The YouTuber who tells stories through animation

Mahathir Mahmud Antik was just interested in comics at first.

He spent the first decade of his life in Japan and Japan being one of the countries with the best animation industries, the young Antik's interest in cartoons grew early. 

Antik even worked as a cartoonist for a renowned daily in Bangladesh while pursuing higher secondary education.

Soon, he started watching Marvel movies regularly and took a liking to their CGI. This made him interested in CGI and VFX, and so he took up a course for 3D animation.

Even though he initially found the course difficult and realised that this was not his cup of tea, fast forward to today, his youtube channel 'Antik Mahmud' has 535k subscribers and 120 videos. 100 of them are animated videos while the other 20 are regular content.

The beginning

Even as a child, Antik was into making videos, such as for a friend's birthday, and drawing comics. When he started getting appreciation from people on Facebook, he decided to go public and make 2D animated content.

Around the end of 2017, Antik started his journey as a YouTuber. 

"A video I made in collaboration with Ayman Sadiq helped my channel grow in the beginning. It really motivated me to go forward. But later on, no other video of mine garnered such huge traffic. Then I became very consistent. Sometimes I used to forget to shower and have my meals. I worked 24 hours straight to make a video. I struggled to come this far," Antik said.

Antik has a number of videos where he starred as an animated version of himself. According to him, it is easier and more interesting to portray himself rather than creating a new, fictional one. 

Antik's storytelling is inspired by whatever interesting thing happens in his everyday life. The majority of his audience are university students.

"I always try to interact with my audience. I stay connected with them through my Facebook group, YouTube's comment section and through discord. I think when they get to know the natural me it makes the relationship stronger and more genuine," Antik said.

Antik opened his own animation studio, Antik Animated Studio, in Mirpur 12 in 2019. He initially opened the studio for himself. Later, however, he foresaw the potential and expanded his studio activities. Now, Antik Animated Studio is a team of 12, working on client projects, music videos, etc.

The official music video of 'Behula' by Shunno was created by Antik Animated Studio. This was one of Antik's most notable projects so far. The music video garnered 25M views on YouTube and immense popularity throughout the country.

Antik has recently been awarded at the 'Marvel of Tomorrow Influencers Award 2021' in the art category. "I earlier received the YouTube Silver Play Button but this is the first national recognition and it means a lot to me."

'Bhallage Na' is Antik's first published book, which he co-authored with Ayman Sadiq. 'Chol', an adventure thriller comic book, is his first solo literary work. 'Noman-1', 'Noman-2' and 'Tin' are some of his other published books.

The dream

In the next five to 10 years, Antik aims to grow bigger. His ultimate dream is to lead the animation industry of Bangladesh. In other words, he wants to see himself as the Disney of Bangladesh.

"The problem in the animation industry of our country is that we have creative and talented people but they don't dare to make creative things. They rather focus on commercial projects. But the scene is changing and eventually it will get better. Even government projects nowadays are animated and this is very appreciable," said the animator.