كلاكيش: books

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Abu Dhabi International Book Fair - 2011

Last month, I was invited by Kitab to participate in Abu Dhabi International Book Fair 2011, Illustrators' Corner. It was my first visit to the UAE where i was overwhelmed with the respect they showed me. It was an amazing experience that i will definitely repeat any other time.

The following are some photos from the opening of the illustrators' corner the first day of the fair.

Other illustrators checking the work i exhibited in the fair. Oliver and his students from Cartoon Network Academy watching some of my animation work.

Meeting the lovely Bea and Rosine from L'agenda Gulf that chose Haltabees as a cover for their march issue. Sulaf wrote an amazing article in L'agenda after reading Haltabees with her kids. Check it in here. Tx Sulaf and the boys :)

We filled the table in the Illustrators' corner with loads of illustrations and i had my portrait drawn by Omar Jaramillo :)

My lecture "The Making of Visual Art" that covers new forms of media in the visual art scene and talks about the relationship between the different types and how they are implemented.

Later, i had an amazing time with the kids reading the books and showing them some animations.

I shared as well some of the puppet making techniques i learned in different workshops with the illustrators and we did a spontaneous workshop for 2 days.

The festival organized a cruise tour in Abu Dhabi full of chats, food and trallala moments :)

In addition to the great lectures i attended and all the connections i made, i met some beautiful amazing friends that i will try to keep forever ...

Thanks for Kitab, Alexandra, Julia all the staff (except Erin Cox), for the amazing opportunity, and please meet the amazing illustrators and check their work:

Haltabees Flying with MEA arilines

Haltabees is now flying with other Al Khayat Al Saghir books with MEA airlines :)

so whenever you are flying with MEA, you can ask for the book and enjoy your trip !

hurrey :)

Berlin Literature Festival 2010

Last september, i was invited to participate in Berlin International Literature Festival.

The organizers first saw my book, "Haltabees Haltabees" written by Rania Zaghir and published by al khayat al saghir, in Bologna book fair, Italy where they discovered the book and invited me to participate in their International Children's and Youth Literature section.

Let me say i was honored to participate at the age of 25, with my first book, in this amazing festival next to brilliant illustrators and authors like Shaun Tan, Philippe Lechemier, Emily Gravett, Eva Muggenthaler and many others.

The festival was extremely well organized and the amazing thing about it that i visited a lot of german schools, children's museums, libraries, and i was able in a short period of time to have a looot of wonderful souvenirs from this lovely capital Berlin.

i read my book for hundreds of kids living in Germany. the book was translated to german, but kids wanted to hear it in arabic and they enjoyed it :)

i did some stop motion workshops for some schools and i learned a lot from kids. some other schools did workshops based on my book before i met them and presented the work for me. it was overwhelming to see kids performing some plays based on Haltabees, or doing group illustrations using my style of illustration. some presentations were just funny like kids talking about how they imagined i look like after they saw the book :)

i had a lot of fun with those wonderful kids, with the authors and illustrators from the festival, with the organizers specially in the parties at the end of each day :)

i did a video that describes a bit what was happening :)

tx a looot for the amazing people i met; Ina, Katrin, Mahmoud, Claudia, Inga, Christina, Alex ....

za second Book

the second book for "Haltabees" is now OUT :) it s entitled "حلتبيس حلتبيس : أشعار من سمسم وخيار" and it s a poetry book for children about Love written by Rania Zaghir and published by al Khayyat al saghir. it s available in Arche de Noe library in Hamra and soon will be available in other libraries. I attached some photos of the book and illustrations. enjoy :)

Making of Haltabees Poetry Book

as usual, the best part for me, is to share the making of the book with you :)

this book is the second book in the series "Haltabees" so i used the same mixed media technique that i used in the first book. however, the color palette is brighter and less contrasty.

a basic version of spread 1 inside the book. later, i changed the hierarchy of the elements to give more importance to the "Kebbe", a traditional lebanese food item. i added more depth to the illustration by adding the blurred background and the light with uniform shadows on all other elements.

spread 1 done.

in spread 2, "Abd l Halim Hafez" was mentioned in the text and i was lucky to have bought before this disc from an old library in Hamra so i took a photo with the sesame background. however, i was not happy with the foam effect.

chasing balloons in the studio was hectic. but at the end, i managed to avoid blurry photos. tx Kevin :)

spread 2 done & dedicated to mOmO and Egypt :)

i wanted to illustrate a telephone so i used this vintage phonebook that i bought for free from Jounieh, where i live :) i changed the original latin numbers into arabic numbers with a twist of love.

taking photos of Haltabees was a main step in the process, but it was harder this time coz Haltabees, the clay character is getting older so the clay is becoming dryer :s

i used different patterns from gift wrapping for the background of the illustrations.

tx to Hanane & Ashley for posing :)

spread 3 before applying textures to Lamees and without Haltabees.

spread 3 done.

some Luxury objects found in a shop called "Tansa" in Jounieh. the owner of this shop was not sure about my interest in Dentelles :)

to the right, the making of the castle done from cardboard and clay.

finishing the castle but from one view only. you can see the mess from other views.

spread 4 done.

the title page

the sherpa proof from the printing press to make sure of the colors.

za parents checking the printed book but it seems they are more happy with the camera than the book.

the biggest assistant ever Mr. Pierre Boutros.

a BIG thank you for Hanane Kai who assisted me in the research and illustrations for this book. i love u Hannouch !

