كلاكيش: 2011

Tabadol - Mar2it Tari2

During the month of November, I met 10 amazing artists from France and Lebanon.

At the beginning of the project, I knew only one of them but i ended up having 10 friends: Angela, Raghda, Maryam, Dana, Azza, Brice, Clemence, Jeanne, Dianne and Ronan.

The project is called "Mar2it Tari2" and the association behing it is Tabadol. This is their second project between Lebanon and France, and this year the theme was "street".

In this workshop, there s no leader; everyone is here to exchange their knowledge and each idea is a potential project. So we spent the first two weeks doing workshops, each one in his domain, and we did a lot of applications as well based on what we learned. I suggested to the group the stop motion technique, and working with artists from different disciplines made me explore a lot this technique. We used to shoot every day for an hour or two, a short stop motion with no story line; we explore the streets, we find a spot and we do it !

I don't mid now spending an hour a day doing this because it s just like a therapy :)

here is the result of all the scenes we shot during the month of November.

The movie was part of a show we did for 2 days in Beirut. "Mar2it Tari2" was not a play, nor a dance show; it was a parade in the streets of Hamra, Beirut where the audience walks and explore the city from a different perspective and spirit. This was seriously dreamy, surreal specially with the great audience we had. This video edited by Jeanne Robert, document what happened during two days in Beirut !

I took some photos of the show so u can enjoy few moments that i will never forget !

Dianne, Jeanne, 2 books and a sofa surrounded by cars, police and the audience.

"memory" was the key of this moment that happened in the middle of a construction area.

Les Bouffons, a married couple, lead the audience around the different locations where the show happens, and we blocked the streets so the audience can cross, and we painted some additional pedestrians passage. I hope we can keep them and make cars respect them one day !

Songs and music in a garage :)

shows around "Consommation" in a parking ...

the beautiful audience with whom we shared some videos at the end of the parade. Thanks everyone for being here and i hope this post will transmit a bit of what happened for all of you,

learning about Tabadol for the first time :) You can check other photos from "Tabadol" on this link: http://www.behance.net/gallery/TABADOL-2011/2649645

Now we will continue this project in Lyon, France in February 2012. I m so excited to discover this city and to work again with the great team and will keep you posted what will happen in Lyon :)

Mixy - Cardboard Illustration

This is not very recent but it s never too late to share it :)

I collaborated with the cute and sexy art director Petra Abousleiman on this AD directed by the one Amin Dora and we spent a week of preparations full of colors, food and a bit of stress !

The mission was to design the set imaginary elements and to illustrate them on cardboards.

We used markers to define the contour stroke and acrylics to fill in with colors. The surfaces were big since all the models are real scale relative to the actors.

The following are some final illustrations that we used in the actual shooting of the AD.

the best part for me was to design a car for the kid, the hero in the AD.

We used a real car, and covered the body with cardboards with a design twist, cut it into pieces

and drew on each one apart.

Later we fixed all the cardboard pieces on the actual car in the very early morning before the shooting starts.

here is the original car :)

This job was really fun and it s all because of the amazing working team.

Thanks a lot to Issa Kandil, Ashley Choukeir, Houssam Kanj, Sahar Malek and Petra Abousleiman :)

Marcedes - Poster

Marcedes, is the new film for Hady Zaccak.

I am a fan of Hady's documentaries and i m lucky to work on this one.

I designed the poster and the opening title that i animated along with Ashley Choukeir.

Marcedes is the story of a car, the story of a family and the story of a country. Therefore, the poster visual must reflect those elements so we decided to create a postage stamp for Mercedes, the car so it becomes an icon in the history of Lebanon.

This is one of the most exciting tasks i've ever worked on, and i hope one day, i ll be able to design some stamps for real :)

Here is the final poster that is now printed in 4 different colors like any other stamp.

I added some photos of the prints, and a photo of the lovely Hady Zaccak :)

Marcedes world premiere will be in Dubai International Film Festival, December 9th.

For more info, check this link

A Place To Go

A place to go is a short movie directed by Wajdi Elian.

The genre of this short is psychodrama mixed with animation, and i was lucky to work on the animated part of this movie that was full of challenging tasks. The main 2 characters of the movie are Ziad & the cat. Ziad was shot in real footage and the cat in stop motion in a real environment, different from the usual Stop motion set; we had no wooden board elevated from the ground to fix the cat, so we had to research another technique to control the contact of the cat with the ground of the set.

