Ritesh Varma is under the BananaBandy Spotlight

Artist, Animator, Director; Ritesh Varma juggles a lot of professions quite efficiently. From award winning short films to colourful doodles and heavily detailed 3 dimensional landscapes, his art covers a lot of ground. With a lot of well-appreciated projects on BananaBandy, Ritesh Varma was selected in the third edition of BananaBandy Spotlight. Here is our feature interview article on this talented artist!

My father and brother were hobbyist painters and so I grew up making paintings and crafts. I never thought that i will make out a living out of it someday.

Growing up as a child, Ritesh Varma was surrounded by the great artwork that his father and brother, both hobbyist painters created. With an artistic mind of his own, he developed a keen interest in film-making an animation when he got his first computer. He loved watching cartoon shows but he couldn’t fathom the process that went into creating them. With his curiosity piqued, he started researching and looking up on how animation was created and what were the softwares used to do the same. This led to him joining an animation course in class 10, where he learnt about mastering the softwares, the techniques, storyboarding, character creation, etc.

I feel the best part of making art or doing something related to art, is diversity. Art is huge and has infinite possibilities. Whenever I animate something , I research a lot and that makes it even more exciting. You are creating something  while also learning about things that you thought never really existed.

Ritesh creates his films by mixing traditional as well as digital mediums. This a technique I usually make my films by mixing traditional and digital mediums. It’s something that makes them stand out visually and gives them a unique look. He believes in never giving up and learning from his mistakes. This is what he had to say on learning from our mistakes:

I once tried a blend of wall paintings and stop motion. The result was not up to the mark and I ended up ruining one of my office walls. But it inspired me to create wall painting and murals, and after some attempts I was successful. The experience was enriching as I had failed at achieving what I really wanted in the start, but in that failure I learned two more things and now I am quite good at both. This is how it actually works, failure often teaches you the biggest lessons.

This is what Ritesh Varma had to say about his favourite BananaBandy artists:

Rahul Parihar is an artist that inspires me a lot. His ideas are amazing and he executes them with justice. He has  stellar skills in 3D design as well as in developing games.

The other one is Vikas Tiwari , I know Vikas from a very long time and he always amazes me with his Graphic Design works. His designs are subtle yet amazing. They leave an impression that is hard to ever forget.

Neha Shah is brilliant in craft. Her flawless skills and designs have been a great contribution to new generation of artists.

Ritesh is not just about art behind the screen though. He is also talented in front of the camera and is a great dancer and singer. Back in 2003, he took part in Boogie Woogie! Apart from that, he’s acted in many plays and even took on the role of Hanuman in RamLeela. Currently working on an animated feature film about a junior artist, Ritesh is all but ready to make the step to the big screen. We wish him all the success for his future and are keen to see him direct some awesome features!