Studio Kokaachi at Panampilly Nagar has one of the most delightful views. It overlooks the Children’s Park, with its glossy green carpet of grass and the giant banyan tree. The rustle of the banyan leaves are a permanent feature here not to mention the steady breeze. The decor is artful--bright yellow walls with portions dedicated to the black board, where squiggles and words meet in curious ways. Another section of wall has been devoted to ‘post its’, which are works of the participants of ‘vara’, a monthly meet-up of those who love to draw.
When the founders Pratheek and Tina Thomas were on the lookout for a studio space, they didn’t want it to be just a room. They were looking for a space that would get them inspired and charged.
“We fell in love with this place the moment we stepped in,” says Tina, sitting in the balcony of her studio, with a cup of coffee, looking dreamily at the park yonder. “Pratheek and I had done a lot of research on how a studio space should look like and we felt we had found just the right space.”
It has been a year since they moved into the studio and Tina says whenever either of them hit a mental roadblock, they’d take a walk in the park.
Kokaachi is in the business of comic book and graphic novel publishing and they call themselves a story-telling studio. Pratheek and Tina, worked together for Manta Ray, co-founded by Pratheek and later did a comic page for Mint called ‘The Small Picture’. In the mean time, they also married each other after a fascinating love story following a chance meeting on a train, conversation and friendship. The couple felt there was a space for a comic book and thus was born Kokaachi.
Before settling in Kochi, the couple were living in a two-room apartment in Bangalore. “Then, one-fourth of our room was our studio space,” says Tina. Also, when the living and creative spaces merged, the boundaries were so blurred, they didn’t seem to exist. “I could not concentrate on my writing. I would catch myself doing household chores in between work and the studio space often ended up doubling as laundry space--when it rained and the clothes had to be brought in,” she laughs.
Having given up a career in Engineering, both Pratheek and Tina decided to get into comics full time, as writing was where the heart was. Pratheek, after his engineering, studied design at NID, Ahmedabad. “While I write ‘slice of life’ stories, Pratheek of late has been doing more sci-fi,” Tina says. While she prefers solitude and silence, he can write even in the din of traffic. “He always has his headphones on when he writes. He listens to background scores of some of his favourite films,” Tina explains.
While both write with the fountain pen on paper, Tina spends more time with her characters in her head. “Pratheek writes as soon as an idea forms. I wait till the story is fully formed.”
The market for comic books is small, as readership is low. When the duo consulted mentors in the industry, before founding Kokaachi, the responses were not too encouraging. Many dissuaded them saying it would only work as a hobby and not as a steady income-generating job.
“We just decided to take some quiet time and didn’t talk about it. Pratheek used it for his reading and I had a lot of story ideas in my head. Though I ignored them, I felt at one point that these stories were begging to be told. I only had two choices, to write them or not. And I wrote them,” says Tina.
The studio has a library of comic books and other books as well. In addition to comics, they do animation as well and is currently working on the Hindi remake of OK Kanmani, OK Janu. They arealso working on a picture book for children in collaboration with National Geographic . Kokaachi plans to bring out a comic book series in Malayalam as well. Tina writes in Malayalam and English. Pratheek and Tina are also conducting comic workshops and classes for the graphic design and animation students of Sacred Hearts College.
Mornings are usually devoted to the duo’s personal creative work, while the afternoons are for client work.
The small balcony has paper lanterns made of their own comic book pages and water tanks, which have their favourites quotes written in chalk. “Ideas are the easy part, they are always there. Execution is the difficult part. And that is where an inspiring space helps,” Tina says.
