Awais Shaukat

Awais Shaukat — Pakistani Illustrator, Animator & Film Director Awais Shaukat is an illustrator, cartoonist, animator, and painter born on June 11, 2004, in Bhawana, Pakistan. From an early age, he loved making up his world and dreams with paper and pencils, a passion that has never left him. In 2019, at just 14, Awais began his journey into digital art, quickly becoming a significant figure in Pakistan's creative industry. He completed his schooling at Punjab International Public High School and then attended Chenab College Jhang for high school. His professional period began when he moved to Lahore and joined Fine Arts at the National College of Arts in 2023. Awais founded **PakistaniArt**, the country's first art magazine, and **Awartsy**, a film production company, together with his elder brother Rafhan Shaukat. Founded in 2020, the PakistaniArt platform originated as a digital Instagram community and is now evolving into Pakistan's first independent print and digital art magazine. In a historic milestone for the country's creative sector, PakistaniArt became the first Pakistani startup nominated for the Global Startup Awards (GSA) in the "Startup of the Year" category for the Central Asia region. His most notable work, *Under the Blaze*, is a hand-drawn animated film addressing child labor in Pakistan's brick kiln industry, blending traditional 2D animation with modern digital techniques. He is currently directing this short-length film, which is expected to be released this year. The film has garnered significant media attention, with features on major Pakistani news outlets including Aaj News, Samaa TV, Express Tribune, BOL News, and Dunya News. He made history as the first Pakistani to be ranked among Crunchbase's top 50 profiles out of 2 million global entries, securing the 24th position in September 2024.

Founder & Editor-in-Chief

Founder & Editor-in-Chief

Awais Shaukat is a painter, digital illustrator, and animator dedicated to documenting and championing Pakistan's cultural landscape. He is the founder of PakistaniArt, the nation’s premier independent publication and directory designed to catalog domestic creativity and project it onto the global stage. The company was nominated for The Global Startup Awards in 2025.
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More from Awais Shaukat

ArtJUL 22, 2026

Why the Internet Thinks Every Painting Is a Crime Scene and the Truth Is Stranger

Awais Shaukat
An ornate and visually striking duotone graphic is presented in a bold palette of bright orange and vibrant teal, arranged with a dynamic composition that features four classical artworks tilted at various angles across a flat teal background. The entire image is layered with a distinct halftone dot pattern, simulating a vintage screen-printed or comic-book matrix texture that unifies the classical subjects with a modern, pop-art aesthetic. In the upper-left quadrant, a horizontally oriented, rectangular ornate frame encloses a rendition of Claude Monet’s Water Lilies, capturing the dappled light and impressionistic textures of a pond surface. Positioned in the lower-left area is an iconic portrait of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, framed in a heavily detailed border, her famous enigmatic smile and serene posture clearly identifiable despite the stylized monochromatic rendering. Moving to the lower right, a large rectangular frame showcases Vincent van Gogh’s Almond Blossoms, where the intricate, twisting branches and delicate floral buds extend across the space in a Japanese-woodblock-inspired composition. In the upper-right section, oriented completely upside down, is a framed portrait showcasing a closely cropped human face with prominent features, reminiscent of a surrealist figure or a classical portrait inverted for a disorienting, contemporary twist. Each of these four paintings—along with their highly decorative, Baroque-style frames containing scrolls, filigree, and corner moldings—is rendered in a single, saturated shade of orange, creating an intense, complementary color contrast against the smooth, solid teal field that fills the negative space. Image copyright to "Awais Shaukat for PakistaniArt".
AnimationJUL 21, 2026

