‘Comics have been a part of my life ever since I was a kid’
A UX designer and popular comic artist, Achinthya Amarakoon, the creative mind behind the “Papadamn” and “Sakkai Muniyai” Sinhala comic strips, and the webtoon “This Fluffy Love” enjoys wide popularity especially in Sri Lanka. ‘This Fluffy Love’ her most famous work so far, with more than 100K subscribers worldwide, has been translated into more than five languages.
Born and raised in Sri Lanka, Achinthya has lived in Toronto, Canada with her Canadian husband Rajitha since 2017 and has plans to get dual citizenship in a couple of years. A former student of Musaeus College, she says “This Fluffy Love” is set in a high school and was heavily influenced by her own experiences at school.
She started creating her comics in 2012 under the “Papadamn’’ brand, after a couple of comic strips she uploaded to Elakiri.com went viral. Her traditional Papadamn comics range from plain old jokes to PSAs, and she tries to tackle subjects that are considered taboo in Sri Lanka and therefore not touched by other artists. Even today “Papadamn” has its own Facebook (Papadamn) and Instagram (papadamnarts) pages, and fans can see what Achinthya is up to these days.
“Comics have been a part of my life ever since I was a kid. My late grandfather used to collect comic strips on scrapbooks. The first comics I read were “Tennakoonge Samaja Samayan” and most of my preteen and teen years were spent reading Archie comics and Tintin. I think Archie comics influenced my early artwork a lot,” Achinthya told the Sunday Times Magazine.
Achinthya says that her style of drawing has also been influenced by Japanese manga, which is why she tries to emphasise facial expressions.
“I think one thing that sets manga aside from Western comics is how meticulous the Japanese creators are when it comes to drawing expressions. This is probably why anime and manga are remembered for how they draw eyes. I have seen different mangakas with different art styles, but what brings them under the same umbrella term is this quality,” she says.
Achinthya has two more seasons of “This Fluffy Love” planned, as well as one more season of “Sakkai Muniyai”. She has also signed a three-year contract with Toomics (Lalatoons), a Webtoon Company based in Seoul in South Korea, and will be creating new comics for them.
While Achinthya’s day job as a UX designer is her main source of income, she takes her comics very seriously too. They have provided her with a decent side income, and therefore she can no longer think of them as a hobby, she says. She plans out episodes, does quality checks, and even maintains public relationships with her readers.
“It’s pretty much like running a company in its own right, and I want to explore more themes in future, such as horror, thriller, and history. My ultimate goal is to tell as many stories as I can, and create as many comics and webtoons as I can,” she says.
As a UX designer Achinthya designs B2B web-based and mobile-based software apps primarily used in agriculture and animal feed manufacturing. She studied UX designing at the University of Canberra, Australia, and has been passionate about it since then.
“I represented my university with a couple of friends at the Microsoft Imagine Cup 2014. As the ‘artsy’ kid of the group, I ended up being responsible for our app design. We won an honourable mention in the interface design category, and that made me realise that this was something I was good at, that was worth pursuing.”
“While I find art and comics to be my passion, UX feels much more stable. It isn’t only about career and financial stability. UX requires more theory and logic than illustration, which ‘needs to come from the heart’ in my opinion. Turning something that needs to come from one’s heart into a primary career feels risky and restrictive. This is why I predict that I will stick with UX for a long time, even while having a pretty decent comic career,” she says.
Achinthya learned the art of creating comics completely by herself, and had to work hard to become the talented comic artist she is today.
“I like to analyse the comics I read in technical terms. However, the self-taught path is hard. So, I try to publish my findings and share my knowledge via “Papadamn Learn,” my lesson and blogging platform,” she says.
Papadamn Learn is available on Facebook and up-and-coming comic artists can get a glimpse into Achinthya’s vibrant world of comic art and storytelling, and pick up some hints from her on what they need to know about getting into, and improving, this fascinating form of digital art.
Her husband, editor, and partner-in-crime Rajitha has been her constant support over the past ten years, Achintha says.
“His support has extended beyond comics, to my career, and my other hobbies of music and photography. We bounce ideas between each other about my comics, we brainstorm, and he helps out in editing, along with my friends Chrish and Matheesha. He also helps me out of slumps and creative blocks, and I consult him before signing up partnerships with comic service providers and other talent agencies,” she says.