A moti'vated artist

Meet Miss Moti. Her name means ‘fat’ or ‘pearl’ in Hindi depending on how you pronounce it. Like most girls, Miss Moti has her set of problems, but she chooses to look past them. She is chubby, curvy, has beautiful long, dark hair and she sometimes gets stuck in stairways because of her size.  At a time when superwomen comic characters are far and few, also very sexualised, artiste Kripa Joshi’s Miss Moti is a refreshing change. She may not have superpowers and she’s not invincible, but has become a favourite for comic book fans across the world.

Born in Nepal, 38-year-old Kripa Joshi’s battle with body weight led to the genesis of Miss Moti. “The character came out of my struggle with body image issues — like being overweight and fat. I wanted to create a positive character that could achieve and accomplish things regardless of her size. I was inspired by my mother, who, despite her weight, has gone on to do everything she wanted. She is very active and full of energy.” A peculiar name for a South Asian comic character, Kripa says Miss Moti would mean two things depending on the reader’s perspective. “I came up with the name because a friend of mine used to call me Moti.

I wanted to change this negative connotation into a positive one. I liked the fact that Moti could mean a plump woman, but if you pronounced the ‘T’ differently, it could also mean a pearl. So the name, and her logo, suggests that Miss Moti might look plump and ordinary, but on the inside, she could be extraordinary and a gem of a person.” Miss Moti’s journey began on the campus of School of Visual Art in New York, where Kripa completed her Masters in fine arts in illustration. “Stylistically, my work was inspired by the Maithali or Madhubani folk art from Nepal/India but it changed over time. In the beginning it used to be quite ‘flat’, in the sense, it didn’t have any perspective. That changed when I started making comics. I took inspiration from Chris Ware for the design of the comic page. Now I think my figurative drawings have also become more refined,” she says.

As a child, Kripa remembers trying to copy drawings from comics books such as Archies. Her work evolved over a period of time as she sought inspiration from the likes of Winsor McCay. “Winsor McCay was an artist in the early 1900’s and his Little Nemo stories were quite an inspiration for me. In it, a little boy falls asleep and has these wonderful adventures in Slumberland, only to wake up at the end, leaving the reader to wonder whether it was all just a dream or not. This play between the dream and reality inspired my Miss Moti stories. There are generally always little elements in her stories that make you think that maybe events are not just in the imagination.”

The most important thing in making a comic is the planning stage where you jot down and plot your ideas quickly, feels Kripa. “When I first started, I used to draw the outlines on paper and then colour on the computer. Now with my tablet, I do most of the work on the computer except the initial planning stage,” she says. With her Motivation Monday series, Kripa uploads an artwork on her Facebook page every  Monday,  with a quote. “I first start with finding a quote after which I think about what the image could look like, to represent that quote. Then I plan a rough layout and look up reference images. If I am working on an anthology, the theme is generally provided and then it is a question of finding the story. For a comic, it takes more planning because you not only have to tell a story, but also design the whole page and factor in the page turns as well.”

Kripa now has a five-story arc of Miss Moti that she would like to get published. “I have self-published my books till now and it would be good to be able to have the books available to a larger audience, especially in other countries.  Motivation Monday is an ongoing project till at least the end of 2016 and I hope to collect the illustrations into a book or journal.”