Yupangnenla Longkumer
Morung Express Feature
Dimapur | April 1
Last year, after the death of Steve Jobs, hundreds of digital artists from across the world honoured the Apple mogul by paying graphical tributes. 22-year-old Moanungsang Lemtur was also among them. Along with the many designs of other artists, his creation is listed in several websites.
He is the man behind the cute EP cover of upcoming band from Nagaland Alobo Naga & The Band.
Lemtur, a freelance digital artist is also a “self taught” graphic designer. He has undergone a course in 3D animation from Frameboxx Animation and Visual Fx, in Pune.
Describing himself as a man of few words, Lemtur said: “I’m usually so less with words and talking often fails with me. So I always had this close attachment with art, and I hope that my artworks always somehow conversed with people, or at least acted as a medium of talking with people.”
Like any child, Lemtur started doodling battles scenes and comic superheroes on the pages of his notebooks. “...I would sketch with the trails of bombs and bullets going everywhere over the pages.”
Reflecting, Lemtur said his father encouraged him to grow up with his interest for art for which he is thankful. “...my dad allowed me to make drawings on the walls of my room. I was just a small kid back then, and to even stain the white clean wall with the smallest mark of a drawing was like an art of rebel for me. And having been allowed to doodle all over my walls, it felt like I was already enjoying the beautiful rebel art movement of street art from my own bedroom.”
Lemtur confessed that he stumbled upon graphic designing just some few years ago when he started taking a course in animation. “I didn’t take up any graphic designing course but I was so much influenced by its way of creating an artwork with all the different software and I found it very versatile too.”
So what he did was undertake a lot of research on graphic designing and would occasionally read design magazines.
“I hardly bought any since all the design magazines are so costly and learned so many notions on designing through many art documentaries. And typography art is one more reason why I love graphic designing so much. I like how it is so simple but yet so hard. It has allowed me to learn how to express a lot with so little details and characters.”
z Do you use Graphic tablet/ digital sketchpad while designing and what are the softwares you use?
So far till now, I have been working without an art tablet. I have always wanted to get one, but the good tablets are really costly. My well trained computer mouse has been serving me well anyway. For my artworks, I mostly use Adobe Photoshop CS5 and Adobe Illustrator sometimes when needed. And for 3d and other motion graphic works, I use Autodesk Maya, Cinema 4D and Adobe After Effects.
z What is your opinion on “a digital artist” and “an artist”?
From my perspective, I don’t see any difference between these two. It’s just the medium of working with ones artwork and both artists’ works with his feelings and ideas. In fact most of the artists I look upon works both the traditional way as well as digitally with softwares. Humans have evolved so much and has found a new digital more versatile canvas to paint I should say.
z ...your best works so far?
I haven’t worked on any mammoth projects so far. I’m still on my humble beginning stage I should say. But I think the artwork I did for Alobo Naga and The Band has been a really successful one for me.
z How did you feel when your digital art - ‘graphical tribute to Steve Jobs’, got listed in so many websites?
Steve Jobs was such a great visionary, whose life has changed the way we view technology forever. His works and achievements were such an influence on me and I always have been a fan of Apple’s product designs too. And when I did the tribute ‘Apple’ art shortly after his demise, I posted it on my Behance portfolio. And it was such an encouraging feeling to get such good response from the other artists from different parts of the world. I just thought that it would be just another artwork of mine which would be would be viewed and appreciated by some of my few close friends only, but surprisingly it had such a good feedback from other designers of other places as well.
z Tell me something about the Alobo Naga & The Band’s EP cover.
I was told of the EP title ‘Painted Dreams’ and the songs listed in the EP, and that they wanted something cartoony and colourful. The EP title ‘Painted Dream’ already had so much of story and meaning within it, so I tried putting characters to it by filling it with cartoon characters and creatures (which can be found in the background of the band member on the cover art). All the small characters in it are inspired by our everyday life of simple things that we see around, giving us a picture of what our ‘world’ is like. And then i created the cartoon characters of each band members with their musical instruments with colours smeared over their hands and their instruments. Which in other words, they have their tools to make their dreams with, and they are ready to paint their dreams with it and bring it to life.
z Are you a fan of Japanese animation? ( ...judging by the name you have given to your blog “The Art of Shinobi”)
I do like Japanese anime and reading manga. The Japanese wave art also has a big influence on my artworks too. But the name ‘shinobi’ has been inspired from its sole meaning ‘ninja’ itself. The ways of the ninjas are really inspiring on how much they dedicate their life on mastering their martial arts and their techniques, on how being so lethal yet they move so quietly unnoticed. Regarding this, I relate to how designers are also like ninjas too. More like art ninjas equipped with all the ideas and knowledge of computer tools and different art techniques, working behind their computer making everything look beautiful around in the city, designing all the tiniest typography ads around the street corner to the wide spread billboards in the buildings. Yet the artist is hardly known behind the art, but it continues sneaking in the design world to kill every visual ugliness.
z Name five of your favourite animation movies.
- Transformers 1,2,3. It’s not a total animation movie since it’s mixed with real life action movie, but Transformers is one big inspiration in my animation career.
- Ninja Scroll
- The Giant Robot
- How to train your Dragon
- Beavis and Butt-Head do America
z What are the prospects of taking up graphic designing as a career?
Graphic designing is such an honest and fun way to work professionally as for me. But it is not at all an easy thing to become a great designer to make a mark in the design world. There are still many people who don’t know the value of designing and they usually ask for free works to be done. But I’m not totally against this either, especially when a person is still a fresher in this designing field one has to go around doing projects for various people and try to get as many experiences and exposure as one can get. And on top of that, continue doing lots of personal works to develop their own unique ways of illustration and design techniques. But besides all of these, if one has the confidence and the dedication for all these, I think it is a really sure and promising career to pursue filled with fun and creativity, especially in India where there are not as many graphic designers when compared to those European countries with humongous talents in designing.
z Anything interesting coming up in near future?
Ah, there are so many things I want to do. I want to travel around the world working with different artist on different projects. But it’s just what I dream of and it’s hard to achieve it in reality. But I’m hoping that everything works out well and people would be as supportive as they have been.
z ...a few lines for the Naga youngsters?
We should get rid of the thought of relying on government jobs and starts venturing towards our own interests and follow our heart. We get to live only once, we can’t keep dreaming of a dream one life, and then try to achieve it the other life. NO, it doesn’t happen that way. We only got a single shot for our life and we should stop dreaming and start scheming. God is always there for us and we should have faith, and do what we love and try to achieve it without keeping a plan ‘B’. If we are not ready to make a risk over a thing we love to do, it can’t be called a dream.
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