School Daze! Kopykatman, Sunday Midday 29th April 2007
Courtesy: Sunday Midday
India"s Super comichero!
Kopykatman
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My fav character!
Kopykatman! The super-flop hero, who's based on Suresh Nair's script which appears every week in Sunday Mid-Day. He's as much superhero as you and me! It's not complete till I tell you about his obsession, BIPASHA BASU! I sincerely wish he gets her someday. Suresh, are you listening? And John, watch out!
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5 comments:
Hi! Thought I'd write in to say I liked your cartoon strips, and of course the thoughts communicated. Good to know the MGM connection!
Wishing you all the best.
Nakul
Hi Satish,
I have been going through your Kopykatman strips for some time now. I have so far refrained from commenting, but I guess I should tell you what I feel as a reader.
1) The drawing is good (most of the times, well above average), but the scripting leaves a lot to be desired. As a cartoonist, you should be the first to admit that cartoon strip scripts have to be succinct and pithy. Suresh Nair's script rambles on (Square 4, for instance), and ultimately makes loses impact.
2) The plots used in Kopykatman alternate from average to below average. Take the Virginia Tech massacre take-off in the latest strip. The reference to WWII and Partition is out of context, and holds no relevance to the present generation of your readers (who I presume are online). Instead, I would have used references by the speaker to more recent topics, if at all. To me, that particular square was irrelevant in the first place.
3) The reader does not understand whether the reason for the strip or the Kopykatman character is (a) satire; (b) plain humour; (c) random timepass; or (d) A current news event story take-off. A cartoonist must be able to awaken the dead senses of the reader with just one line. Also, I would rather that you concentrate of satire or black humour (as you do in your regular cartoons) so that the "Satish Acharya Flavour" is retained in every work of yours. I like (but don't admire) Suresh's columns otherwise, but as you'd know, writing a cartoon strip requires a completely different skill. Suresh clearly does not possess that. It may be harsh to hear this, but it is the plain truth.
Dear Satish, some of the comments I have put across may be something you might have not liked to hear. But, here's what I feel. If you don't get honest feedback from your readers, then I don't think you will be able to progress in your chosen field (whoever you may be).
So, as such, please take my comments in the right spirit. You are doing a great job by serialising a cartoon strip. That's a great first step. Your next step has to get a good scripwriter who can bring magic to your characters. Once you have a great amalgamation of drawing and words, who knows what would lie in store for you.
Cheers,
A dear friend
Hi dear friend,
I'm glad to receive your frank comment. Whatever you said will help both of us(suresh and me) in improving a lot in our chosen profession.
Kopykatman is not exactly a comic strip in stricter terms. It's more of a comment on current affairs of the week. A kind of spoof on news.
It's just a timepass stuff.
As it is a weekly thing, it puts both suresh and me under lot of pressure. And most of the times I feel like I really dont do justice to his script. Sometimes he feels he's not at all happy with what he'd done for the week. I know it can't be an excuse. But nothing wrong in sharing the inside story with readers
Again thanks a lot for your frank opinion. I'd have been more happy if you could reveal your identity also. I have a sense that we worked together! :-)
Dear Anonymous Friend
Thanks for speaking the plain truth.
As for me, it's been a learning process which has been terrifically
enjoyable. Kopykatman has been around for over a year and that in itself is an achievement. Some of our readers have been gracious enough to appreciate the fact *something like this has never been attempted before in Indian media.* And Sunday Midday actually had the courage of conviction to devote an entire page to a cartoon strip that was a first of its kind in Mumbai. So I hope you understand that it's still a process of trial and error unlike the high quality cartoon strips that you seem to be reading or comparing it
to.
Now to tackle your issues with Kopykatman one by one:
1. Cartoon scripts have to be succinct and pithy and Kopykatman
rambles on: For starters, I do not know which cartoon strips you are comparing us to. But Kopykatman is not a one-panel cartoon like Common Man or a three-panel strip like Peanuts. It's a whole page, which means twice or more the number of panels. So if you wonder why the script seems to be rambling on instead of stopping at a punch line in the third panel, this should help you understand. And we've been experimenting within that allocated space – from attempting a serialized story to one off plots and just random panels. I am not sure whether you've just discovered Kopykatman online or been reading it in print for the last 59 odd weeks. If you've been reading it in the print version, you might understand this point better.
Because what you're seeing on this blog is the many panels that occupies an entire page in Sunday Midday.
2. The panel you referred to as irrelevant showed a guy in the background talking about WWII and partition of Pakistan. I am surprised that you thought it was irrelevant to the present generation because it was actually a take off on Rahul Gandhi's comments about how the Gandhi family was responsible for partitioning Pakistan. So, you see,it wasn't irrelevant and was actually a recent news headline. Ironically,Kopykatman abounds in such asides that goes on in the background in the form of people talking or placards or slogans on walls and there's a whole lot of readers who seem to find that most interesting.
3. Kopykatman is all that you wondered about – satire, plain humour,random timepass and take off on current events. I don't see why it should confuse you or make you feel the need for it to be one of the four things. I am no authority or expert on comics or cartoon strips, but in my humble understanding it's perfectly possible for a cartoon strip to have no higher goal than entertainment (and that too is subjective, as I can see) instead of awakening the society or revolutionizing the genre.
I absolutely welcome your criticisms because it shows that you're a person of very high standards and you've set those very high standards of
expectations from Kopykatman. I promise to try and improve my scripts and study all the cartoon strips in print. Hopefully, I will be able to do it before we find someone who is better equipped to write Kopykatman!
Regards
Suresh Nair
Hi, Cartoons looks superb. hw du u do these things? Can u tell me hw to do. I am interested to learn.
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