When we set out to match the truly unique style of the Kama Sutra for a sultry Valentine’s Day card, the first step was to do our homework…  which of course meant looking through the ancient Indian text over and over.

We poured through a variety of Kama Sutra books and images on the internet, noting the textures, symmetry, shapes and colors that give the instructional drawings their unmistakable look.

With a set of character and background design notes worked up, the time came for experimenting with colors and patterns, laying the ground work for our visual development. We worked up plenty of flat floors and a number of large objects to place in the middle of the scene in order to block certain unwanted visuals.

Character design occurs at this stage as well.  With the Kama Sutra, there aren’t many opportunities to see our characters in clothes, so we had to get creative designing big head pieces and hair.

By the way, before you get any ideas, “FIST” stands for “Face In Symbol Technology”.  We worked up a bunch of positions based on the initial pitch, with names like “The Hurry Curry”, “The Side Saddle Swami” and a few more that if we posted we’d have to wash out mouths out with soap.  The key to finding the funny in the positions was fairly obvious.  Legs.  In several scenes you’ll notice a bunch of arms and legs that are completely uncounted for.

We were just about wrapped when it struck us that in our rush to get lots of Valentine’s Day stuff wrapped up, we had almost completely forgotten to design some head gear!  In just a little over a day we designed up some interesting art to fit atop your Valentine’s head.

That’s a wrap!  See how it all turned out by casting you and your Valentine in the Kama Sutra over on the site!