Tajani Sakina Ali Asgarbhai

IR2022

Once Upon a Pandemic

Once Upon a Pandemic is a narrative about the experiences and learning from the studio. The studio focused on how stories can be created, narrated and catered with different leanings through Ethnographic Research, Data recording, Communication, Studying a living crafts culture, game designing, characterization objects into Graphic Novels. The key learning from the studio was how  to make the narratives  interactive such that people  engage in them.
Graphic Novel:https://www.flipsnack.com/skinaa1612/round-about.html

Portfolio:https://www.flipsnack.com/skinaa1612/once-upon-a-pandemic.html


Report Content

The Tub, is a story based on Maahi Patel's and her love towards animals. The illustration style of Benji Daveis is used to portray the lively nature of Maahi using the bright color pallete used by the illustrator. The illustrations presented here are from the book showing the little girls travel in the mysterious world in the search of her pets.

Indian Narrative crafts have been used for depicting stories since ages. Kaavad is one such Indian performative craft from Rajasthan. The beauty of Kaavad lies in the stories revealed with each door. Presented here is a Kaavad which depicts the journey from Travellers home, a studio which opened the doors of learning and experiences each day.

Gundiyali is a village at a distance of 7 Km from Mandvi where the major terracotta culture resides. As a part of filed visit, we got a chance to interact with the potters family there and try to learn maximum stories and narratives from them which was further mapped down to bring in a trabsperanvy between the narratives from the family and that of the entire village.

Narrative Maps helped one to organize the narratives and information gained under a specific topic or two and thereby helps in channelizing them in a direction. Presented here is Chai pe Charcha, a narrative map on the conversations with the potters family over a chai. During that , a lot of narratives about the potter , his family as well the village from where he belonged to have been abstractly portrayed in the map.

Bolti Diwalo is a contextual study of the questions and conversations raised by the people of gundiyali while walking through the village. The map show the curiosity that existed in their minds, curiosity to learn the changes taking place, curiosity to question them.

Game Design is an Interactive medium to make people learn stories about a place. Reading a paragraph wouldn't have a great impact as making a play of the same. As a part of the game design exercise, the narratives from the earlier exercise were converted into an educational game such that people engage with the undiscovered narratives through challenges of the Game. The game presented here is a labyrinth of narratives.

Elements from the game. The game comes along with a play board on which the two player plays, pawns for the players. A dice and A spinning wheel which guides a player on how to move about in the game and a set of narrative cards using which the players have to reach their narrative.

Fisabillah is a word with a meaning FREE TIME, as a narrative title the game fisbillah is a labyrinth of narratives that one explores and comes across while playing the game. Presented here is a poster of the Game.

Characterization helps an individual to look beyond the normal. Round About is a graphic novel narrated by a Chakda and talks about the its life and the life in the village from the Chakdas' perspective.

Glimpses from the novel