Eymyth Media Arts Festival 2022
EyeMyth is India’s only independent media arts festival and this year, it's in a digital avatar, celebrating 10 years of storytelling! The curation explores present and future cases of immersive storytelling and new media, bringing together young creative professionals, artists and performers from India, South Asia & the Global Media Arts space. This edition of Eyemyth Media Festival focusses on South asian new media and Gaming industry.
We delve into Illustration, Visual Design, Branding, and Digital Design for the of the project in this presentation. This project was executed by a small team of designers from Quicksand design studio and Unbox. Parts of the project showcased below are predominantly executed by Gaurav, unless stated otherwise.
Project Manager- Tejas Nair, Avinash Kumar
Visual Design- Gaurav Vikalp, Madhav Nair
Illustration- Gaurav Vikalp, Madhav Nair
Digital Design- Gaurav Vikalp, Hiren Kangad
Sound Design- Tejas Nair
Technology Partner - Lemonade Social
^ Eyemyth 2022 main artwork inspired by Ludo- a South-Asian origin board game
As Eyemyth spotlights the South-Asian Gaming Industry in this edition of the festival, we decided to use Ludo as a central artefact. As Ludo finds it's origins in South-Asia, it felt fitting to use the motif to talk about South-Asian Gaming Industry.
The concept was to create a sentient Ludo board with four-corners as hands and feet. The sentient Ludo board plays the dice, and then spins around for the next person's turn. The artwork uses South-Asian ornamentation and motifs.
^ Above 1. Typical Ludo Board Game 2. 'Tipu's Tiger' sculpture at V&A Museum 3. Miniature painting of Lord Krishna and Radha
The artwork takes cues from a typical Ludo board, to artefacts like Indian Miniature Paintings from the Mughal era. The colour palate takes closely from primary colours of the Ludo Board, to the bright polychromatic colours from the miniature paintings.
The pawns on the board take stylistic cues from the wood cut sculpture 'Tipu's Tiger'. The artefact is a menacing image of a Tiger( India's National Animal ) feasting on an East India Company Soldier. The sculpture is one of the many Indian artefacts that now reside in a British Museum( V&A Museum) post decolonisation. The subtle nod to the artefact is to invoke the subliminal message of championing South- Asian achievements in the gaming industry that otherwise is predominantly western.
^ Above 1. Early rough Iteration of the Ludo Board with hands coming in from the outside 2. Simplified rough of the Ludo Board 3. Rough drawings of the pawns, inspired by vehicles of Indian Dieties.
The Animal pawns on the board game were inspired by Jumanji. The pawns created were also inspired by Mythological animals that Indian Dieties use as their vehicles. For example, Swan is Goddess Saraswati's vehicle. These pawns were a subtle nod to Indian Mythology. We finished the pawns with accessories inspired by vocations like gaming, sound design, videography etc.
^ 1. Music Producer Tiger(Godess Durga's Vehicle), 2. Media artist Swan( Godess Saraswati's Vehicle), 3. Gamer Monkey ( Inspired by Monkey god Hanuman), 4. Videographer Owl ( Goddess Laxmi's Vehicle)
Additional stylistic elements like geometric Islamic architecture motifs, Ghoongroo (Jewellery for feet) etc. were added. These made for easy elements that we could use to extend the branding on additional assets and web.