Boomranng Studio

0:02 [applause] Thank you for the lovely introduction and we would like to thank it's nice that for having us here and thank you all for joining us today. I'm Sonel and this is Makran. Together we are Boomrang Studio a cosmic punk design studio based in Mumbai, India. We explore storytelling through illustrations, animations, murals, augmented art, and more.

0:33 We also have two more members in our studio, our two little cats, Mickey and Pixie, who also sometimes make an appearance in our projects. Our illustration style can be described as maximalist, vibrant and retrofuturistic. Rooted in Indian and South Asian mythology, global pop culture and deep love for storytelling. We describe our selfdeveloped aesthetic as cosmic punk.

1:00 We've been fortunate enough to have worked with the most amazing clients such as Apple, Google, Nike, Netflix, Parolympics, Cold Play, and many more. And today we are really excited to share with you all a little bit about our journey, work and process. So this is our art school sir JJ Institute of Applied Art in Mumbai where we met each other and studied BFA together. Our mutual love for storytelling and illustration was something that really connected us.

1:34 We were also the imaginative kids, the one lost in Indian folklore, sci-fi tales and local comic books. Dreaming up worlds of our own. Those stories shaped us. They made us believe in magic of creation. Somewhere between those pages, we knew illustration was a way to bring imagination to life. So even back in college before we had any idea how it would happen, we dreamed of starting our own studio, a place where our words could collide and explode into colors.

2:04 That dream became Boom Rang. After graduation, we took the leap and started our little studio in the middle of the 2020 pandemic. Our way of creating light in uncertain times. Our name Boom Rang says it all. Boom, the big bang and rung for colors in Hindi. an explosion of colors, ideas, and imagination.

2:25 In our early years, we were all over the place making zenes, merch, comic books, basically everything that made us excited and taking them to art fairs and pop-ups. That's when we learned our favorite lesson that you have to make something that you love and stuff that you really like that actually means something to you.

2:46 And that's how retrofuturism became our guiding philosophy, our lens. Basically, blending nostalgia with possibilities. We both grew up in Mumbai, a vibrant, diverse, and endlessly aspirational city that never stops moving. It's a place alive with cultures, colors, stories, and emotions, always reinventing itself while holding on to its roots. That spirit continues to inspire our work, our vision. So when Nike came to us with a brief to create an illustration series on Mumbai for the launch of their first ever customization store in Mumbai, Nike by you, we knew exactly what to do.

3:27 Bring our retro futuristic view to life through the city we love. We wanted to combine the geography of the city with our style representing with the diverse cultures, taste and aesthetics. The idea actually came from something really close to our home. We've always been fascinated by the handpainted Indian film posters and old circus posters that you can see pasted on the city um on the walls. The colors, the energy and slightly imperfect compositions became the starting point for the creative direction.

4:05 We took cultural nuances and everyday influences around us and turned them into unique elements for the posters, local patterns, gestures that reflect daily life. Through this, we wanted to bring out the human emotion behind ordinary movements. In every circle poster, you usually see animals performing under the tent. But in this world, our cosmic punk universe, the uni, animals are cybernated and the real ones roam free in the wild. It's our way of imagining a future that advocates kindness over cruelty.

4:43 A city that never sleeps and runs entirely on tea. It's almost like tea is the city's fuel. Without it, nothing moves. It's everyone's quiet recharge before the day spins forward again. We've combined traditional Indian tile patterns with ornamental designs of old metal gates. Two everyday details you often see across the across the city. So that became our backdrop for this artwork.

5:12 Through all these different observations and influences, this is how the entire campaign came together. So we used a lot of uh local stories and cultures and the patterns to create this entire collection. a collection of moments, emotions that together tell the story of the city and its people. We love animation, so we integrated AR into the illustrations. So when people scan them with their phones. So these are Instagram filters, the artworks came to life, adding a layer of movement and surprise that connected the static posters with a digital experience because we always love uh experimenting and going be beyond the digital.

5:56 We also organized a fun interactive workshop for the launch where people could design their own t-shirts using elements from the campaign. It was a playful way to let everyone engage in the artwork and experience the creative process firsthand. This project received international appreciation. It was also featured on It's Nice That. And not long after that, we were signed with Jelly.

