Nikhil Misra

Spring Show 2026! Proud to be featured alongside such amazing artists and artwork and honored with awards in 2D layout design, Character Design, and Color Script. Means a lot being recognized by fellow artists and seeing that sort of progress marker. Congrats to everyone in the show! 🙌🏽

Each of these selections and more are displayed in full on the gallery show site which I’ll link to in my profile bio and story post.

Most of this art, including the digital color script and traditionally painted wood version, was created for my thesis story project ‘Adrift’. Looking forward to sharing more of that visual development process 🌱

Thanks so much to and for this amazing opportunity! Honored to contribute to such an inspiring show. Hope you enjoy seeing the evolution of these illustrations and if you’d like more of the step-by-step development process in a larger desktop view, check out the project page on my website nikhilsanimation.com and please feel free to share!

I designed this Saraswati character (goddess of music, learning, and art) to express the feeling of song and dance with a more rhythmic approach than her traditional depictions. She’s often portrayed in a white sari, seated on a white lotus, accompanied by a swan or peacock, with four hands playing the veena and holding symbolic items. This contemporary Saraswati design incorporates those character icons with other select symbols of the arts in a dynamic pose and curvilinear art style (inspired by Albert Hirschfeld) to create a playful piece that’s hopefully novel but familiar.

Character design for my story project! Line, shadow, occlusion, local color, and rendering. Every day is

Background design inspired by the Festival of Lights 🪔 drawn and painted by hand. Happy Diwali!