Why 'Ainak Wala Jin' The Movie Is Dividing Pakistani Cinema

Awais Shaukat
The nostalgic 90s classic Ainak Wala Jin has officially crossed into the future with Asia's first AI-generated feature-length movie, releasing nationwide in Pakistani cinemas on July 24, 2026. Produced and directed by Farhan Khan, this groundbreaking 85-minute animated family adventure has been built entirely through advanced artificial intelligence tools to lower production costs while maintaining stunning, fast-paced digital visuals. The hype around this AI transformation initially ignited through a highly popular digital tribute series created by the content platform Reelwind. Reelwind began releasing episodic AI-animated shorts on YouTube and Instagram to honor the classic PTV characters, which generated viral nostalgia and paved the way for this cinematic breakthrough. The full-length theatrical film centers around a young boy navigating a rigid human world of rules until his eccentric, visually impaired neighbor—the gentle genie Nastoor—opens a magical portal into the mythical realm of Koh-e-Qaf. Iconic legacy characters like the hilarious Zakoota Jin, the mischievous Bil Batori, and the wicked sorcerer Hamoon Jadoogar have all been visually reimagined for a new generation through generative AI. Blending childhood nostalgia with next-gen automated animation technology, the film represents a historic, albeit polarizing, shift for Pakistan's digital film industry.
NewsJUL 20, 2026

PakistaniArt Launches Official Publication Website

Awais Shaukat
PakistaniArt (pakistaniart.pk) is Pakistan’s first independent art and culture digital publication and online magazine, serving as a dedicated platform for documenting, reviewing, and celebrating Pakistani creative life. The platform was originally launched by Pakistani painter and animator Awais Shaukat in October 2020 as a digital art community on Instagram to showcase local talent before officially transitioning into a full-fledged art magazine on June 11, 2023. It quickly gained international prominence for its unique focus and was nominated for an international startup award. According to its official About PakistaniArt page, the publication bridges the gap between traditional practices and modern expressions by covering several cultural categories, including visual arts, film, music, fashion, architecture, and design. Content on the platform covers everything from ancient miniature painting traditions to contemporary digital art, street art, photography, calligraphy, and sculpture. The magazine specifically tracks Pakistani creative talent working both domestically and internationally, including large diaspora communities in the UK, US, Canada, and the Gulf states, providing editorial value through news updates, deep features, exhibition reviews, and profiles on individual creators. By providing critical discourse and a centralized directory, it serves as an archival hub for Pakistan's evolving contemporary art scene. The publication acts as a bridge connecting local gallery spaces with global collectors, curators, and institutions who are looking to discover authentic Pakistani talent. Through its curated features, it highlights how artists blend South Asian heritage with contemporary global themes like climate change, identity, and rapid urbanization. Today, it stands as one of the most comprehensive digital resources for understanding the breadth and depth of artistic expression emerging from Pakistan and its global diaspora.
ArtJUL 16, 2026

Why TikTok Keeps Flagging Art and What It Means for Artists Online

Awais Shaukat
TikTok is a globally dominant short-form video hosting service owned by the Chinese technology firm ByteDance that has revolutionized modern social media, entertainment, and digital culture through its highly sophisticated, behavior-driven recommendation algorithm. The platform delivers an endless, hyper-personalized feed of user-generated content—spanning micro-comedy, dance trends, educational tutorials, and musical challenges—primarily centered around its iconic "For You" page (FYP). Beyond casual content creation and real-time community engagement via TikTok LIVE, the application has evolved into a massive economic ecosystem; it empowers creators through specialized analytics suites like TikTok Studio, drives corporate marketing campaigns via TikTok for Business, and integrates direct social commerce through TikTok Shop, which allows merchants to sell products seamlessly within videos.
OpinionJUL 14, 2026

