New Delhi: As a child, Kanav Agnihotri, who has a penchant for inventing various fictional characters in a unique style, was always attracted to the magical world of nature and strongly believed if you take care of nature, nature will take care of you.
“I kept reading books on environment, climate change, marine pollution, but I felt that if I can create a super powerful hero who talks about this subject in the most creative way then it might attract children and in the process they might start reading more on our environment and try to be the future climate leaders of our planet,” Agnihotri, the author of graphic novel “The Adventures of Super Sharkaru — The Shark That Flies” told IANS in an interview.
Covid-19 made everyone sit at home and his previous business just went down the drain, so while sitting at home created a super powerful marine hero, a shark, and named it ‘Super Sharkaru — The Shark that Flies’, did the voiceover’s, direction etc. and posted the video on his YouTube channel Kantell Stories.
“I am not a professional moviemaker or voiceover artist, but my work started getting views and subscribers and today my channel has approximately 10,400 subscribers mainly from India. The videos on the channel helped me indirectly in writing the story for the graphic novel,” Agnihotri said.
He always wanted to be in a purposeful driven business so he formed Kantell Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. on May 23, 2022, a company which will creatively talk on climate change, marine pollution to start with. He launched his plush hand puppet sharks as well on www.kantell.com, all made in India.
The novel is about a young shark prince who gets unimaginable powers to fight against marine pollution. The villains are polluting the oceans with plastic and chemical waste that harms marine life. They are also unraveling the secrets of the oceans and exploiting all their resources for their selfish needs.
Welcome to Sharkaru Island, a magical place where the Sharkaru race lives. God-fearing, peaceful and brave, they are the protectors of the island. King Sharkaru rules it and his clan includes his beloved wife, Queen Light Sharkaru, and two adorable children, Prince Sharkaru, his alter ego Super Sharkaru who gets transformed after receiving the magical energy from the Sharkaru Lake, and Princess Sharkaru.
The novel is about Super Sharkaru and his allies stopping the negative forces from destroying the oceans.
Speaking about the novel’s journey from conception to completion, Agnihotri added once his channel picked up, it gave him more confidence to launch the book budget was a big issue.
“So I smartly used my surroundings for backgrounds to get the book ready and used services of a designer to get my vision executed. The journey was very difficult as when you enter a business where you have zero knowledge, you end up trusting any one, which I did, and burnt my fingers, made mistakes and suffered loss of time and money.”
“At one stage the project reached ground zero, but I did not give up as I knew that my vision of creating these super powerful heroes and villains along with the storyline on marine pollution will get its due recognition and I started again this year from scratch and finally launched my graphic novel ,” Agnihotri said.
“A friend of mine supported as he had his own design studio, as they say god helps those, who help themselves,” he said, adding: “Reading now is not a social reel, so I deliberately went for a graphic novel as I felt that children will try to read a book with pictures, and that was the first feedback I received from a parent that his daughter is trying to read along with colourful photographs.”
“Super Sharkaru is cute yet powerful shark and children have connected with him, his mother is a powerful leader, he also has a human friend. There are many other exciting fictional characters, along with dangerous villains in the graphic novel,” Agnihotri elaborated.
“I have formed these brands from my room, with no professional studio, no team, done everything alone from ideation to execution filled with passion, practical ambition and self belief. Marine pollution is the current subject where all the fictional characters have been introduced. I have all the IP, trademarks and respective copyrights,” he said.
Speaking about his company, Kantell Entertainment Pvt. Ltd, Agnihotri said its vision “is to educate through creative entertainment, children on problems faced by our planet, by creating a fictional fantasy world of super powerful heroes and villains. Also positioning India in this process as a strong content creator of fictional fantasy heroes and villains thought and Made in India”.
“We will reach schools, teachers, parents, educational institutes to educate them on the planet crisis through creative storytelling so that the message is passed in the most creative way without compromising on the problem/main issue.”
“I always say change is good, but not for the climate,” Agnihotri concluded.
–IANS
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