Ever since I was a child, I enjoyed watching movies and creating art through my imagination. The artistic visual story-telling comprising colorful characters designed in innovative ways fuelled my enthusiasm for Design and Art. As I grew older and my education progressed, I realized I can merge and pursue both my interests as a professional career through the art of animation. Introduction to the movies of Hayao Miyazaki and Satoshi Kon, by my art mentor completely changed my perspective of animation and cinema. Since then, I have felt that telling stories through animation is something that I am passionate about and want to do for the rest of my life. Driven by this goal, I pursued an undergraduate degree in Animation Film Design from the National Institute of Design, (NID) Ahmedabad. Those four years were an enriching experience in Art and Design wherein I acquired a diverse set of skills and knowledge through various school and freelance projects. In my second year, I, along with a few of my batchmates, made our very first animated short film, ‘Whilom’, which got nominated for four international film festivals. In the same year, I got an internship opportunity at Ghost Collective, an animation studio in Kolkata, where I worked on their in-house short films – “Wade”, “Mother”, and “Beyond Border”. In these films, I worked as a character animator, and effects animator, and assisted in the character design. All these three films talk about the endurance of love and humanity even in the direst situations. They went on to get nominated and win awards at several notable international film festivals. Simultaneously, I got to be part of the animation team that worked on the award-winning Malayalam film “Jallikattu”. In my sixth semester, I was selected from NID for the exchange program at ENSAD, (Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts Decoratifs, Paris) where I studied animation filmmaking. I also won the Charpak Exchange Scholarship for this program. Needless to say, studying there was an enriching experience. During my course in ENSAD, I started working on my solo animated short film which I later carried forward for my graduation project at NID. I got to interact with other exchange students who came from different parts of the world and gained knowledge regarding their culture along with the different approaches they take towards animation and filmmaking. The city of Paris offered substantial artistic experience concerning its world-renowned museums and galleries. Looking at famous works like those of Leonardo Da Vinci and Monet transported me back to their time. After graduating, I joined Otter Studio as an animator. I worked on the storyboard animatic and pitch trailer for their 2D animated feature film, “Heirloom”, which is under development. The film is directed by Upamanyu Bhattacharyya, who was also the co-director of “Wade”. It was an enlightening experience being a part of the production pipeline for a feature film. During this period, I continued working on other projects to broaden my skill set and expand my portfolio, such as making background art for a music video, NFTs for an art collective, and animating advertisements. From joining NID to working as a professional animator, I consider myself lucky to get to do what I love, but I have also realized that there is a lot of room for me to grow. I don’t want my animation to get restricted to just one style and medium. My long-term goal is to explore and develop my skills further in my endeavor to create animated feature films that are fresh and unique in terms of both narrative and style.