6:19 Yeah, shout out to Jelly, an amazing illustration uh agency based in London. So yeah, for the next project, yeah, we'll uh take you through the work that we created for Coldplay. So when Coldplay first approached us, like we honestly thought it was a scam because of course like Yeah, it was it was a plain DM saying we want you to work for Cold Place, of course.

6:47 Yeah. So it just felt too unreal. They wanted us to create like a 13-second animation for their project called a film for the future which celebrated animators across globe. It was for the new song called good feelings uh for their 10th studio album. The brief was very simple but beautiful to capture movement and uh feeling good about yourself. So we again started with cats for obvious reasons. [laughter] We filmed Pixie uh playing around the house. The energy felt perfect for them for the for the theme for like I mean from there like we created an animation of a couple dancing to the beat and capturing that same sense of freedom and lightness in this video kind of simple

7:35 genuine gen genuine joy that just like song celebrates. This was our part. [music] Thank you for Yeah, thank you. Pretty small part like just 13 seconds, but the team really loved the work and not long after that they reached out again for another collaboration. This time the design of the visual identity of the live stream of the biggest concert ever which took place in Ahmedabad, India earlier this Feb.

8:16 So we built the story around the cultural influences of the location. It also happened at a really special time when seven planets aligned and the band wanted us to bring in a cosmic theme to reflect the sense of connection. We wanted to create a transformative animation where each frame seamlessly morphs into the next showing the power of music. [snorts] The idea was that music blooms, turns into a wine and flows through the universe connecting everything and everyone together just like cosmic punk. This was the opening title.

9:30 some overlays we created where we used throughout the live streams. Thank you so much. [applause] Thank you. It was honestly a surreal experience uh working behind the scenes. We got to see the entire live stream from the backstage and meet everyone. So something we will never forget. Most of the work you've seen so far was created for our clients, but we feel that creating for ourselves is just as important, if not more. It's where we get to explore freely, experiment without boundaries, and build worlds that come entire that come entirely from our own imagination.

10:18 And so after years of brainstorming, patiently crafting different stories, we decided we would create our own spin on the idea of punk. We call it cosmic punk, born out of the spirit of exploration. As artists, we've always wanted people to feel inspired by our work, to take something from it that stays with them.

10:40 And that's really what we tried to do through Cosmic Punk. It's our way of reimagining a parallel world, one built on curiosity, kindness, and tolerance. When the spirit of discovery is sacred, we created cosmic punk as an aesthetic to explore our style even further without the restrictions of a medium.

11:06 We began with reinventing ourselves. Uh we found ways to bring our illustrations to life in different mediums. We would always do clothing and jewelry on illustrations. So we thought why not let's create like real products that people can actually experience. This is a sculpture that we made uh of our own character called the high empress. It's handmade. So we tried doing things uh with our own hands uh and experimenting in different mediums whether it be jewelry or whether it be sculpture like and also trying different techniques and processes. So this one being hand sculpted.

11:46 The next one this was uh made in 3D. So like the second image that you see is a handtufted carpet. So of course we experimented with that as well. So how one illustration can be experimented and turned into like different mediums is what something we were trying to experiment with and through like different mediums and completely different processes each one like teaches you something new. So it was very exciting.

12:11 Yeah. I mean each each uh different material comes with a different challenge and that uh that's something that we really love. Yeah. Everything becomes like a new challenge and um like every process, every scale like just pushes you to think differently. But that's what you know keeps it exciting for us. And um it's like rediscovering your own voice each time but in a new form.

12:40 We also collaborated with a Chinese restaurant called Yawacha in Mumbai. It's also there in London. Um to create a patary collection inspired by our universe, turning the stories and visuals into edible art that people could actually taste and experience. So with this vision, we launched our first ever cosmic punk exhibition last year in Tokyo where we gave people a small glimpse into this world that we've been patiently crafting.

13:11 And this year we took a step further creating a full-blown cosmic punk experience in India, an immersive journey through the world that we've imagined. Yeah. This is where we launched our first ever novel, Cosmic Punk Volume 1. So all the stories, all the characters, all the journeys come from this book. Uh this is just the beginning for us of creating a cosmic punk universe and we hope to create some more uh something that can inspire everyone and just be like this ray of hope and sunshine. So thank you so much for listening. That's all. [applause]