Vishav Arora is a homegrown visual storyteller who creates digital animated shorts that are as whimsical as they are delightful. We caught up with him to learn more about 'Project Heart'.

Tell us about Project Heart.

I started a series called Project Heart two years ago and challenged myself to post animated shorts about different kinds of love every day till Valentine's Day. The concept was to embrace different kinds of love.

I wanted to convey a message that Valentine's Day should not just be celebrated as love between two people but it should be more than that. Two years ago I made 7-8 animated shorts on different kinds of love and put them under name 'PROJECT HEART'. This year, I wanted to make it even bigger, so i opened up the project to people for collaboration. I got 30-40 people who wanted to work on it as they had their own love for certain things they wanted to embrace. Due to time constraints, I was only able to collab with 12 artists in which they illustrate the concept and I animate it or vice versa.

My plans for this series is to make it even bigger by making this an every year thing and promoting it on bigger platforms. I have been in contact with influencers and popular artists who want to collaborate on this series over the rest of the year.

Could you tell us a little about your creative process?

My creative process is all about experimenting and morphing different art styles. I am constantly trying out different art styles and working with people across various forms of media to bring out something new and creative. Recently, I have been experimenting a lot with mixed media. You can see this in one of my shorts, 'Love For Eyes', where I showcased the emotions and feelings that eyes can convey. My creative process is all about experimenting, morphing art styles, and taking inspiration from my favourite artists while trying to make something similar that I can put my own stamp on.

Who are some artist that inspire you?

Alberto Mielgo, Ben Marriot and my mum, of course!

What did this project teach you?

The three main things which I learned while working on this project heart were:

1. Working on tight deadlines does not affect quality but increases your ability to think in new and creative ways to achieve quality.

2. Experimenting with new art-styles and mix media is what scares me a lot, but because of this series, I forced myself to create a lot of experimental animations which built my confidence.

3. Creating proper pipelines and structures for personal projects is very hard as it needs a lot of time and effort but this helped me get used to the process.

Who are some artists who've shaped your work?

Jishnu chatterjee, Mehr Chatterjee, and Jake.

Is there a project that you want to be a part of in the future?

I mostly try to include myself in fun projects I come across but due to my job its hard to keep up. Motion Mondays is a project that is very popular and I want to be a part of it but because of the time and effort required, I am unable to for now. But I'm definitely gonna do it in the future.

You can follow Vishav here.

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