Friday, November 12, 2010

"brothers from anotha motha"

char design


another character pitch for a studio in paris.




Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Monday, October 18, 2010

Character Design




I was involved in a pitch for an animated series for kids.
These are a few of the many options I presented.
The series will be done in stop motion clay animation.
et voila.
Thats all i can say for now :)














Friday, October 15, 2010

waiting for the sun


BURN

Family Portrait



"Not in front of my friends Billy Bob!"

I might as well laugh


a laughter or three for whats waiting for me this year .
Because right now i am without a house , without a job and without a long term visa .
Cry of a bedouin ?

Nina Simone says it best.

And im Back



with a postcard from Beirut

Ive been absent for a month .
Its only normal when your internet connection allows you to do one thing a day .
Opening up my gmail was enough of an activity .
It exhausted me and my connection .
Now im back to the land of fast internet .
Wondering if it will speed up my productivity .

Thursday, October 7, 2010

A KAFFA - Graphic Research -


IN SEARCH OF THE SIGNS IN THE COFFEE


The starting point of this movie was the concept of
"reading in the coffee cup " in french "lire dans le marc de cafe"
It was a known tradition back in  Mediterranean countries .
and it goes way back . 

Basically its turkish coffee that you pour in a cup .
Its advised that you drink it (if you want your divination to work on your behalf )
and then tip it over and wait .
15 minutes later, you tip it back and admire the
coffee stains that got stuck all over your cup .
Thats the part where the " reader of the cup" trips over those graphics and creates a 
whole interpretation to what he sees.

IN SEARCH OF A STORY

Ive always been fascinated by this tradition that so many people took too seriously.
I was more impressed by the beauty of the graphics  from the stains .
Once we formed our group (Lionel Caruana ,Bastien Martin and Aurelien Gueroult who was later replaced by 
Margaux Demont )  we started developing the idea further.
We wanted to be able to transform this ritual into something greater than it is .
Its something to have some bored women perform this ritual on their balconies in the morning 
but to have an actual leader of a city depend on its interpretations  in order to better impose his rules ,
that took the tradition on another level.
a more serious one .

We took our search further into megolamanic leaders that are obsessed with their principles 
and that defend them to the end .
We came across famous leaders like Alexander , Napolean , Hitler , Edi Amin ... 
all which had one point in common . 
Obssession with a threat , a menace .
An Obssession that ended up taking over them and ending their reign.
From there on we decided to personify this paranoia by using a second character
that represents all the extreme flaws in his personality .
This character we named "the other "interpreted the stains and made them darker then what they 
really are.
Each stain he interprets, carries a different threat and  imposes a regulation on his people .
Naturally , his people whom we decided will stay blinded puppets until one of them dies, wake up and act out. 
Their revolt only troubles the leader more , and by erasing the stain he thinks hel save his city once again .
Only then he finds himself face to face with all the illusions he himself created. 
Delusions and reality are merged . His people which are represented by crabs in his illusion finally come together to eat him alive and with that destroy him and his entire city.

 IN SEARCH OF A GRAPHIC STYLE

One thing we knew we wanted was a 2d illustrative style that allows 
us to experiment with  textures to give a handmade look and feel.
Lionel  , one of our talented group members was able to take his 3d technical researches further and 
allowed us to recreate a 2d representation with fidgeting  borders like in real 2d animation. 


We fed on a lot of 2d animators and illustrators like Caroline Leaf, Alberto Breccia , Toccofondo ,
the great Shaun Tan,Marco WAgner... Artists like Egon Schiele,Gustav Klimt, Reza Abedini, Friedensreich Hundertwasser were of great inspiration for textures , colors and compositions.
and ofcourse we were highly inspired by German Expressionism; the "Clair obscure "graphic treatment of their movies Metropolis, the Cabinet of Dr caligari, M le maudit  ..Stanley Kubrick's Dr Strangelove was also a huge inspiration for the study of character development and so on ..

So finally we had to lay out our restrictions to maintain our intentions :

-Animation was going to be in step , and baked to give the impression of having it in 8 frames per second (like in real painted animation ).


-Very few elements were modeled in 3d .
Most of the environments that I painted were reprojected in 3d by using the process of cam mapping .
And others were later added in the compositing process.


-We withheld ourselves from using any realistic stock shots and did every animated textures by hand using sand , acrylics on water , ink , milk ..anything we laid our hands on that we filmed with an Hd camera.


Here are some researches for character designs , and graphic style ..









Sunday, August 29, 2010

Saturday, August 28, 2010

Meet the DROOLIN MACHINE

.accessible to everyone. at one point .






Friday, August 27, 2010

Too much love

When cheap phone GIFS turn into "Something less Cheap."



silliness leaks with me and my buddy jer jer but then again
Thats what you get with two GIF addicts and a brick wall .
we call it " EMPTY BUBBLE"

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Rawrrrr

PUSHHHH


These last two years

we slept, ate and breathed
an idea.
we watched it closely grow
too close .

we pushed and pushed
and there it is a 7 minute baby
that we dont want to look after anymore .

it looks like this and we even gave it a name.


looking back , it is always interesting seeing the first intentions
and the degree of loyalty we were able to keep.

on the left are the colorboards i made , and on the right are the final images taken from the movie.






il leave here a sneak "fixed preview" for those who still havent seen it.



Go press repeat


check our music blog
and then press repeat