About the project
Mythical Creatures of Bengal is an art-book style catalog of supernatural beings from Bengali and indigenous folklore. Initially, it began as a small project focused on illustrating a handful of Bengali ghosts from popular culture. However, as we delved deeper into the subject matter, we discovered a vast collection of mythical creatures that have remained largely unknown to the wider world. To fully explore this treasure trove, we extensively researched and obtained every available book on Bengali and indigenous folklore. Consequently, our catalog expanded from a mere dozen to over a hundred creatures. At present, we have completed over 95% of the illustrations and are in the final stages of crafting descriptions for these creatures in both Bengali and English.
Progress update
October 2023
We're thrilled to announce that we've completed 70 out of 100 illustrations for our upcoming book "Mythical Creatures of Bengal." Big shoutout to our superstar illustrators for their incredible work in record time.
July 2023
We are one month into illustrating our upcoming book “Mythical creatures of Bengal”. We are extremely fortunate to have two amazingly talented artists, Wasif Noor and Omi Abdullah Opu, invest their expertise in our project. Noor Bhai has an incredibly long resume of published book cover designs and illustrations. And Opu bhai is a 2D concept artist by profession. But he is secretly a multi-disciplinary artist who has designed game characters and even dabbled in animation and 3D graphics.
When we first started the project in March 2023, we knew of two dozen classical Bengali ghosts. But since then we have expanded into the folklore of the minor ethnic groups of Bengal. As of writing this post, we have cataloged more than 110 mythical entities. This entire process has broadened our mindset and elevated our perception of our own culture on the world stage. We hope all of you will soon be able to feel what we felt while working on this book.
Here’s a sample of some of the work we’ve done on the Bengali version of the book. We’ve taken inspiration from Bengali childrens books published in the early-1900s. We’ve even hunted down fonts that mimic the typographic style of printed books from that era. We are now brainstorming ideas for a beautiful gold-foiled hardcover design to complete the vintage look.
June 2023
After two months of conducting paid demos with around a dozen Bangladeshi artists, we are about to finalize the illustrators for our upcoming book, "Mythical Creatures of Bengal." We are humbled that artists with both national and international experience have deemed us worthy enough to invest their creativity. Here is a small sample of the artwork that was submitted during the demo phase.
May 2023
Application deadline extended till May 31
April 2023
Last month we formed a team of folklore researchers to start compiling resources on Bengal mythology. Our long term goal is to create a new fictional universe like Marvel (MCU) but using characters from our own myth instead of relying on Norse mythology like Thor, Loki etc. As a first step in this long journey we are looking for an illustrator to work on a book entitled "Mythical creatures of Bengal". The book will be structured like a personal journal consisting of sketches and handwritten notes about supernatural creatures.
