Why Study Animation at GLSUxSAE

Shreya Saha

Shreya Saha is an Assistant Professor in the field of Communication Design. She has several years of collective industrial work experience in diverse fields across India. She has won a gold medal during her Master's Degree in Visual Merchandising and Communication Design from FDDI, Noida. She also won the first prize in "Jharokhas"-Visual merchandising competition across India. Thereafter, she worked with various retail companies like Pantaloons and Max as Cluster Visual Merchandiser across Indian cities.

Shreya has done her Bachelors in Animation from Xavier's College, Kolkata. She also holds a Diploma in Fine Arts. She has worked in various animation TV series for Star regional Channel. She has worked as a Freelance Layout Designer on various Industry Projects. She also has a balanced skill set in various painting mediums and Design software. She is well experienced in both traditional and digital mediums of Animation.

Shreya has also worked at IDC, IIT Bombay as a Design Assistant. Other than this, she also has interest in fashion styling. She has hands-on experience in fashion styling for various fashion shows & mannequins of the flagship store. She has also exhibited her paintings in various art galleries across India.

She is currently pursuing her doctoral studies in Design at GLS University. Her area of interest lies in Retail display, Visual Merchandising, drawing, and Layout design. She is a practicing artist with an immense interest in painting and Indian handicrafts. She is also passionate about traveling, exploring new places, and photography.

Prof. Hardik Shiroya

Hardik Shiroya is a communication design professional with 6 years of industry experience. Before starting his own design practice in Ahmedabad, he worked in a technology firm in dual roles of a Visual Communication Designer and a UX Designer. During his tenure, he has led a team of designers and engineers to successfully drive projects for national and international enterprises including PNB, Aditya Birla Capital, Oklahoma Gas and Energy, Axis Bank, Rescue Bank and IBM. He has worked with various industries – hospitality, agriculture, information technology, engineering, finance, energy, education, healthcare, waste management and e-tail. Besides this, he was also involved in teaching design as a visiting faculty for more than 3 years and have been a jury member for a design institute.

After graduating as a Mechatronics Engineer, he identified his passion for design and pursued it with a post-graduation in Communication Design from DAIICT, Gandhinagar. With strong design ethos, he believes that learning should be interesting, interactive and fun. He describes himself as an auto-didact who enjoys intellectual freedom and cross-disciplinary environments, and is in endless pursuit of knowledge. He gives more weightage to culturally-driven designs against technologically-driven designs. For him, design is omnipresent.

His skill set is an amalgamation of graphic design, animation and interaction design. His current areas of interest in academics are typography, branding, sequential storytelling, UI/UX, design research, visual semiotics and visual culture.

Smit Shah

Bachelor’s in Animation Design, GLS Institute of Design Ahmedabad

He's a visual storyteller who served as a visual designer at Knownsense Studio in Ahmedabad. His proficiency lies in crafting and strategizing visuals for projection mapping and new media presentations. He excels at experimenting with diverse mediums and styles, with a keen focus on exploring the complex dynamics among characters, objects, objectives, and living entities.

Prarthin Bhatt

Prarthin Bhatt is an illustrator and concept artist whose work explores imaginative worlds, character-driven storytelling, environments, props, storyboards, key moments, and animation-focused visual development. His portfolio reflects a strong interest in bringing cinematic ideas and otherworldly scenes to life through digital painting, design, and short-form visual narratives.

With experience across illustration, character design, environment design, storyboarding, and animation projects, Prarthin demonstrates a thoughtful approach to visual storytelling and creative world-building. His work combines strong visual imagination with an understanding of mood, composition, narrative, and atmosphere, allowing him to develop concepts that feel both visually engaging and emotionally expressive.

Through his creative practice, Prarthin continues to explore how images can communicate stories, build immersive settings, and shape memorable characters. His portfolio highlights a developing artistic voice rooted in curiosity, experimentation, and a passion for transforming ideas into compelling visual experiences.

Skills: Digital Illustration, Concept Art, Character Design, Environment Design, Prop Design, Storyboarding, Visual Development, Keyframe Illustration, Composition, World-Building, Narrative Design, Digital Painting, Animation-Focused Design, Cinematic Storytelling, Mood and Atmosphere Development.

Aqib sheikh

Prof. Aqib M. Shaikh Faculty

Aqib Shaikh is a faculty in the Communication Design discipline at GLSID since 2018. He has done his Bachelors in Fine Arts (Applied Art) from B.A. Mehta Kala Maha Vidyalaya, Amalsad and Post Graduation in Illustration (AppliedArt) from Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. He has worked in various positions like Illustrator, Graphic Designer and Animator at The Creative Voyage, DAP Designing and Flying-Whale Animation Studio. Aqib has got a combined professional experience of 2 years in the Design Industry.

He has participated in Painting Group Exhibition called “Anahita” at Gufa in Ahmedabad, 2014, He has won the Jeram Patel Award Applied Art Department (Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University) 2014, Best Realistic Portrait Award at Gujarat Kala Pratishthan Exhibition, 2014, Best Landscape Award at Gujarat Kala Pratishthan Workshop, 2013, Landscape Award at Gujarat Kala Pratishthan Exhibition, 2013, Jerup Intercollege Award 2011 and Best Sketching at Jasubhai Naik Foundation Award, 2011. Aqib has the right skillset to deal with both traditional and technological domains.

Skills & Interest:

Quick sketching, Human drawing (Portrait, Anatomy, Gesture drawing), Nature drawing (Landscape, Cityscape, Detail subject), Perspective drawing, Analytical drawing, Illustration, Character Design, Storyboard, Sculpting, Calligraphy, Graffiti and Painting.

Mimicry, Listening Music & Song (he sings), Camping, Traveling, Learning about new Softwares and Exploring Art Mediums and Materials.

Mukhtiyar Shaikh

Mukhtiyar Hussein Shaikh has done a Master of Design in Industrial Design from National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad. He is currently pursuing Ph.D. on Impact of digital games on Human Behavior. In his academic journey, his major project ‘Facilitating learning through multisensory experience’ has been recognized and published in NID’s Design research magazine ‘The Trellis’ and Times of India.

He has 9 years of collective professional experience in Education and Industry. He has done 2 years of Faculty Development Programme (FDP) from National Institute of Design (NID). He has worked with reputed design organization for 4 years across the country. While working in the industry, he has worked on a varied range of projects of product design, digital game design, toy design and application design. He has also conducted many design workshops and contributed to create design awareness in the Indian Industry and Craft clusters, under various projects supported by Design Clinic Scheme, Government of India, and National Institute of Design. For last 5 years, he has been working in the field of Design education. He has worked for creating and developing a new curriculum for product design, digital game design and foundation studies at GLSID - GLS university, National Institute of Design, Swarnim Startup & Innovation University and Ramuji Krian Universe.

His main areas of academic and research interests are Form studies, Workshop skills, CMF (Color Material and Finish), Ergonomics, Materials and Process, Material Exploration, Design Thinking, Design Process, Simple Product Design, System Design, Geometric Construction, Analytical Drawing and Monograph.

At GLS Institute of Design, he teaches in Product Design department and is responsible for developing GLSID Bamboo Centre for Tripura craft cluster. he also works as Design Expert for GLSID Design Consultancy projects. He is interested in Product design, Digital game design, Toy design and Furniture design for working on professional design project.