to make them more then just a regular family. I wanted to have fun and make it a bit quirky. Ajja is dressed like my father, in a kurta pajama, but I added the beard in last minute to make him a bit more lovable. The things around the burrow are inspired by things my son is into right now. Crayons, the golf ball (which is an asteroid at home) and the broken fork etc, were things I thought Sujju would like to collect. I love ferns and mushrooms and plants and bits of all these things are in there.

 

5. How do you go about selecting texture, materials and patterns?  

All the leaves in the book are from a picnic we had in Lalbagh. I just filled up a small bag and took pictures when I got home. The clothes of the rabbits and the roots are different kinds of paper. I have a big soft spot for all kinds of paper, handmade/recycled/printed…anything. And any excuse to buy more paper works for me. Most of the time I have a clear idea of what I need to source, and sometimes the paper inspires its own use.

6. Often working in an organization gives you a supportive feedback system. While working by yourself what criteria do you use to critique your work?

Funnily enough, my three and a half year old was my constant critic for the art on Ajja. He would ask about what was happening on each page and narrate the story back to me as I worked on Photoshop. My husband is also an animator and artist, and an approving nod from him is always hard-earned, so that keeps me on track too.

7. What is the one thing you learnt while working on Absent Minded Ajja?
 

Working within the constraints of a story while setting up your own challenges was a good learning experience on the book.

8. What do you hope to accomplish with your work?
 

I love children books. I buy lots of them mainly for the art. Now I end up reading the same ones a 100 times over to my son. I really enjoy the ones where there are many things to look at in a page and every-time you revisit them they seem new. 

9. If you could imagine the “perfect art day” for yourself, what would it be like?
 

The perfect art day is an impossible dream for me right now. With a home schooled toddler in a small nuclear family, time management is my biggest enemy. I really struggle to juggle all my mom jobs and get enough time to do everything else. But a perfect art day would be to just sit undisturbed and get lost in the job with a few hours in-between of paper shopping.

 

Be the first to comment.

---

 

Pratham Books is a not-for-profit children's book publisher that was set up in 2004 to publish good quality, affordable books in many Indian languages. Our mission is to see ‘a book in every child’s hand’ and we have spread the joy of reading to millions of children in India.

In the last 3 years, we have invested deeply in technology based initiatives to further our mission. We are now looking for a Data Analyst as we significantly scale these initiatives.

                                               

(Image by  Thea Nicole de Klerk from the BookDash book 'Springloaded' by Chenél Ferreira and Sam Wilson)

About the Platform

StoryWeaver is a digital platform that hosts stories in languages from India and beyond, so that every child can have an endless stream of stories in her mother tongue to read and enjoy. The stories can be read, translated, versioned or downloaded for free. All stories on the platform are openly licensed and the goal is to open source the code as well. In two years, StoryWeaver has scaled from 800 stories in 24 languages to 7800 stories in 111 languages by engaging with a community of users. We want every child to have access to quality reading resources in their own language.

StoryWeaver is being recognized as an emerging innovation that can transform the early literacy reader ecosystem globally. Our vision is for StoryWeaver to be the largest multilingual open library in the world for children by empowering communities to address the scarcity of reading resources in their mother tongue languages and scale the quantity and quality of content being produced.

Job Description

We are looking for a passionate individual wanting to make a difference, one who believes that technology can be a powerful enabler in creating equitable access to resources. This role requires an individual contributor who can work effectively, both independently and collaboratively, in a team environment and deliver the project in a timely manner within allocated resources and budgets.

We are looking for a Data Analyst to work closely alongside our Product Development team and other internal teams. You will discover the insights within our data sets, and help us make smarter decisions to deliver better results for our end users.

In this role, you will be responsible for providing requirements for new features for collection of data, execute data validation checks, ensure data integrity, use statistical techniques to analyse and interpret data, take complete ownership of Google Analytics, identify trends and provide insightful reports to internal and external audience.

We’re looking for a self-motivated, detail-oriented individual who loves digging into data, developing insights and communicating data-based recommendations. You will work closely with the internal teams and tech partners to implement your recommendations, track the impact and course correct.

