Hasta La Motion!

Indian kids YouTube channel, Infobells from Infobells Interactive Solutions, has found a place among the Top 50 channels on YouTube. 

Helmed by Kuber Natarajan and his wife Jayalakshmi Kuber, Infobells Solutions offers the simplest learning solutions for young children with colourful videos and captivating music to keep them hooked. The creative and interactive videos introduce various concepts easily in a fun way that makes a lasting impact.

Elated on the news, Natarajan shared, “I feel immensely happy to know about this and feel our efforts are getting rewarded. It’s a total team effort with my wife Jayalakshmi being the creative head, as we always believe to implant some moral message in every single video in an entertaining way that is fun yet has a message the little ones can absorb.”

The Infobells YouTube channel provides endless edutainment and act as a bridge to develop great bonding between parents and their little ones, where they engage in singing and playing together. Best known for creating short form content of three minutes inspired from Indian folk lores, rhymes and morals in different languages, the team is currently working on new longer episodes. “It is based on the adventures of little kids, which they encounter during the young years during schooling, which we feel that our primary target audience can easily and emotionally get associated and engaged. It is in the pre production stage right now,” added he.

The studio has created a sizeable number of followers through their infotainment videos on YouTube. The Infobells channel collectively has over 44 Million subscribers making it the largest regional edutainment channel in India. The interactive videos are dubbed in various languages like Hindi, Tamil, Kannada and Telugu, so that children remain connected to their roots. Altogether, Infobells channel has a massive following of approx 50 million views daily.

Featuring popular characters, the channel’s regional rhymes are sure to capture and stimulate the minds of young ones. Rhymes instill local cultural and moral values will grab the child’s attention instantly and make them watch again and again. Noted he on the importance of regional content, “We focused mainly towards the regional content to showcase and bring to the front the hidden traditional values and morals to the kids of the current generation, who were more inclined towards English language. All our lead animated characters has an Indian touch in their appearances and costumes, which appeals to young kids greatly. We didn’t foresee a big growth when we started developing regional content, but with the growing digital data consumption in the rural places,now we are able to reach out to the mass audience.”

Infobells’ characters Chinnu, Chitti, Pappu and Lalaji from The Adventures of Chinnu & Crazy Pappu are hugely popular and have a massive following among kids as for the trio’s new adventures or songs to entertain them.

Now with this feather to its cap, Infobells Solutions’ mission is to create better, attractive and creative products that help children imbibe cultural and moral values.

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Marvel releases the much awaited teaser trailer and poster of Marvel Studios’ Black Widow. Scarlett Johansson reprises her role as Natasha/Black Widow in Marvel Studios’ action-packed spy thriller Black Widow—the first film in phase four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Johansson is also acting as executive producer on the film.

At Comic-Con in July Johansson described the film: “Where we find Natasha in her life at this point is very specific …. She really is in a dark place where she’s got no one to call and nowhere to go. She’s really grappling with her own self … In that moment, you actually have to face yourself.”

The film takes place between the events of Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War and stars Florence Pugh as Yelena, David Harbour as Alexei aka The Red Guardian and Rachel Weisz as Melina.

Directed by Cate Shortland and produced by Kevin Feige, Black Widow hits Indian theaters on 30 April 2020 in English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada.

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Discovery Kids is all set to launch an even bigger edition of its successful and award-winning all India school outreach program called ‘Little Singham Squad’.

In its second edition, ‘Little Singham Squad’ will reach out and teach the importance of self-defense to more than three lakh students across 700+ schools in 13 cities across India including Delhi, Lucknow, Kanpur, Bangalore, Chennai, Coimbatore, Madurai, Mumbai, Pune, Surat, Ahmedabad, Rajkot and Baroda.

Discovery head of Advertising Sales – South Asia Vikram Tanna said, “‘The Little Singham Squad’ generated huge traction on-ground last year. The effort is to educate children to learn the importance of self-defense, understand the basics of what to do in case of an emergency. It is a worthy cause delivered in a fun-way leveraging Little Singham. The advertisers too love the engagement that Little Singham Squad has been able to deliver.  Our endeavor is to increase the scale and impact of the program with each passing edition.”

Inspired by successful Bollywood cop franchise, Singham, animated series, Little Singham is mentored by ace director Rohit Shetty, and is extremely popular amongst children. Little Singham, as the face of the school contact program, will guide and educate students to become self-aware and learn the best ways to protect themselves in case of an emergency. ITC Candyman Fantastik has come on-board as the Presenting Sponsor while Britannia Treat Croissant is the Powered by Sponsor and Tata Salt as the Special Partner of ‘Little Singham Squad’.

“Self-defense is an important art every kid must learn. Tata Salt has partnered with Discovery Kids for the ‘Little Singham Squad’ to help the kids understand the importance of internal self-defence of the body. For this it is very crucial that they consume adequately iodised salt which helps in their mental development. We believe this is a step towards building the health of kids that lay the foundation for health and development of the nation,” added Tata Chemicals head of Marketing Sagar Boke.

 The School Contact Program which was first launched in 2018 has been much appreciated by the participating schools and has also been the recipient of several awards including the Gold Award winner of ‘Successful use of CSR activity’ at (ACEF) Asian Customer Engagement Forum 2018, the bronze award winner for ‘Effectiveness’ at (ACEF) Asian Customer Engagement Forum 2018 and ‘Best Experiential Marketing’ at ANN Awards in 2019.

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Riot Games will pay out $10 million proposed settlement collectively to every woman employees and contractors who has been employed by the company at any time over the last five years. The settlement is one of the largest in California history for a gender discrimination suit, says the plaintiff’s lawyer.

