So we’re not dead . I made the move from east coast of USA to the west coast and was down and out for a good part of last quarter => hence, the paucity of updates on this site. We’re back to a schedule and will post Vivek Shinde’s delicious art as soon as I get my hand on it.

In other news, Saumin Patel (my frequent collaborator from the Virgin Comics days on DEVI and co-creator of MUMBAI MACGUFFIN) honored a long standing request and sent in some pieces about his interpretation of MC. Saumin has a style that is truly unique and I feel his renditions of a hard boiled genre piece like MC, makes me wanna bug him some more for a full fledged digital short.

–Saurav

MUMBAI CONFIDENTIAL Digital Shorts are a series of companion comics to the first book “GOOD COP, BAD COP” by various artists using the characters created by Saurav Mohapatra and Vivek Shinde. These shorts are set in the same “universe” as the main story. Though these are not required to follow the main book, they do enhance the backstory of GOOD COP, BAD COP.

About Mumbai Confidential

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

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.

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...]

Some new exploration / character sheets.

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

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 turned in the final images and after dressing it this is what we ended up with. (click for hires)

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.

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

In case you were wondering where the updates went, it’s just that we had to keep quiet for the right reasons. Mumbai Confidential has almost found a publisher and the good news is it’ll be released in India first

So keep your fingers crossed and RSS Readers peeled, for I’m going to make the announcement soon…ish!

Here are the inked pages for pages 1 and 2. Sid is not happy with Page 2 (Well looks more than okay to me ), but anyways you be the judge.