Dreaming big with “Podi”
Magazine cover and pix courtesy - Podi
Every day, for one hundred days, Isuri Dayaratne managed to find something to post on the PodiTumblr. She drew scary things and funny things; details of things you would never notice but that would still register in the murky depths of your subconscious – layouts rearranged, lamps and leaves drawn and redrawn, till she was satisfied. But sometimes, on days when she was all tapped out, she would ask DeshanTennekoon or NavinRatnayake to pitch in with a post. You can usually tell hers apart from theirs, by counting the number of times rogue penguins appear.
When they wrapped up the 100 day challenge, the trio had a workable draft of their comic book. Then Oni Press, an indie comic book publisher, sent out a global call for submissions. Oni’s open call saw them inundated withover 2,500 entries, but in April this year Podi became one of only five submissions to make the cut.“It was a long shot – we were going to publish it online and hope for the best. Then Oni said ‘yes’ and everything changed,” says Deshan.Podi is now scheduled for release in 2018.
Podi’s origins are older and more complicated than the Tumblr challenge would suggest. The trio self-edited early drafts and then, “at a stage we felt comfy showing it to other humans,” they shared it with a few close friends. The feedback wasn’t great. “All of them said the draft was rubbish,” says Deshan. Navin, Isuri and Deshan went back to the drawing board, and then returned to run the gamut of readers again. Draft “13-ish” is what was finally submitted to Oni. Says Navin: “This thing was only supposed to be 32 pages and done in no more than two months. That was the motivation. Then these two got carried away.”
What Deshan, Navin and Isuri produced together is now a unique piece of shrink-fiction. It introduces us to Roo, Nooshka and Trippa, three siblings who accidentally shrink themselves. The summary promises ‘a story of squabbling twin sisters who must put aside their differences to find their missing brother.’ The trio, all now considerably tinier than they once were, must navigate a landscape that is less of a garden and more of a ‘moonlit, perilous jungle, ruled by giant beasts.’
Navin
Deshan and Navin, who dreamt up the plot are both madly inventive, and consistently curious about the world – one of them is even a quizmaster. Targeting Podi at young readers, they say they “wanted to show kids that the life forms you meet everyday are magnificent when you don’t meet them at human scale.” For Deshan this meant “mosquitos the size of horses, their stomachs filling with blood as you watch. Glow in the dark fungi the size of water towers. Bats as big as zeppelins chasing you.” For Navin, it made perfect sense to set it in Sri Lanka. “While we realise that there are so many stories about human miniaturization (or shrink fiction) we didn’t think there were any that showed insects and a tropical Sri Lankan garden from that perspective,” he says.
Between them the two writers had no dearth of ideas, but it took collaborating with Isuri to get Podi out of their heads and onto the page. “What took us this long was the inability to find Isuri! It’s actually incredibly difficult to find a good artist who can draw sequential art where you maintain consistency of tone for environments and characters and if we hadn’t found her we would still be toiling away with nothing to show for it,” says Navin.
This is Isuri’s first long-form comic book and when it’s done it will be some 120 pages long. Looking through the 100 Days of PodiTumblr (http://100daysofpodi.tumblr.com), you can actually see Isuri beginning to build a visual library, which she says has proved essential to character and world building. “Exploring the details makes the world and the characters feel more real in my head.” For example, she has character notes on Trippa’s favourite food, Nooshka’s favourite colour, Roo’s favourite superhero and more.
“Some of these details won’t really make it in to the comic in a big way but you’d see a Wonder Woman sticker on Roo’s hockey stick or Nooshka’s socks being purple, or a small handwritten Hotdog and jaggery recipe by Trippa. As for world building, you’ll see that we sometimes reference the wonderfully odd and quirky things you’d see around Sri Lanka – like those horribly misspelled shop signs (Fancy Palace Buriyani Pot) and those lovely yellow bamboo trees you’d sit under and have a seeni-sambol sandwich when you’re off on a trip.”
Though the publication date may feel like it’s far off, Deshan, Navin and Isuri have their work cut out for them.
Deshan
“There’s lots to do in the coming 2 years, I am really excited and terrified at the same time,” says Isuri explaining that she is currently tussling with trying to figure out what everything will actually look like, from characters to camera angles. Right now, it feels a little like she is “failing horribly.” But thanks to the Tumblr and how they continue to share snippets of work in progress, part of the excitement of “Podi” for readers will be seeing three remarkably talented people find a way of turning a crazy, wonderful idea into reality. “It’s a really steep learning curve for me but I won’t have it any other way,” says Isuri.
Isuri
Follow them on: http://podicomic.tumblr.com/