Shilpa Ranade

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Shilpa Ranade (born 1966) is an Indian designer, animator, illustrator, filmmaker and academic. Since 2001 she has taught at IIT Bombay’s Industrial Design Centre, where she helped start the centre’s first degree program in animation. She has made animated short films for Channel 4 (UK) and her work has been shown worldwide, earning several awards.

Her feature Goopi Gawaiya Bagha Bajaiya (2013) is an adaptation of a 1915 children's story about two musician friends. It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and has been shown at festivals in Busan, MAMI, DIFF, NYICFF and more. Other films include Mani's Dying and Naja Goes to School.

As a child, she loved drawing. She studied at Sir J.J. Institute of Applied Art (Illustration and Video) and then Visual Communication at IIT Bombay, earning a Master in Design in 1989. She later completed an MPhil in Animation at the Royal College of Art in London; her thesis was on Indigenous Images and Narratives for Socially Relevant Animation.

At IIT Bombay she set up the animation degree program and its first cohort graduated in 2006. She has illustrated many children’s books for Scholastic, Eklavya, Pratham and Karadi Tales. Her curatorial projects include Plant Life (children’s drawings and writing about plants) and Child Farmers (the lives of children whose fathers died in farmer suicides in Vidarbha). She is a founding member of Damroo, a group that creates content for children.

Awards include Best Professional Animated Feature Film (2013), ASIFA India Animation Award (2013), The WIFTS Foundation International Visionary Award for Best Indian Animated Feature Film (2014) and recognition at FICCI BAF Awards.