A New Ray – Sonal Gupta’s Kaleidoscopic Take for the #6FrameStoryChallenge
10 years ago
We included ‘Manta Ray’ in our Word Wishlist for the #6FrameStoryChallenge mostly because it’s such a fascinating creature to look at and we were eager to see it enter our books. But Sonal Gupta’s 6-frame story – titled ‘A New Ray’ – has inspired us to find out more about this lovely creature. And so here’s a bit of interesting trivia we found on Wikipedia: “The name “manta” is Portuguese and Spanish for mantle (cloak or blanket), a type of blanket-shaped trap traditionally used to catch rays.”
Sonal’s colour composition is exquisite – the touch of blue in the otherwise earthy valley (frame 1), the flash of lightning in the vast blue sky (frame 3), the kaleidoscopic manta ray (frame 6). Here’s why she decided to take on the challenge of weaving a visual story around 6 words:
“I love illustrating, and I’m always finding reasons to do so. The #6FrameChallenge gave me a reason to not only illustrate but to write as well. It is such an innovative way to build stories and go crazy with your imagination. My experience with the challenge has been quite adventurous. With super busy office hours, it was really difficult to get down and work. The words were always in my mind juggling and getting attracted to each other to make some sense. I have been on a crazy/curious/giggle brain storming sessions because of this. I look forward to more of such crazy rides.”
Sonal Gupta’s Illustrations for the #6FrameStoryChallenge by Pratham Books
(Sonal Gupta is an Animation Designer from MIT Institute of Design. She loves experimenting with bright colours, visuals and illustrating books for children. She has worked on several nursery rhyme books, illustrated two books for Karadi tales and is currently working on an illustrated book for Pratham Books. Currently, she is working on developing educational products for children. She also conducts storytelling sessions for kids. Having grown up listening to stories by her mom, she looks forward to sharing her imagination and experience with kids through stories. You can see her work here: http://sonal7gupta.blogspot.com/)
Read the other interviews by illustrators who took the challenge:
Rajiv Eipe, Kalyani Ganapathy, Prashant Miranda, Kavita Singh Kale, Megha Vishwanath, Priya Nair Panicker, Sweta Roy Choudhury, Paneendra Suresh, Priya Kuriyan, Yulianto Qin, Manjari Chakravathi, Sonal Goyal and Sumit Sakhuja, Samidha Gunjal, Preeti Lata, Shwetha Elisha,Mithila Ananth, Sunandita Mehrotra, Vedavathi Narasimha Murthy, Jithin Jacob, Vidya Gopal,Archana Sreenivasan, Somesh Kumar, Gumani, Antara Mukherji, Anjora Noronha,Vinayak Varma, Soumya Menon, Jisha Unnikrishnan, Kruttika Susarla, Ninoshka Dias, Isha S Valentine, Neelima Raparla, Vallabhi Shegaonkar, Sangeeta Das, Hari Kumar Nair,Lakhsmi Mitter, Lily Banerjee, Aditi Dilip, Niloufer Wadia, Deepa Jayaraman, AnupamaApte, Nishith Mehta, Muhammed Shafi, Amar Soni, Krishna Prakash K,Lavanya Karthik, Sonal Gupta,Kabini Amin, Jason Dvorak, Tanvi Bhat, Ranjani S, Shikha Nambiar, Aritra Roy Chowdhury, Vaishali Chudasama, Sharanya Kunnath, Priya Manikandan, Milan Nayak, Delwyn Remedios, Geetanjali B, Ambica Vinod, Shailja Jain Chougule, Chitra Chandrashekhar, Nikita Modi, David Knight, Geetali Tare, Nilomee Jesrani
If you missed the #6FrameStoryChallenge, but are inspired by the work of fellow illustrators and want to contribute to the open source story platform – do send us your stories! Story guidelines are available here.
