Ponniyin Selvan Varalaatru Peravai

Sridhar has done a wonderful job of posting all characters by Vinu.
I'm
seeing vinu's paintings for the first time and they look very good,
indeed!
But when it came to voting I did'nt have any hesitation in choosing
Maniyam.
One thing we need to remember: Both vinu and Padmavasan have not
deviated
much from the characters maniyam created - vinu did not even change
the
Kudandhai Jothitar - if not other important characters!
But remember, Maniyam did'nt have any models in front of him. With
Kalki
himself being present and demanding the best from him, he concieved
each
character in deep meditation and brought all characters to life. When
you
think of Vandhiyathevan or Nambi, your outline is certainly from
Maniyam!
This will be one of the biggest challenges movie makers will face -
for the
characters are so well etched in memory that it is difficult to
replace it
with live actors unless they are very close to Maniyam's drawings.
In Kalki's special issue commomorating 100 years of Kalki magazine,
there
was a special section for Maniyam - detailing his works other than
PS.
One biggest advantage of maniyam was that he was able to create
characters
who looked almost completely different from one another. Not many
artists
have this skill - if you observe the present day artists, all of
their
females will look more or less the same without much deviations. But
Maniyam's characters stand much apart from each other.
Therein lies his true greatness.