We were lucky to catch up with Rajkumar Ramalingam recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Rajkumar thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

The vision emerged in the form of Master Degree Thesis, Beautiful Chaos: Art of being slow, less and small.

Imagine an architectural space that tells a story about food that is made locally, is affordable and provides healthier choices. Fast food chains provide easy accessibility to food, but they rarely offer healthy options. This system converts chefs into laborers, and transforms the kitchen into a factory, sacrificing the artistry of making. This has produced a monotonous culinary culture, corrupting distinction with bland, uniform tastes and experiences of food. Beautiful Chaos proposes a methodology by creating a small themed experience. In a key urban environment (a Savannah public square), the design proposal transforms an underutilized area into a cultural hub, where making slow food draws people together. Slow food requires a nurturing community, sensitivity to seasons, and connectedness to the environment. The space of Beautiful Chaos is experiential and educational: it provides a communal dining area, includes a community garden, and offers an open-stage platform for performances, storytelling, and lectures.

The reason it became meaningful because one day it got evolved into my business plan which is, “Beautiful Chaos: The edutainment art service that provides food, visual story art and yoga to improve people’s health, wealth and relationships.”

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Rajkumar Ramalingam, I’m an Architect and Entertainment designer with 9 to 12 (+) years of industry experiences and teaching coalesced together to pursue my passion of design and drawing as a storyboard/ concept artist, visual development artist  and architect. I have worked on over eleven movies, designs for theme parks, sets/events, products, branding, advertisements, 2D animations, illustrations and games for the entertainment industry. I am proud of all these collaborations but especially the toy design project for Star Wars while working at Hasbro.Inc. I have also worked on the environmental theme park design for Avengers: Age of Ultron ride and Hunger Games, The Capitol while working at Falcon’s Tree House. My 2D hand drawn animations has elevated my skill set while applied during projects like Title card animation and music videos. Also, my sketchbook got featured in 2D ARTIST of 3D Total Magazine, UK.

As an Architect and Concept Artist I admire the concept used in the movie “Minions, particularly the art of communication is the concept allows for the freedom of exploration to find infinite level of creativity. It is with storytelling that I can use my skills of architecture; creating environments, props, vehicles and characters to balance the story to socio-economic contexts, also seek the freedom to play with fundamentals of perspectives to invent new camera angles, appealing compositions and visually developed storyboards.

During my 12 plus years of teaching experience, I applied my drawing, animation and storyboarding to illustrate complex architectural concepts in an enjoyable and entertaining way. I also possess the relationship building skills to promote support for a team.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Building your audience is like a tree providing us fruits (food). Second, go with the nature’s way. Currently I have 1300 followers in Instagram (social media) and still growing.

I share almost every day an artwork with a one-line sayings about how I see the universe, learnings from masters, philosophers, etc. Artworks like drawings, sketches, paintings ranging from process to finished pieces from my sketchbooks and projects. Drawings with one-liners is something unique that would attract variety of audiences.

Provide what the world wants and needs. Your supply is valuable only where there is a demand or need. Everyone in this universe has their own opinion, views, perspective, etc., and above all, “everyone has problems”. But first, the most would hesitate to share with others, maybe don’t want to be judged. Second, no one would want to hear boring long lectures or advises (in particular) unless it is entertaining.

Again, like how the nature works, a tree first ‘give’, ‘do’ and then at last ‘take’. In addition to that they don’t carry any sort of expectations. Like how, just plant your seeds and walk away with no expectations. Because expectations would never let you be creative. Indeed, it’s always needed to tell less than what is required, which would tempt the other side to ask for more. There’s a difference between “just sell” than “trying to sell”. Precisely, never be greed by wanting for more audiences, let it grow naturally on its own course, so let it be.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

I think it is difficult to categorize someone as non-creatives. Creativity is a state of mind, body, thoughts, or emotions. It depends on how you do, see, respond to things. So, it’s your choice to be creative or not for that episode of time. Being creative is being like a baby, emptying your mind or head and seeing the world.

Masters says that you got to draw like a baby and look it like a master. Emptying your mind is to remove your thoughts, rules, attachments. Otherwise, these factors would accumulate the attitude that constipates the flow of creativity in oneself. Let me test you by asking a question: “How do you put an elephant into a fridge? remember! the hint is to think like a baby”. This might sound like a stupid question but the most important, fundamental question of all. I always start initiate with this question with my students during sessions.

When you’re creative, it is not necessary that you’re inventing anything new. It can even be a newly evolution of an existing invention. For that, you got to detach from the rules, logistics, etc., and lean towards intuitions and consciousness which would help one-self to expand the probabilities of viewing a subject. That will help lead to attain solutions solving the problems faced but not fixed yet in human history. For instance, the one who invented the alphabets (A, B, C, D,) never know the alphabets until that moment. So, “the educated learn from the uneducated.”

Contact Info:

•  Website: https://rajkumar.artstation.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rajkumar.ramalingam/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/raj.animated
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/rajkumar-ramalingam-0a521571
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/Animatedr
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFlo03PE81RpP1cu5YAosRQ
• Other: https://rajkumarkadhai.com/ – (This is my personal  website) https://www.instagram.com/beautiful__chaos_studio/ (Our brand’s instagram page) https://www.facebook.com/Studio.BeautifulChaos/ (Our brand’s facebook page)

Image Credits
Rajkumar Ramalingam_Architect & Entertainment Designer_Studio. Beautiful Chaos