Around 1,000 workers will be entitled to a payout from the pot, but the amount they’re getting will depend on how long they worked for the company. Full-time employees are also getting more money than contractors.

When Los Angeles times asked about the settlement, a Riot spokesperson said in a statement: “We’re pleased to have a proposed settlement to fully resolve the class action lawsuit. The settlement is another important step forward, and demonstrates our commitment to living up to our values and to making Riot an inclusive environment for the industry’s best talent.”

Earlier this year, a few months after the lawsuit was filed, more than 150 employees walked out to protest the motion Riot Games filed to force the plaintiffs into arbitration. Riot Games noted in the settlement documents that it has beefed up its internal reporting programs since then, hired a dedicated chief diversity officer and undertook a “review of all pay, promotion and hiring practices to increase fairness and transparency.”

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Those who admire innovative, genuine and imaginative art forms which are wacky but amazing, are mostly aware of Indian (Bengali) graphic illustrator and comic artist Charbak Dipta. His fantastic illustrations on ‘Alien Series’ on social media platforms made him a popular name in the art and comics ecosystem.

Now, Dipta is all set to provide hobby art courses at his own art academy, The Charbak Dipta Art Academy (TCDAA) besides releasing his fourth graphic novel, The Spoiled Brat later this month. 

The Alien Beatles (part of ‘International Alien’ series)

Dipta who has been travelling the world for his work in the comic and illustration space, conducts weekly workshops in some institutes, will now be guiding aspiring artists different techniques of making their work stand out.

His art courses will cover the basic points like line drawing, still life, portrait, landscape, light and shadow, clothing, depth of field, anatomy, hand gestures, facial expressions and at a later stage especially on comics, pop art, doodling, story illustration, visualisation, caricature and so on. The special focus will be given on comics, cartooning and illustration. 

The courses will differ in terms of the students’ capabilities. If someone is a beginner, he/she will start from the basic line drawing and geometric shapes. For the advanced students, it will start from comics-making, use of thought and speech bubbles, creative speech bubbles, creative calligraphy, creative panel divisions, how to break the story into panels, page layout, translating stories from script to storyboards, the difference between the same artwork in comics and in story illustration, caricatures, doodles etc. The large collection of the school’s comics library will also assist the student in his/her journey.

Said Dipta, “The Charbak Dipta Art Academy is an art school with a difference. Generally in art schools, we learn paintings, drawings, anatomy, comics, caricatures, doodles, illustrations and so on. But that is just a part of the curriculum there. So I was feeling the need for a complete pop art school for a long time, as comics and pop art is neglected in our country. As far as I know, there is no art school dedicated to these art forms. So TCDAA is trying to bridge the gap, and from that perspective, TCDAA is the country’s first full-fledged and specialised comics and pop art school where you can learn different aspects of the comics-making process.”

Starting in January 2020, every Sunday in New Delhi, Dipta announced the registrations open from 2 December. 

Dipta has already earned his share of fame with his three graphic novels. His first book was The Art of Charbak Dipta which was a compilation of some of his selected works from the year 2014 to 2017. Then came Zero: An Indian Aliens Adventure which went on to win a Comic Con Indian Industry Award in June this year. In these two series the main protagonists- Mirarepa and Babusha, a scientist married alien couple goes to strange places to discover stranger things. 

In Zero, this couple visited an underground city to discover the figure Zero or ‘Shunya’- the biggest Indian contribution to science. Zero was a black and white graphic novel with traditional 12-13 panels per page, like a retro Franco-Belgian comics and took him a year to complete. 

In its sequel, Apes: An Indian Aliens Adventure, published this year, the alien couple again embark on a thrilling adventure to meet someone whose traces they thought is important. It is a science fiction adventure and also a social-political satire, whose angle is very relevant with modern Indian political mood. It also deals with the form of Comics and Visual Art themselves in its plot. In Apes, all 56 pages are intricately four coloured with experimental panel divisions with a more modern approach which readers are sure to enjoy. 

The upcoming, The Spoiled Brat is a short comic about the environment and how mankind is destroying the earth and whether he will get any more planet to live. 

With four books under his credit, his art style has evolved and is evolving with every passing day which he intends to channelise in the art courses he is going to conduct. 

Charbak Dipta

“My art is evolving every day. I try to pick up everything that comes in my way and catches my fancy and I include that in my art. So my yesterday’s work is inferior to today’s work. Earlier the emphasis in my work was on the line works. The complex lining was the highlight of it. With time, I am being attracted to the use of expressive colour, that may be the result of my recent studies of Expressionism at the University of Oxford. With time, my line drawing skills has become more precise as I learned anatomy better. Earlier I maintained an earthy feel in my colours. Now it is going towards psychedelia and precise use of light and shadow. I am experimenting with different colour combinations. At least I think that way, rest the audience can tell what they think,” added Dipta.

After Apes, he wished to write a third instalment and carry on doing more volumes for this series. But currently, he is concentrating on his hobby art courses, The Spoiled Brat and webcomics. He wishes to devote more time on the latter, as find this genre interesting and has lots of potential in the Indian context.

Commenting on if it’s difficult to be in this profession in terms of finance, Dipta concluded, “Not at all if you are honest with your works. If you know you are in the right profession and have something original to bring on the table, the money and assignments will follow too. Of course, art is not your everyday object to sell, it has to find it’s niche audience to cater. But I know I have the capability to make millions of artworks. I have more than enough ideas for books to write in a lifetime. So I am not worried about finance. If you work hard and stay true to your craft, it can never be a problem.”

We just wish him the best for his art classes and fourth Alien adventure.

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