Nadim Saoma, a great DOP and friend was working with me to find a solution to fix the legs to the ground and we finally decided to work with magnets and metals, so we had magnet legs for the cat and a metal ground for the set covered with a very thin moquette. The technique worked very well but we had few issues with finding the right magnets, and later having sticky hands and legs in some positions of the cat.

All this came after creating the actual puppet which was not an easy task. I had to create a puppet that will appear in most of the movie, so it has to be flexible in order to perform all the requested acts. therefore, we had to design a strong armature to handle all these tasks and movements. We had the choice of ordering a cat armature from abroad since we don't have armature here in Lebanon, but i wanted a customized armature to fit the design of the cat.

So we decided to do everything in Lebanon and we designed the armature, prepared the technical drawings and asked people working with metal to execute the designed pieces and the result was super satisfying. We were extremely happy to achieve this quality of armature here in Lebanon with the help of many people. We tested the armature after connecting all the parts into one armature, and we shot a very short video of the armature moving.

Later, I covered the armature with a fabric that suits the cat fur and i had to paint it in light grey to avoid overexposed parts of the final image as requested from the DOP Bassem Fayyad.

Here are some photos from the shooting and a video of the armature test.

We had as well outdoor shoots and this was a crazy process, as we stayed till 4 am in the morning shooting and animating and avoiding the cars' light reflection.

This was indeed an amazingly beautiful experience that i m ready to repeat specially with the amazing crew that surrounded me with all the beautiful energy to be able to finish the animation in 10 intensive days.

Thanks everyone and all the best Wajdi with the movie :)

Here are some shots of the film and hope you will have the chance to watch it in the film festivals.

Mar2it Tari2 - Invitation

After three weeks of workshops and street life, i would love to share with you the outcome of the project TABADOL. The event will happen this thursday and friday in zico house at 8 pm.

Check the attached invitation to know more about the project.

See you ... :)

Animate 11 - Creative Lab Interview

and here is a sexy report about my presentation with Ashley Choukeir in Animate 11.

A big thanks for the creative lab :)

Lungs

to Reem ...

EFL competition - Audience Prize

And i won the audience prize in the EFL competition :) Thanks for all the amazing people who supported me, and voted till the last minute of the competition ! :)

Nature clash at the border line

A week ago i went for a road trip to the south of Lebanon. It was my first visit to the south and all happened after the imagination studio, a workshop created by Joanna Choukeir. check this video that describes more her project.

The three days trip was full of surprises; i was amazed that we have such beauty in our country. The landscapes, the nature, the sea, the people are still so fresh and vibrant. It s so sad that we rarely visit the beautiful south, but i m definitely going back soon !

Another sad thing i encountered was the clash of nature on the border line with the occupied land. Same land but different nature ! One the right, the lebanese part and the left is the israeli part. Lebanese farmers aren't allowed so close to the line due to the buffer zone.

These photos are now part of EFL competition, so if you like the project , please vote for me by pressing the green heart on this page :

http://therefordesign.net/EFL/contest/submission.php?id=49

Thank you :)

Animate 11 - Photos

Last week, I was invited to Dubai to participate in Animate 11, a full day event organized by Wamda that gathered entrepreneurs, animators and illustrators coming from the arab world. The event started in the morning in a beautiful venue, The Pavillion Downtown Dubai, where i met again some friends from past workshops and book fairs.

The schedule included a group of lectures to discuss four main points :

- How can animation truly inspire, empower and connect the region

- What can media platform do to better support Animation

- How can animators support each other

- What can the Arab animation industry learn from the practices in the rest of the world

The main panel featured representers of Google, Yahoo, Freej, MBC and Wamda.

The event focused as well on creative showcases to feature a selection of the best arab animators and animation projects.

Ashley Choukeir and I were lucky to be one of the presenters where we shard our experience with an amazing audience that kept us motivated to talk for more than an hour and a half about our project and experience in the field.

Thanks for all your beautiful energy :)

I hope we will have the chance in the future to share more our work hoping to inspire someone ...

TEDx Beirut Sketches

TEDx Beirut was happening yesterday, and it was a great day ! I was asked to do live sketches for the talks on set. That was not easy; but the inspiring talks made the whole process faster than i expected. I had to chose only one idea per talk or else, I would have illustrated the whole day. Now enjoy the Sketches, Check TEDx Beirut great website designed by ThereforeDesign and their Blog :)