10 Free Behance and ArtStation Profiles Every Indian Animator Should Study

If you are an animation student staring at a blank Maya viewport at 11 PM, the fastest fix is not another tutorial — it is studying real, finished work. Spending thirty focused minutes a day on the best Indian animators Behance ArtStation has to offer will reshape your eye, your shot composition and your reel within a single semester.

This piece is a curated, fluff-free tour of ten free profiles that consistently teach craft. We have grouped them by what they are strongest at, so you can pick the lessons you need this week.

Why study Indian artist portfolios specifically?

Global reels are gorgeous, but they are also expensive, team-made and culturally distant. Indian artist portfolios solve three problems at once: they reflect the pipeline tools studios here actually use, they show budgets a junior artist can realistically work within, and they reveal how desi storytelling — weddings, festivals, mythology, street life — translates into world-class frames.

At our Mira Road campus we ask every first-year to maintain a "study folder" of bookmarked portfolios. The students who do this religiously almost always graduate with stronger demo reels than those who only consume YouTube.

How to study a portfolio (not just scroll it)

Before the list, a quick method. For each profile below, do this in order:

1. Watch the reel once, full screen, without pausing.
2. Watch it again and pause on five frames you wish you had drawn.
3. Note the camera lens, the silhouette, and the colour script.
4. Find one project case study and read the breakdown text.
5. Reverse-engineer one shot in your own software for practice.

If you cannot finish step five in a weekend, the shot is teaching you something. Stay with it.

Profiles for character animation and acting

1. Gobind Roy — Behance

Gobind is a Mumbai-based 2D animator whose Behance is a masterclass in weight, anticipation and squash-stretch on Indian character archetypes — autorickshaw drivers, dabbawalas, cricket fans. Study his timing charts and the way he stages a comedic beat in just twelve drawings.

2. Charuvi Agrawal — Behance

Charuvi's "Hanuman Chalisa" work is legendary, and the project breakdowns on her Behance still hold up as a study of texture, scale and devotional pacing. If you want to learn how to animate a god without making it look like a video game cutscene, start here.

3. Suresh Eriyat — ArtStation and Behance

The founder of Studio Eeksaurus posts curated stills and process notes from films like "Tokri" and "Fisherwoman & Tuk-Tuk". You will learn more about storyboarding restraint from one Eriyat case study than from a month of generic Pinterest scrolling.

Profiles for 3D, VFX and look development

4. Raghav K.K. — ArtStation

Raghav's lookdev work blends Indian palettes with PBR realism. His texture flats and the breakdowns of how a sari fold catches subsurface light are an instant lesson for anyone in a 3D animation programme who keeps producing plastic-looking characters.

5. Ishan Manjrekar — ArtStation

Ishan's environment art moves from chawl interiors to dense jungle camps, and every project ships with a clean breakdown of base mesh, sculpt, retopo and final shader. Great for FX and environment students who want to see how senior artists organise their files.

6. Sajal Tewari — ArtStation

Sajal is a creature and character sculptor whose ZBrush studies are a free university for anatomy. Indian animators tend to weaken on anatomy because life drawing is rarely prioritised — Sajal's profile is a corrective.

Profiles for motion design and stylised animation

7. Hashim Badani / Studio Kohl — Behance

Studio Kohl's mograph reels are tight, punchy and very brand-aware — exactly the kind of work Mumbai agencies pay juniors ₹3–5 LPA to deliver. Notice how they keep palettes to three colours, lean on typography, and let one bold shape do the heavy lifting.

8. Aaryama Somayaji — Behance

Aaryama's editorial illustration and short loops are a study in restraint and palette. Indian animators who want to break into OTT promo work, festival branding or political graphics on news channels should keep her profile on speed dial.

9. Plexus Studios — Behance

A Bengaluru-based studio whose Behance presents complete pipelines — from script to storyboard to final 3D explainer. Brilliant for students who want to understand how an idea becomes a billable deliverable.

Profiles for storytelling, comics and pre-production

10. Abhishek Singh — ArtStation

Abhishek's mythological art is internationally celebrated, and his ArtStation is a deep archive of pencil studies, colour roughs and final paintings. If you want to design pitch bibles for Indian streamers, his composition logic is the standard to aim for.

What to take away from each profile

Studying inspiration animators without a framework just turns into doomscrolling. Use this checklist every time you open one of the profiles above:

• Silhouette: Can you read the pose from across the room?
• Staging: What is the camera deliberately hiding?
• Palette: How many true colours are on screen, and which one carries the emotion?
• Timing: Where does the artist hold a frame, and where do they cut on action?
• Texture restraint: Where is detail concentrated, and where is it deliberately empty?

Most Indian portfolios you will compete against on a job application fail on at least two of these five. If yours nails four, you are already in the top tier of fresher reels in the Mumbai market.

How we use these portfolios at Storyboard

At Storyboard VFX & Animation Institute in Mira Road East, faculty members map each of the fourteen disciplines we teach to public reference artists like the ones above. A 2D student might be assigned to deconstruct one Charuvi sequence; a VFX student might be asked to match-lookdev one of Raghav's textures inside Substance Painter on campus.

Because we are on-campus only, mentors actually sit beside you while you study these references — pausing the timeline, pointing at the frame, asking why the artist made that exact choice. That is the difference between watching a portfolio and learning from it. Students from Mira Bhayandar, Bhayandar, Dahisar, Borivali, Kandivali, Malad and Thane drop into our showcase wall every week to compare their own work to the references we curate.

A simple 30-day study plan

Pick three profiles from the list and run this cycle:

1. Week 1: Watch every project once. Bookmark five frames per artist.
2. Week 2: Recreate one frame from each artist in your own software. No tracing — only structural copy.
3. Week 3: Animate one new shot inspired by, but not copying, what you learned. Three to five seconds is enough.
4. Week 4: Post the shot. Add it to your own Behance or ArtStation with a short breakdown text explaining what the reference taught you.

By the end of the month you will have three new portfolio pieces, a public profile that recruiters can actually find, and — more importantly — a trained eye. Repeat the cycle each month with three new artists from the blog recommendations we publish regularly.

Closing thoughts

The best Indian animators Behance ArtStation profiles do not just exist to be admired — they exist to be reverse-engineered. Treat each project page as a free studio internship and you will compound faster than ninety percent of your batchmates.

If you would like a mentor to walk you through these references in person and map them to a structured course plan, talk to Storyboard admissions. Call 091521 55527 or visit our contact page and we will set up a campus tour at the Mira Road studio this week.