We make no secret of the fact that Mumbai Confidential is a love song to the pulp crime / hard-boiled movies and books we love (both Indian and Foreign). So from time to time, when Vivek and I discuss the visual tone/feel of MC, the amazing Mr. Shinde dashes off some quick explorations. These may or may not have direct implications on the main story art, but they are damn cool to look at.

We’ve used old hindi movie posters like this one, pulp crime book covers etc. for inspiration to strike the correct balance between the classic pulpy hardboiled-ness and Vivek’s unique painted style in MC art.

Since Vivek has been overloading my awesome-ness sensors for a while now, I felt that the time has come to share with you some of those images.

About Mumbai Confidential

Mumbai Confidential is a crime noir comic book series created by Saurav Mohapatra and Vivek Shinde [more...]

The image is for preview purposes only. Mumbai Confidential is copyright and trademark of Saurav Mohapatra and Vivek Shinde. All rights reserved. This site’s content are copyright of Mohapatra and Shinde. All rights are reserved.

Today Vivek exploded my inbox with the sheer awesomeness of his artwork. In keeping with his painted style, he just knocked the visuals out of the park. If it were up to me, I’d dump the whole goddamned chapter over here. But I guess you’ve got to buy the book, to see it all.

So while I scoot off to San Diego for SDCC 2010, why don’t you already hold your jaw wide open (to save time) at the sneak peek below.

Click the image above for a hi-res version

About Mumbai Confidential

Mumbai Confidential is a crime noir comic book series created by Saurav Mohapatra and Vivek Shinde [more...]

The image is for preview purposes only. Mumbai Confidential is copyright and trademark of Saurav Mohapatra and Vivek Shinde. All rights reserved.

Things are sort of humming on the art front after a lull and Vivek is busy churning out story pages. We always envisioned Mumbai Confidential as a universe rather than just one book (something like Ed Brubaker’s CRIMINAL or Frank Miller’s SIN CITY). So apart from the main book “GOOD COP, BAD COP”, there will be a series of digital shorts about characters, events outside of the book’s scope. Reading these shorts isn’t mandatory to enjoy the book, but they do enhance the backstory.

First digital short is pencilled, inked, lettered and ready. We’ll be releasing it soon on the website. The art is by Sid Kotian (DEVI, EAT THE DEAD, RAMAYAN RELOADED, THE STRANDED). So keep your eyes peeled for that. The shorts will also be available for other digital readers like iPhone, iPad and Kindle.

Ah, and before I forget — a new one sheeter for MC.

Mumbai Confidential is a crime noir comic book series created by Saurav Mohapatra and Vivek Shinde [more...]

Following up on teaser I posted earlier, here’s another one done with a slightly more “euro” style. The images used are from interior art by Vivek. As usual, your comments/crits are most welcome.

Also in other news, good things are happening vis-a-vis MC in a medium other than comic books , more on that when we are allowed to share.

In case you haven’t seen it yet, here’s the chapter 1 preview

Mumbai Confidential is a crime noir comic book series created by Saurav Mohapatra and Vivek Shinde [more...]

Ordered some ashcans off of ComiXPress of the Chapter 1 preview for Free Comic Book Day (FCBD) on May 1, 2010. I shall most probably be giving these away at my awesome local comic book store That’s Entertainment in Worcester, MA on FCBD 2010.

The ashcans really came out great. Going to order some more of these to give out at Albany Comic Con in April 2010, if I decide to attend it. Here are some hastily snapped cellphone photos. Click on the images for larger versions.

So after getting quite a few quotes north of $500, I decided to just bite the bullet and create a WordPress theme for Mumbai Confidential website myself. It was not much of a pain. The current theme you see is created from scratch and was coded using the excellent Komodo Edit in a box running Ubuntu Karmic Koala. I made the site layout I wished in GIMP and then chopped it up into an HTML page.

I found a really nice resource for coding WP Themes by hand at themeshaper.com. So after a night’s slog, I had a working theme. It’s my first wordpress theme and would love if you dropped me a note if you encounter a glitch in the matrix while browsing the pages.

All in all it was fun unleashing the geekery once again , now back to xmas holidays and waiting for the christmas blizzard of ’09 to hit Shrewsbury. We’ll be back in Jan with new art, a full preview of chapter 1 and many more goodies.

See you on the other side.

So vivek has fired in some more pages and we are working on a cover concept. I’m going to post two of the cover tries. these are mockups we made to play around with various layouts/compositions and these contain some placeholder content.

Click on the images for higher resolution versions.

as usual do feel free to let us know what you like or don’t like about the two layouts.

This is just a brief post to mention the other web / community pages for Mumbai Confidential.

Website: http://www.mumbaiconfidential.com (well, duh! )

Twitter : http://twitter.com/mumbaiconfid

Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mumbai-Confidential/128123608452

So join us on Twitter and Facebook and spread the word. MC is creator owned and we’re banking on fans such as you to get the word out.

Here is a three page preview (Strong language and swearing, so not suitable for minors) (click for higer res pages)

Wow, I never though I’d get this kind of response when I put up this site. Mumbai Confidential is a creator owned project, so every bit of support helps. Currently we (Sid and I) are thinking about pitching it for publication both in India and the US. But we want definitely to keep our ownership of the project. So most probably we’ll try out Image Comics and other publishers open to that.

Also the India publication is a must. This books audience resides in India and as far as I’m concerned it shall be available in India from day one.

The plan for now is to create two versions of the book (same art) — an Indian Edition where the dialogue is a mix of Hindi and English (I tried that out in Mumbai Macguffin ( Virgin Comics 2008) and it came out well, I think) and an International Edition with English only dialogue.