Shesh kiran is a professional animator and a self-taught caricature artist, from Bangalore, who lost his hearing ability in his early childhood. Over the years, he developed an interest in art. He never saw his disability as a shortcoming, instead focused on what he does the best – Art.

Here is an inspiring snippet about his journey as an artist.

“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it”.

~Helen Keller

When Shesh Kiran was born, he did not cry. This made the doctors put him in a special care unit. The heavy dose of antibiotics given affected the micro strands of hair in his ears, due to which he lost his hearing ability. This was undetected until they observed that he was not getting terrified by loud noises.

When he turned 2, his family’s attempt to get him to use hearing aids failed as he was reluctant to wear them. But this did not stop him from learning new things. He started comprehending things in his own way.  

He started sketching at a very young age.  Eventually, he also learnt writing from his elder sister. “It was easy to teach him about tangible things, but we didn’t know how to make him understand what intangible things were. For example, he would ask what a ‘week’ is. But, he somehow figured it out”, says his family.

Being a huge fan of comic books such as Tin-Tin; Jughead; Asterix and Archies, he used to imitate the comics in his own drawing style. In his schooldays, the other kids used to ask him to draw for them. Tired of the requests, he started charging five rupees for each. He even conducted drawing classes for few neighbourhood kids.

Want To Create Your Custom Illustration With Shesh Kiran?

His family recognized his talent and encouraged him to pursue art seriously after his 12th grade. He joined animation classes and learnt Flash; 2D & 3D animation and specialized in character design. “His animation always stood out from the rest”, says his father. He recalls how his first digital art was executed in MS Paint.

He has worked for various design and animation companies such as Parampadham; Media Genie; Stump Vision; Foresee and ZVKY Design studio until now, on various projects such as children Magazines, animations for live scoreboards, making characters for games such as Farmville, advertisements and so on.

He’s also a freelance caricature artist, on the weekends.

“People get offended when I exaggerate their features, which defeats the whole purpose of caricatures”, he says. He makes caricatures of couples, pets and famous personalities.

His work has been featured in many magazines. He says that he was on cloud nine when his caricature of Bal Thackeray got published in the official magazine of RSS.

“However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at”.

Shesh Kiran believes that our brain is wired in such a way that if one of our five senses is weak, the others become stronger. His advice for aspiring artists is to keep sketching; practice drawing imaginary characters and keep it simple.

Click on the links below to see more of his artworks

http://sheshkiran.blogspot.com/

https://sheshkiran.tumblr.com/