How to Get Admission at NCA in 2026, From Someone Who Made It

Awais Shaukat
The National College of Arts (NCA) Lahore stands as Pakistan's premier, federally chartered public art university and the second-oldest art institution in South Asia. Founded in 1875 as the Mayo School of Industrial Arts to safeguard and document regional craftsmanship under the British Raj, the institution's pedagogical roots were deeply influenced by the global Arts and Crafts Movement. Its inaugural principal, British artist and curator John Lockwood Kipling, established a curriculum that uniquely fused traditional Punjabi and Mughal craft techniques with European perspective-drawing methods. This design-and-craft ethos crystallized architecturally in the college's historic campus on Mall Road. Designed by the pioneering master builder Bhai Ram Singh and constructed by the legendary engineer Sir Ganga Ram, the iconic campus features red-brick, Indo-Saracenic facades, protective verandas, structural arches, and ornamental chatris. The historic Kipling Block, whose foundation stone was laid in 1880, serves as a physical anchor directly adjacent to the Lahore Museum, which was originally curated alongside the school to provide students with raw reference material.Following Pakistan's independence, the facility underwent a radical modernization in 1958 under the guidance of its first Pakistani principal, Mian Barkat Ali. Restructured into the National College of Arts, the university successfully decolonized its curriculum by importing global design methodologies and integrating experimental, non-conformist practices. Today, the institution organizes its academic scaffolding across the faculties of Art, Design, Architecture, Film & Television, and Performing Arts. It accommodates diverse specializations ranging from traditional Miniature Painting and Ceramic Design to contemporary Musicology and Visual Communication Design. Entrance is exceptionally competitive, drawing talent nationwide via a strict, multi-tiered provincial quota system, written testing, and rigorous live drawing examinations. This immersive, studio-centric cultural melting pot has birthed generations of visionary changemakers. Its alumni include modern art pioneers like Zahoor ul Akhlaq and Salima Hashmi, alongside prominent contemporary cultural icons like Ali Zafar and Ayesha Omar. Expanding its national reach, NCA also hosts specialized satellite campuses—including its Rawalpindi Campus and the newly inaugurated Gilgit-Baltistan Campus—solidifying its role as a monumental pillar of artistic scholarship, creative freedom, and cultural preservation across the region.
FeaturesJUN 21, 2026

Where the Lagoon Holds Its Breath and the Art World Holds Its Nerve

Awais Shaukat
The monumental sculpture shown is "Support" (2017) by contemporary Italian artist Lorenzo Quinn. This detailed photograph captures a large-scale public art installation in Venice, featuring two massive, white, child-like hands emerging from the deep green waters of the Grand Canal. The hands are positioned as if they are literally supporting and bracing the historic, salmon-colored facade of the Ca' Sagredo Hotel. One hand grips the corner of the ornate building while the other reaches up against its side, set against a backdrop of sunlit Venetian architecture and traditional wooden mooring poles lining the canal.
ArtJUN 19, 2026

"The Condition" Meets the Street Between Two Worlds at Art Basel 2026

Awais Shaukat
The image features a large-scale sculptural installation by artist Nairy Baghramian titled Modèle vivant (S’empilant) (2026), which is currently situated in the Messeplatz fountain in front of the Messe Basel exhibition hall in Switzerland.
ArtJUN 12, 2026

David Hockney's Death Reframes the Aching Stillness of "A Bigger Splash"

Awais Shaukat
A wide, eye-level shot captures British artist David Hockney standing to the right of his famous large-scale pop art painting, A Bigger Splash (1967), which is mounted on a plain white gallery wall. The painting itself takes up the majority of the left and center portions of the frame. It depicts a modernist, flat-roofed house with floor-to-ceiling glass windows under a bright, clear blue sky, flanked by two tall, thin palm trees. In the foreground, a yellow diving board extends from the bottom right into a swimming pool of turquoise water, where a massive, chaotic splash of white and light blue water erupts, indicating someone has just dived in. The entire painting is bordered by a wide, unpainted canvas margin. To the right, David Hockney stands in a three-quarter view, looking slightly past the camera to the left. He is an elderly man with glasses, wearing a dark navy blazer, a black and white houndstooth scarf draped around his neck, and a matching houndstooth flat cap. His hands are tucked into his pockets, and his expression is neutral and contemplative. The lighting is soft and even, typical of a gallery setting, casting subtle shadows behind him.

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