Interview of Nipun Chawla

Nipun Chawla, a 21-year-old engineering student from New Delhi, is an outstanding talent when it comes to working with Photoshop and playing with imagination. The photo illustrator at News That Matters Not (his work here), India’s no. 2 news satire website, also describes himself as a poet (“The Illiterate Poet”, his poems along with their photo illustrations can be found on his Facebook albums here), and loves image manipulation and digital painting. He is best known for his Picture Stories for NTMN.

Interview

Describe your work.

I handle the Photo Editing job at NewsThatMattersNot.com which includes creating pictures for certain articles according to their theme. Along with that I have contributed to various sections at our site such as Being, Picture Stories and Comical Life.

My work apart from adding visual data to make an article more informative is to create satirical cartoons and picture stories based upon the current news topics.

What according to you is the role of photo illustrations on a satire site like News That Matters Not?

Photo illustrations are a vital part of a news related satirical website. They attract the viewer to read an article by providing the article’s summary visually. And sections like Picture Stories and Comical Life are the best way in which we can put the imagination of our characters(political figures or celebrities) interacting with each other in an unexpected and funny way. Thus, it is an icing on the cake of news reporting.

How long does it take you to give proper finish to a long Picture Story?

Ans. It totally depends upon the amount and the level of animation required to create a picture story. The longest Picture Story :”The untold story of the great Indian reservation”, took me over two days as in a longer Picture Story there is more room for errors. But the shortest one: “Love can bring governments down”, it took me just around 5 minutes to finish it.

What software aids to you take to do your work? How often do you use hand to prepare your stuff?

I use Adobe Photoshop CS most of the times and my drawing file as well. I use hand drawings often to create caricatures of political figures and celebs. Drawing by hand is a lengthy process, but it does provide me with a greater freedom to express my creativity, which otherwise couldn’t be achieved by using the pre-defined tools of photoshop.

What are the most interesting and frustrating parts of doing a photo illustration?

The most interesting part of doing a photo illustration is that I get to do what I always wanted to. It’s a learning experience all the time. And I must admit that every illustration or a picture story has always helped me to perform better than before in this field. And talking about the frustrating part, I am yet to experience that.

Describe any interesting experience to our readers that you faced during your job as an illustrator.

Ans. While creating the picture story entitled “Coz Sri Lanka also bleed blue” the original concept was established by Smrithi Murthy(Assistant Editor). So I had no idea about what to do in that picture story. Finally I imagined a conversation between me and my grandma to create that picture story. And I believe that the final product qualifies to be called ‘perfect’.