Indie Preview: Acid Toad drops by!

Aakash Pandya

8 years ago

IndieFolio interviews illustrator, graphic designer, vocalist for Inner Sanctum and creative explorer Gaurav Basu aka Acid Toad

I am guy who loves to draw strange pictures. I love nature, music and travelling. Been working as an illustrator for the past couple of years…and oh yeah, I am in a band that plays hateful music and has vowed to enslave the world through the word of Satan.

What are you working on at the moment?

My behaviour towards stupid people 😛 but jokes apart I run a design company by day which keeps me busy and morph into an amphibian by night to create absurd realities on paper. Currently designing some merch and an album cover which will soon be revealed 😉

What’s a piece of advice that really helps you with your own workflow?

Do your best….your best isn’t good enough, try better. Wow I just realized that some clients have traumatized me.

You’re the vocalist of a metal band, sketch out these insane artworks and are killing it at both. What’s one thing that helped you get there?

Why thank you ! Other than hard work a sense of humour helped ! The more you do it, the better you get at it. I am gonna sound like a broken record here but “practice makes perfect”. It best to stick to what you are good at and yeah, you’re heart’s gotta be into it.

A deep sea adventure

If you could claim that any piece of artwork in the world was yours, what would it be?

That’s really creepy, but yeah I would shamelessly like to take credit for shaping the universe and the planets, Thank you very much.

Once upon a time I entered a realm, an alternate universe…on this fantastic voyage I encountered a great toad. He was a wise sage that lived in the smoked out valley of large fungus. All of this Acid Toad stuff is just me, dedicating something in his memory. Soon the master amphibian will reach out to others in lead them to their own quests!

If the IndieFolio team were to spend a Saturday night with you, what’d we be doing?

Waiting for me to show up.

Visual identity and collateral design for Mumbai based online apparel store ultykhopdi.com

The best album art cover you’ve seen?

That’s a tough one, but at the top of my head anything by John Dyer Baizley. He’s the man! But its not just album covers , there are some great artists making some seriously kickass posters and merch. Florian Bertmer, Vance Kelley , Angryblue , just to name a few. The Indian scene is on the rise as well, we have some great local talent that’s creating some pretty cool shit.

So I had the privilege of working for one of the biggest bands in the country, Indus Creed. Straight out of their new album the track fireflies was the one they wanted me to illustrate. I was given full creative freedom to express my own interpretation of the song. Here is what came out!

1833 AD

A message you’d like to pass to ‘all the haters’?

I thought you have to be famous to have haters! Who are these people who hate me, please pass me the shotgun. I’ll threaten them into hating something more useful…like the government , religion or right wing nut bags, bad music and Kim Kar-douche-ian.

So I was commissioned to do the cover for a children’s novel in Kannada written by Balasubramanya HR. The book is called “Tammanna Mattu Iruve Rajakumari” which translates to “Tammanna And The Ant Princess”. Its a fascinating story about a boy and his magical journey into a fantastic kingdom of Ants! Trippy stuff!