كلاكيش: animation

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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 :)

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.

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 :)

Animate 11 - Lecture

Wamda will be hosting an energy-filled gathering in Dubai that Inspires, Empowers and Connects the region's best animation talent. "CoE Animate 11" will bring together animators and illustrators and connect the investor community to the top Arab creative talent.

Ashley Choukeir and I will be giving a lecture on September 22nd at 2 pm so hope you can attend :) See you .....

Freez - Refresh, Restart.

and here is the first AD i direct that includes real footage, actors, studios, and animation; it is the new corporate TVC for Freez drink.

Credits:
Client: Kassatly Chtaura
Creative Director: Nathalie Masri
Director: David Habchy
Animation Director: David Habchy
Strategic Planner: Khalil Khatib
Executive Producer: Nathalie Masri
Production Manager: Sofia Moussa
Art Director & Layout Designer: David Habchy
DOP: Nadim Sawma
Animation & Modeling: Emile Jalkh, Avak Avakian, Ashley Choukeir
Colorist: Roy Loutfallah
Editing: Wajdi Elian, David Habchy
Music: Karim Khneisser

This was indeed a big challenge for me. I knew before all aspects of real footage and compositing using chroma but i never tried it all together. working with a group of professional talented people made everything easier than i expected; and again gave me the energy and the will to handle bigger projects with lots of risks.

Thanks for all the lovely people who worked on this project; all the technicians, actors, animators, and all the rest of the crew...

I hope you ll enjoy it and i m ready to hear your feedback.

This s my first project of its kind and i want to learn more :)

Puppet Making for Stop Motion

Last month, I lived one of the most intensive and charming weeks of my life. I had the chance to give a workshop in Puppet making for animation where i met nine of the most inspiring artists from Lebanon and the arab world. It all happened within Beirut Animated Festival, in its second edition, organized by Cinema Metropolis and Samandal Magazine.

The participants had different backgrounds; printmaking, illustration, 2D and 3D animation, music, cinema ... and this mixture gave a great potential to start the workshop with.

The schedule of the workshop was so challenging; we had to finish 9 puppets with all their accessories, decide on a story, do the storyboard and move to the animation part, editing and music.

How to do all these tasks in one week with participants who are not all familiar with puppet making and stop motion animation ?

Above these limitations, something unexpected happened; a great group energy multiplied our efforts. We used to work till 5 am in the morning, take shifts sometimes, reschedule everything for one reason; we love what we do. We kept enjoying our time till the last minute of the workshop and we finished the movie just before the screening schedule of the festival.

The movie was short but with great potential and a lot of love.

I learned a lot from this workshop. Now i really believe that everything is possible when you meet the right people.

Thanks everyone for believing in this project and i hope we ll have the chance one more time to rock ...

Please watch the Short movie we did and the workshop process.

Workshop Moderator: David Habchy
Assistants : Ashley Choukeir, Nadim Saoma.
Participants:
Lama Sawaya
Nour Bishouty
Ahmad Beiruty
Avak Avakian
Elie Maatouk
Salam Al Hassan
Nadia Rais
Ghalia Al Barghouthi
Mohamed Fathi

The workshop took place in two amazing animation studios in Lebanon; La Palma & Kurio motion studios.

Thanks to Sarah Maali and Joelle Kiame for their great help :)

Thanks to AFAC for funding this workshop.

"WEHDE" video clip - Making of

for the last five months, i've been collaborating with other Lebanese artists. This collective work refreshed all my working process and brought a lot of excitement. One of these projects involved the great director Amin Dora that i really appreciate his work, Nadim Sawma who s full of energy, knowledge and talent, Ashley Choukeir that i've been enjoying the work with her for the past seven years and the amazing Tania Saleh whom i m lucky to have her in my life.

The project was a video clip for the song "Wehde", from the new music album for Tania Saleh.

We mixed stop-motion animation with 2D animation and it was not that easy.

First, Amin and Nadim filmed the stop-motion part frame by frame for many weeks and they created many mechanisms for each scene. They took footage for Tania singing "Wehde", that was displayed later in the old tv of the stop-motion set. Later, we moved into creating the character design and animation and later integrate it into the scenes.

here are the steps leading to the final male character. we did the shirt with papier-mache, took a photo and edited it digitally.

Testing the male character on the already shot background.

old fashion drawing cutouts, printed and later photographed and edited into one composition to create the female character.

testing both characters on the video visuals.

integrate the characters into the scenes and decide where to position each with the choice of the motion.

we did all the character related sets with papers and crafts. we added all the visuals later to the main book shot in stop motion.

again, more cutouts to include in the visuals and sometimes we took additional photos for the papers in perspective like the skirt at the end following the perspective of the shots.

time for fun, or else we explode !

more compositing on the original book. the photos are later animated with after effects with a lot of masking. this was the hardest part maybe because we have to animated the masks sometimes frame by frame, knowing that the scenes are in stop-motion and the movement is never linear.

adding more papier mache objects to the set.

the house was done with old lebanese money, printed and later folded and some parts were animated in stop motion like the window.

the opening of the paper is also shot in stop-motion technique and later, we added the character to the scene.

the ending closing paper was printed, edited with some brush strokes. later we added water so we can animate it easily and in a very accurate way but we had to do it really fast before it dries.

after all these shots and composition, comes the character animation. ideally, the best thing to do is to do everything in stop motion but it will take us ages. so we moved into 2D character animation using a software called Anim Studio. with this software, you can add a bone structure to your characters, so later you can control the animation and the time effectively.