Launching of za second book photos

last saturday, 27 feb. 2010, was the launching event for my second children's illustration book: "حلتبيس حلتبيس، أشعار من سمسم وخيار". This time it s a poetry book for children; a new adventure with the author Rania Zaghir published by al khayyat al saghir.

we were supposed to celebrate in the streets of Hamra, Beirut, facing a pub called Dany's. it was raining, so we moved inside, to a small warm room in Dany's. i was tired, coming back from a looong meeting and an animation workshop @ Zico house. i forgot all my hectic day when i saw Tania Saleh and her lovely kids Karim & Tarek sitting in the pub listening to the amazing Mashrou3 Leila rehearsing on the new songs they composed based on the poems of the book. i love this band, and hearing them singing the text inside the new book was a beautiful experience ! Thanks Mashrou3 Leila !

shway shway, the place became more and more crowded till it was filled with lovely people and one more time, love was in the air, Cucumbers and sesame as well :) Thanks for all the beautiful people who attended the event, who called and sent messages and for my friends in Egypt, Jordan... you are a huge support ! i love u all.

lovely people

lovely band Mashrou3 Leila

سحبه

"Sahbeh" is a project by Mona Merhi, funded by Beirut World Book Capital and with the support of the Ministry of Education. This project helps integrating the concept of reading in the lebanese society. the approach is new; the book will find you !

"Sahbeh" is an old lebanese gadget that used to be distributed for children in shops as a random gift. "Sahbeh", now, is a mini-book that will be distributed in public areas such as supermarkets and some schools (everyone throws away certain coins - 50 l.l. and 100 l.l coins - because this amount of money buys nothing and no one would like to keep it. therefore, instead of supermarkets giving coins that nobody will use, the cashier will offer sahbeh mini book).

The mini books contain excerpts of books (novel, poems, short story, essays..) the latter are either written by famous writers including locals and internationals.

"فضيت مشطين" & "تصريح" are two short texts for Soha Awwad, selected by "Sahbeh" project to be published. I illustrated the two texts and here are some previews of the book and the illustrations.

Enjoy :)

"تصريح"

اتصل بي المرجع الأعلى منذ قليل.

يبلغ تحيّاته للجميع.

لا معركة اليوم.

عودوا إلى بيوتكم و ارتاحوا.

اكتشفنا أنّهم ناس أيضًا.

لا نستطيع قتلهم. عيب ما بجوز.

سنبلغكم أيّ جديد،

حالما تردنا الأنباء.

ابقوا مستعدين. بنادقكم نظيفة.

و شكرًا لتعاونكم.

"فضيت مشطين"

أترى كل هذه الغيوم في السماء

و الدخان المتصاعد من أنوف الجثث؟

كل هذه الفوضى أنا مسوؤلة عنها.

إليك ما حدث:

بعد الظهر فضيت مشطين

برأس مستأجر في حاجز يريد التدقيق

بالكلمات المكتوبة على قميصي

و حذائي و كلساتي و أقراط أذنيّ...

فضيت مشطين برأس عاطل عن العمل

يبشّر بحلّ للأزمة الراهنة،

ببناء دولة المؤسسات، بالافراج عن كل المعتقلين،

و بالسلام العادل و الشامل في المنطقة...

وينتظر مني أن أرسل له معاشه عبر البريد

كي لا يضطر أن يواجه الواقع في الخارج.

فضيت مشطين برأس كل يقطينة في الحقل نضجت قبل آوانها

عندما أمرها قائد زواريب اليقطين بالانفجار.

كلّهم، أجل كلّهم متساوون

أمام رشاشي الجديد الملمع.

كلّهم، دخان أبيض عندما أكون مستعدّة.

و أنا دائمًا مستعدّة!

Haltabees MakingOf

"Haltabees" the book, printed and ready to be published by al Khayyat al Saghir :)

this book is written by Rania Saghir and illustrated by me.

process for creating the main character "Haltabees". first, the armature, volume, then adding the clay and coloring the face. the choice of clay is to show that "Haltabees" is sensitive and fragile just like the material.

Christy (neighbor) & Rania Saghir (the author) meeting Haltabees.

steps for one of the spreads : starting with a hand drawn illustration, shooting Haltabees in the right light and angle, leading to a digital full rendered illustration, placing the character inside the illustration, adjusting the colors and light and adding shadow.

the final illustration.

steps for another spread of the book; making the set of hearts to introduce the dream of Haltabees. many layers will be added to the photo, including photo collage, Haltabees and Lamees.

the final illustration

creating the street scene from clay and cardboards, trying different light positions and shooting the background street scene.

more steps for the same spread; shooting street details from the neighborhood and adding them digitally to the illustration. in addition to adding the character to the illustration.