For the
past 22 years, Karadi the bear has appeared in pages of numerous Karadi Tales
books, on screen in animated TV shows, and as a mascot at our events. And for
the first time, a couple of months ago, he took the shape of a
three-dimensional sculpture who now sits in our office.
Mahalakshmi
Gurushankar brought the popular image of a dancing Karadi and his young monkey
friend Meera to life with such incredible detail that one might actually think
it is 3D printed rather than painstakingly hand-carved! Every little detail
from Meera’s flying necklace to what looks like almost every single strand of
Karadi’s fur is present in the sculpture. She took the time to add grass, real
stones and even a little plastic butterfly to complete the image of the
storytelling bear in his home, the forest. When asked how she was able to
capture such intricate details in the sculpture, Mahalakshmi said, “I started
by creating a wire frame. The sculpture is made of polymer clay but needs a
foundation. Once that was ready I could move on to the smaller details like the
fur. I have small hands so making small things is not a problem. I used dentist
tools which I actually found are the best and cheapest for this sort of thing.
The trick is to be extremely delicate. I didn’t have much difficulty getting as
close as possible to the existing 2d character.”
Making the
sculpture did not take Mahalakshmi very long. She worked on it for two hours a
day and was done within a week. “The first time the facial proportions were
off. So it took another week to redo that and this time it was perfect” she
said.
Surprisingly,
Mahalakshmi does not have a background in sculpting. “I had not learnt sculpting
as part of a course before, but I did have a couple of classes in it during
animation studies. The first time I ever tried my hand at it was during a
competition at school. That was my first time trying it. I had no idea what I
was doing but decided to have fun anyway. I did not win anything in that competition,
but I clearly remember one of the participants making a dog cradling her
puppies…it made me want to try harder. I learnt a lot from YouTube tutorials
and by trial and error - I began by just playing around with different types of
clay and soon made it a point every Ganesh Chathurti to make my own Ganeshas
for Visarjan.”
Today, the
painstakingly created sculpture from our beloved reader sits in our office
alongside us every day. And sometimes, when the sun shines on Karadi’s face, we
almost feel like the big, lovable bear is grinning at us meaningfully, as if to
say – “Do you have any new stories for me to tell?”
