Stings & Smiles

The first HAT-Trick workshop for 2009 was organised by us at International Club on Saturday, 11th April 2009 and the conductor was none other than the celebrated illustrator, cartoonist, scriptwriter, film maker and painter Mr. Sarbajit Sen.

“Lines crookedly drawn – features exaggerated – oddities blown out of proportion – we often tend to think that is all about cartoons. Too simplistic, isn’t it” is how Sarbajit Sir introduced visual scripting for comic strips to his audience.

He went on to explain to the audience that cartoons were almost certainly about having fun. Whether it be the about an experience we have on pour daily life, whether about the current trends in news – sports, politics or others, or whether about something totally imaginary.

The art of story-telling, visually, is more complex than narrating and in the process more fulfilling for the creator. For animation students it is all the more important since it guides the film development process and works as a storyboard for the film maker’s script. Cartoons or comic strips are not bound by any language and the medium is powerful enough to communicate without the aid of “language”.

Comics have a visual language which is universal and speaks for itself. To further illustrate this point he shared a “French” comic strip about a man feeding a crow and no one had any difficulty in understanding the story even though the dialogues were in French.

He encouraged the participants to create a story in three or more frames based on their day to day experience, the political situation or anything which came to their mind, to illustrate his point and upon request from the audience, picked up the pen and started illustration on ‘Concept”

This got the students started and everyone squatted on the floor and started “illustrating” their own ideas on paper. Sarbajit Sir encouraged everyone to discuss their ideas with him and approach him if they got stuck....

Students approached him in droves and he patiently went through their work guiding them and encouraging them with his remarks and suggestions. The queue to get their work assessed was increasing by the minute and one could see the happy faces of those who could squeeze through.

Eventually time ran out and Mr. Sen promised that he would look at each and every work in details later and would be happy to leave his comments about them for the students to see.

In the end Mr. Sen encouraged students to scribble a lot and do freehand sketching exercises to improve their drawing skills and asked them to develop their sense of observation of day to day happenings and be more aware of them.

The winning student comic was an entry by Tapon Roy.



Mr. Ramesh Ruia, the Director of Arena Animation Park Street announced that Mr. Sarbajit Sen would conduct a longer duration workshop for the interested students at the academy and those interested could register their names for the same.

The success of the seminar can best be judges by what the students had to say:

“Ek do teen char, Sarbajit Sir is a superstar” - Sushama Shaw

“The program was simply stunning and I learnt a lot” - Tanushree Biswas

“It was an excellent experience as well as opportunity to interact with a person
like Mr. Sen. I enjoyed drawing, sitting on the floor. Thanks to Arena Animation – Park Street” - Kumar Ajay

“Idea of comics became more clear” - Sangita Ray

“This seminar laid the foundation for learning storyboarding, which is so important for creating script for animation” - Tapan Roy