22/04/2024
Our Creative Director Reminisces:
Very sad to share that our wonderful film-poster artist and long-time collaborator, Sampath passed away on April 19, 2024.
Sampath had great skill, one of the few remaining film-poster artists from the pre-digital, pre-flex era. This was a time when heroes, heroines and villains were hand-painted larger than life, with animated gestures and saturated colors, emotions and drama brought alive to draw crowds into the cinema.
I remember, when we designed the MTV offices in Bangalore and Mumbai (in collaboration with ) in the late ‘90s, we wanted to bring the layers and energy of the city into the office space – much like MTV was doing with its programming. Embracing the local, repackaging it, making it cool, and giving back to the Indian youth, a new and exciting version of the everyday.
So, we went on an expedition into the lanes of Malleshwaram, where film-poster artists sat in their studios made of bamboo, and there we discovered Sampath. This wonderful, talented, artist – ready to experiment and have some fun.
We overcame the language barrier through gestures and sketches, moving between hand-drawing and photoshop – Sampath was a little puzzled that the hero’s face was to be painted pink, and his cheek would in-fact be a drawer that opens for storage. Or that, we were putting together a dilapidated auto-rickshaw as a reception table. But he played along, and I watched in fascination as he translated the little hand drawing with great precision onto a bold, eye-catching mural.
Sampath continued to collaborate with TSK from walls to books, and helped create a joyful India inspired alphabet book, ABCDesi.
TSK is grateful to Sampath for or all the vibrant work he created, bringing our vision to life.
Much has changed from the late ’90s in terms of our cities, globalisation and technology. But MTV remains one of our favourite projects for its unrestrained youthfulness and its celebration of the local.