At the end, we edit all the scenes on After Effects and since the files are really huge and complicated, we experienced a looot of crashes. but we survived al hamdou lellah ...

Finally, the artist Tania Saleh checking the video with a bunch of excited friends ...

Thanks for everyone who worked on this clip and for Tania who believed in the group.

You can check always the video clip in here.

Hope this post adds more excitement to your day :)

kissezzzz

Ashekman - Ya Reit

Ashekman is a Lebanese Hip Hop band and this is their new Video Clip "Ya Reit". I worked along with the Konstrukt; the sexy Michel Karsouny and the super talented Fouad Mezher :)

animating the illustrations of Fouad was more than exciting since we both share the love for details.

Thanks to Alain Nasnas, Omar, Mohammed, Michel and Fouad for the great time :)

Here is the video clip, hope you ll enjoy it as much as we enjoyed the process ...

PICON

This is another illustrated and animated campaign with agency Leo Burnett Beirut.

The client is Picon, and it is the back to school promo entitled "a2wa rass bi Lebnein" :)

it s a competition on Picon's website that challenges the kids knowledge about Lebanon.

Here are the key visuals i did for the campaign.

i had to do all the elements in the illustrations with a simple contour line so the production team can add die-cuts easily, specially that part of the campaign is to do pop-up stands in supermarkets.

Just after the visuals, we moved to the animated TVC Ad. I did the animation together with the great Ashley Choukeir :) tx Ash.

Enjoy the animation and i hope you like the project :)

Puppet Animation - Prague / the Movie

"Captured" is a stop motion movie done during the puppet animation workshop in Prague, May 2010. Enjoy :)

Puppet Animation - Prague

Last may, i was in Prague for a Puppet Animation Workshop.

I discovered this workshop through the internet and it is the most interesting workshop i've attended so far. it was perfectly organized with great instructors who provided unique knowledge and an amazing experience ! i definitely recommend this workshop for puppet animation and stop motion lovers.

For ten years, Mirek Trejtnar and Leah Gaffen have been organizing puppet workshops for students from around the world. Mirek heads the workshops - he is a puppet-maker himself and also a designer of toys, sculpture and much more with a special background in wood. Leah is an American who takes care of the organizational side of the workshops. Together Leah and Mirek bring together a team of leading Czech artists - woodcarvers, puppet designers, puppeteers, film animators, etc.- who bring the students into the world of puppetry in Prague.

i was lucky to be one of the eight participants in this workshop and i tried to document for you as much as i can from what happened during the 10 days.

the first day, we met in the KID studio where we worked most of the time surrounded by puppets ,wood and toys. and this is where i met the other lovely participants.

the first two days, we were asked to come up with a short story and do the storyboard. we also had to animate the movie in "stop motion" technique using a selection of professional finished puppets and in two different sets in Hafan Studio. we succeeded in accomplishing the mission with the help of one of the best czech animators, Lenka Krizova.

discussing the storyboard & sleeping akid.

the participants left some illustrations on the walls of the Hafan Studio

after we finished the movie, it was time to create our own puppets supervised by Mirek Trejtnar and Zdar Storm, the specialist on building puppets for animated film. and here are the sketches i did for my character "Bahman". you can see as well the technical drawings for the same puppet.

cutting the basic shape of wood cubes for the head, chest and pelvis based on the technical drawing.

carving the head, and this was not easy because it was the first time i worked with wood.

a lecture about how to make hands for animated puppets in the studio of Jaroslav Bezdek.

everyone modeling the hands of their puppets. the latex was added later over the metal base so the hand can contain wires for animation.

group photo with the instructor, Jaroslav Bezdek using some latex accessories :)

in the end, we received the latex hands we did in a chocolate box.

metal studio: Milan Vins is teaching us how to make an armature.

back to the KID studio to finish the puppet by connecting all the wooden parts with metal wires and covering the armature with foam.

other participants' work in progress.

and "Bahman", the puppet, getting dressed for the group photo.

the nice thing about this workshop is that, we were given lectures by several film directors, producers, photographers, puppet builders and animators who are experts in their field.

one of the most interesting lectures was with Michaela Pavlatova, a czech director and artist who taught us how to create a film step by step. she also showed us the original illustrations she used in her animations.

another lecture about Production of animated films by the producer of Fimfarum, M. Vandas.

visiting different animation studios in Prague was very exciting; we saw the way they made things possible. they showed us how they animate the puppets, the original designs, how they build the sets, how they film and edit, everything !