Style combination · Contrasts

Amar Chitra Katha Comics × Javanese Wayang Kulit

Both retell the Mahabharata and Ramayana with a fixed iconography, but Amar Chitra Katha draws idealised, near-naturalistic bodies in panels, while wayang codes character into impossible proportions.

From the research on Javanese Wayang Kulit (Tatah Sungging)

Mix them and make something Amar Chitra Katha Comics Javanese Wayang Kulit

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Javanese Wayang Kulit, their arrangement from Amar Chitra Katha Comics, the finish from Amar Chitra Katha Comics. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

Amar Chitra Katha Comics Javanese Wayang Kulit (Tatah Sungging)

Type from Amar Chitra Katha Comics: Hand-lettering
All caps
Colour from Javanese Wayang Kulit: Jewel & metallic
Full polychrome
Form from Javanese Wayang Kulit: Stylised figuration
Distortion & exaggeration
Composition from Amar Chitra Katha Comics: Framed panels
Sequential narrative
Surface from Amar Chitra Katha Comics: Painterly brushwork
Flat

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Amar Chitra Katha Comics

Public

Londrina Solid, standing in for Upright hand-lettered capitals (dialogue in round speech balloons, evenly spaced and drawn by hand)

Text · Javanese Wayang Kulit

The visual language of Javanese shadow puppets: flat figures cut from buffalo parchment, with head and legs in profile, shoulders turned to the front and long jointed arms worked by horn rods. Their insides are punched into filigree that draws costume and jewellery in light on the screen; both faces are painted in stepped colour gradations and gilded, for viewers on the puppeteer's side. Eyes, nose, head tilt, stance, size and face colour code each character as refined, strong, coarse or comic (the much-loved panakawan clowns); the leaf-shaped gunungan opens and closes the play.

Bodoni Moda; Javanese Wayang Kulit used Aksara Jawa (hanacaraka), the Javanese script of court manuscripts, whose illustrated narrative poems draw their figures in wayang style and Noto Sans Javanese (the Noto Javanese project, SIL Open Font License) for setting character names and captions in aksara Jawa

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Javanese Wayang Kulit, with a counter-accent from Amar Chitra Katha Comics. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Amar Chitra Katha Comics Javanese Wayang Kulit (Tatah Sungging)

#efe2bf ground · 36%
#1d1a16 ink · 14%
#b3361f accent · 18%
#e8772e accent · 14%
#c9a33b accent · 10%
#6fa3d8 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #efe2bf;
  --ink: #1d1a16;
  --accent-1: #b3361f;
  --accent-2: #e8772e;
  --accent-3: #c9a33b;
  --accent-4: #6fa3d8;
  --font-display: "Londrina Solid", cursive;
  --font-text: "Bodoni Moda", serif;
}

Use it with care

Amar Chitra Katha Comics: The series, its covers, characters and sunburst logo belong to its publisher (Amar Chitra Katha Pvt Ltd) and its artists: draw your own figures, covers and badge, never ask an image model for an ACK title or a named artist's hand, and never present a generated page as an ACK comic. Many of its subjects are deities whom readers worship, so do not mock, crop or deface them. Scholars have criticised the series for giving heroes extremely fair skin while coding dark skin with violence, brutality and low caste, for casting Muslims as either secular heroes or zealous villains, for drawing the British as ugly caricatures, and for leaving women, Muslims and lower castes out of its history: give gods, demons, villains, Muslims, Dalit and Adivasi characters the same drawing care, never use skin colour, features or dress as markers of evil, caste or religion, draw people across the real range of South Asian skin tones rather than one pale, uniform type, and do not present one Hindu reading as the whole of India's past.

Javanese Wayang Kulit (Tatah Sungging): Wayang kulit is a living Javanese theatre and craft, on UNESCO's intangible heritage list (proclaimed 2003, inscribed 2008): its puppets are made by carvers and painters for working dalang, and some performances are rites, such as the ruwatan exorcism held for children born under unlucky circumstances. Every figure is a particular character whose eyes, nose, head tilt, stance, size and face colour carry meaning, so do not assemble invented characters from mixed features or use a puppet as generic 'exotic' decoration. Semar, father of the other panakawan, is said to be the god Sang Hyang Ismaya in human form and is held by some to be the most sacred figure of the set, so do not reduce him to a clown or mascot. Never use kasar features such as fangs, red faces and bulging eyes to caricature real people, ethnic or religious groups. Commission or credit Javanese carvers and dalang rather than tracing museum puppets, many of which left Java under colonial rule. Do not sell printed or machine-cut copies as hand-carved tatah sungging, and never present a generated figure as a real wayang character.

The two styles

A colourful comic poster titled “The River Friends” follows four children in a rural village as they seek advice and bring their community together to build a stone check dam across a drying river. Black-bordered panels show the village, conversations with elders, collective construction, and the friends beside the restored river.

1967–present · South Asia Amar Chitra Katha Comics The Bombay comic-book series that from 1967 retold Hindu myth and epic, Buddhist and Jain tales, saints, folk legends, the jests of the court wits Birbal and Tenali Raman, and Indian history for children, in English and Indian languages, with well over 500 titles by the early 1990s. Each issue of about 32 pages tells one story, or a few short tales, in regular grids of ruled panels: brush-inked, idealised figures in flat colour, narration in tinted caption boxes, hand-lettered capitals, an iconography fixed from book to book, and a painted cover, often in the idiom of Indian calendar art. 1500–present · Southeast Asia Javanese Wayang Kulit (Tatah Sungging) The visual language of Javanese shadow puppets: flat figures cut from buffalo parchment, with head and legs in profile, shoulders turned to the front and long jointed arms worked by horn rods. Their insides are punched into filigree that draws costume and jewellery in light on the screen; both faces are painted in stepped colour gradations and gilded, for viewers on the puppeteer's side. Eyes, nose, head tilt, stance, size and face colour code each character as refined, strong, coarse or comic (the much-loved panakawan clowns); the leaf-shaped gunungan opens and closes the play.

More combinations

With Amar Chitra Katha Comics

With Javanese Wayang Kulit

Every style combination