The position will report to the Head of Digital Projects but also requires working closely with the top management. The person needs to be an out-of-the box thinker and should be a strong believer and propagator of use of open technologies.

The individual will be responsible for the following:

Work closely with internal product owners to understand the target audience and their motivations, generate the product enhancement, development ideas and requirements docs.

• Perform steps required to create analysis-ready data sets.

• Perform regular data analysis to demystify, assess readership, content gap, trends and performances.

• Extracting valuable insight from our data and generating analysis that drives user retention and conversion.

• Build a visualization tool  that allows internal users to interactively explore the data and insights.

• Respond to ad-hoc report and analysis requests from other teams as needed.

• Take all data driven features to fruition by working closely with the product development teams.

• Be the bridge in between organization and other data-for-good communities.

Must haves

• BTech/MSc/MCA or other graduate degree in Computer Science, Statistics, Market Research, Operational Research, or related quantitative discipline.

• Experience working with data and analytics.

• Good technical background with some hands on experience with Python/R, relational databases to perform data analysis.

• Ability to interpret findings through data visualization and delivery of presentations to both internal and external stakeholders.

• Expertise with Google Analytics and common Data Visualization platforms like Tableau, Apache Superset, Google DataStudio etc.

• Strong analytical thought process, ability to extract data and transform it into valuable, actionable insight.

• 0-3 years of experience in the industry

Nice to have but not mandatory

• Experience working with non-profits.

• Experience with Machine Learning.

Location: Position is based out of Bangalore and we are open to part-time as well as full-time position. Project is expected to complete within a 2 year time-frame.

Salary: Compensation will be commensurate with experience.

Interested candidates can email their resume to [email protected]

 

Be the first to comment.

---

Khyati Datt, a member of our outreach team writes about our recent workshop in Nashik with senior teachers of the SNS Foundation.

Our recent StoryWeaver workshop took us to the picturesque town of Nashik. Senior teachers from 6 different states gathered for the annual meet of the SNS Foundation, where they exchanged ideas, celebrated each other’s achievements and discussed the long term goals of the foundation.

A day before the workshop, our team was introduced to the teachers in Mumbai and we were happy to learn that they were as excited to explore the StoryWeaver platform as we were to share it with them. The 3 hour drive to Nashik provided us the opportunity to interact with them in a relaxed space and understand their context better.

After a hearty breakfast the next day, everyone assembled for the workshop. The teachers shared highlights from their last one year and lauded each other on their achievements. We started the workshop with an ice breaking activity and moved on to a storytelling session. They were more than willing to share their experiences and ideas around using books with children. The teachers responded enthusiastically to using StoryWeaver in their classrooms. After a brief exploration of the platform, they went on to the task at hand, which was to search for books on the platform on the given themes. All teachers tried their hand at looking for content that they could possibly use with their students too. The teachers then shared the stories they had found and how they might use them in their classrooms.

A satisfying lunch later, we moved on to discussing how they could use the platform to translate and create stories. They tried their hand at creating stories in their mother tongue and were excited about sharing this with their students back home. We got some really great stories and the teachers loved sharing their thought behind the story and presenting it in front of all of us. What was really impressive about this workshop was that the participants created original stories in 5 different languages- Tamil, Hindi, Kannada, English and Marathi.

The senior teachers gave us a great response and were happy to know that they could use wordless stories, flashcards, spotting books and a lot more resources from StoryWeaver in their classrooms. We discussed what students liked to read and how that could be used to motivate them academically as well.

As we wrapped up the workshop, the participants shared their thoughts with us on how they plan on using the platform and combining stories with curriculum. As Damayanti, who leads the CSR efforts of SNS Foundation, later told us, “there’s so much more we can do in our classrooms through StoryWeaver and we can’t wait to get started.” The participants were patient and interacted with us throughout the session, for which we’re thankful to them!

A big thank you also to the SNS Foundation for giving us the opportunity to interact with the teachers and their consistent support.

If you are interested in hosting a similar workshop for your organisation, drop us an email on [email protected]

 

Be the first to comment.

---