DIVYESH
SANGANI
divsang
I am Divyesh Sangani, a 27-year-old animator currently based in Los Angeles. As a kid, I was always into creative stuff. I was obsessed with drawing, painting, and creating things out of nothing. To be honest, it gave me a different kind of high when I made people smile through my work. I kind of always knew I wanted to be part of the creative industry.
The road to becoming an animator took me through the techno-town called engineering. Coming from a family of engineers, I was somewhat pressured into pursuing an engineering degree instead of an art degree. I took it on rebelliously, but with a promise to myself that I would parallelly follow my dream of becoming an animator. I freelanced, interned, and took on graphic design and animation projects on the side, but I was still only 18 years old. My professional approach was very casual, and my response to small projects going wrong was usually that the client was paying too little for the work.
After graduating at the age of 21, I was hired full-time at a small animation studio, Bakarmax Pvt. Ltd., as an animator. I worked on animated commercials for popular brands, made comics, and helped produce short film projects. We were a small team, so I got to wear many hats. I even made an appearance on Shark Tank India Season 1 as a co-contestant along with Bakarmax founder Sumit Kumar. I was involved in planning and managing the pitch. While we didn’t receive funding, the feedback helped us immensely and nearly doubled our reach and audience. Later, we ran a successful Kickstarter campaign where we raised money to produce our own animated show, resulting in a 15-minute pilot episode. Although we weren’t able to get it greenlit by any major studios, we gained a lot of valuable experience from the process.
This whole journey made me realize that I wanted to tell my own stories and make my own films. In 2024, at the age of 26, I was accepted into the MFA Animation program at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). I have made two short films in my first year here and am on track to make another one this year.
My first film was a short gag piece made entirely on paper and then watercolored. My second film, Sherwani, was a longer six-month project, a 4.5-minute political satire set in a jungle. The film revolves around the animals protesting against their leader, the lion “Sher.” I used it to comment on propaganda, politics, and media manipulation. I’m hoping it gets its due time on big screens at animation film festivals.
My current film is a 2D animated comedy about a ghost waiting in line to get into heaven. The only catch is that there’s a 400-year waitlist because the angels are too lazy to clear paperwork. Fingers crossed I finish the film this year!
"and then what happened..."
Artist Statement
I’ve always wanted to make people laugh. It’s been a constant throughout my life. I was the funny kid who could get a whole room giggling. Now, at 27, I’ve come to understand that humor was once a coping mechanism, a way to distract myself from my own feelings. That impulse is what first led me into storytelling. But with time, I realized that making people laugh isn’t just a shield, it’s something I genuinely love to do.
I want to be the reason someone smiles. Over the years, I’ve created absurd comics and offbeat short films that lean fully into humor. At UCLA, I’ve learned how comedy can carry weight, that you can make people laugh and still deliver something meaningful. My first-year film Sherwani did exactly that. It was a comedy at its core, but one that also examines propaganda in government and media. Humor has always been the heart of my work, and it will continue to guide the stories I tell.
