KOCHI: Malappuram native Vinesh M K is a self-professed movie buff, one that especially loves gritty crime and spy thrillers, futuristic sci-fi fiction and dystopian action flicks, not by any stretch an unusual fascination for a 20-something millennial. The golden era of western television has for the last few years churned one phenomenal show after another rubbing off its new found glory onto traditional feature film formats and many of us like Vinesh, have truly embraced popular entertainment media.
We are loyal members of worldwide fandoms referencing punchlines in our everyday conversations, smirking at idiosyncrasies of our favourite TV or movie characters at odd hours of the day and indeed repping them in our fashion choices but Vinesh’s obsession went a step further. The engineering student and digital artist was not happy with passive admiration. Instead he chose to contribute to the creative genius of his best-loved visual content by redesigning and recreating alternate posters for TV shows and movies.
An attempt that seems to have paid off considering that the American TV series ‘Better Call Saul’, a spin-off of the cult show ‘Breaking Bad’ and the sensational ‘Money Heist’ decided to feature his work on their official social media handles. The Spanish show had in fact named Vinesh’s fan art of character Tokyo as among the 15 best in the world, sending him a note of recognition last year. “Money Heist was conducting a competition for artists around the globe. I submitted my version of Tokyo and they liked it,” says Vinesh.
Although redesigning posters is something Vinesh started only recently after the pandemic outbreak, his earliest renditions of characters and scenes from TV and films date back to three years. “I have always been drawn towards pop art and wanted to make something akin to it. I taught myself most of the software and started practising on them. Whenever I finish watching a movie or a show, I have a natural impulse to recreate a few moments from what I saw. Hence, the visual media is the inspiration for most of my art,” says Vinesh who works on Adobe Illustrator.
He scours through the internet collecting as many pictures as possible of his subject before settling on a frame or angle for his design. “I look at hundreds of images of each character, place them all together to see which layout is most visually appealing and then recreate them on the application.”
The 25-year-old who is currently working on a series titled Cyberpunk fusing human elements with that of a robot, is planning to next recreate the poster of the 2017 movie ‘Ghost in the Shell’ which deals with a similar sci-fi theme. Having received considerable traction for his art, Vinesh has been commissioned to design the poster of an upcoming Malayalam film.Find Vinesh’s work on Instagram @pulp_fiction.