Fouad

Fouad is a short film commissioned by the NGO"Act for the disappeared".

It was directed by myslef and David Habchy & written by Ghassan Halwani

Full on 2d frame by frame and endless nights of etching results in this 

little gem that you can watch here 

"In the beginning of Time "

Back In 2008 , I spent the summer in  Zagreb, Croatia working on a short stop-motion animated film . 

4 years later, the film is finally finished and it looks great ! 

" In the Beginning of Time "is directed by the talented BOŽIDAR TRKULJA and 
was produced at Bonobo Studios .
It is currently touring in festivals, so no chance of seeing it online yet ,
 but you can visit the website for some sneak peaks . 

Bank Audi TVC

I was recently comissioned to work on an animated TVC  , for Bank Audi.

The pitch was given by the ad agency , Leo Burnett .

I worked on the illustrations/ artistic direction , and my talented buddy Avak Avakian animated  the balloon.

Like every other project done for advertising , It had to be wrapped up in a week .

But impossible deadlines give out interesting results sometimes .

Here's the colorboard

you can catch it on Tv and here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dn9v6eRPRjQ&feature=youtu.be

"ALEF" Short Film

'ALEF" is an NGO against torture in the prisons in Lebanon . 

We were comissioned to make a short film promoting their cause. 

I teamed up with the director Talal Khoury , and the producer Francois Monayer and animator Avak Avakian 

to create this short film that was later projected in movie theaters and festivals.

I was  in charge of the artistic direction of the animated sequence .

 Heres a few pictures of the making of. 

The interesting part of this work was taking part of the shoot .

We as animators had to respect the constrictions of the shots taken 

and think beforehand how to work our animation accordingly.

This is the cut version of the film


and you can watch the whole film here :

The Squirrel and Penguin

The short film i was working on this summer in London is finally online!
Its directed by Jens Blank and Anna Benner and I was animating with very talented and  lovely people . 
This short explores the Israel- palestine conflict in a lighthearted way.
Here's a sneak peak .

2 Secondes Les Gens

A project that started in London , with Abel Kohen and Florence Cuccoli.

The point being, to produce fast efficient rough-cut short films which will be combined at one point 
through some installation or projection mapping.

Thats the first one in line . theres more to come .
yay.

meet keira noor

I now have a beautiful niece.

She comes in a package 

Here's the first gift i give her

France 24 -The Birds

Here's the France 24/ twitter ad i worked on in the studio Mr Hyde, Paris .
Its directed by the talented director Philippe Grammatipoulos .
We were a small team of 4 3d artists and i worked on the layout , modeling, animation ,lighting , rendering and compositing.

BEIRUT ANIMATED

A Kaffa is finally online but

but

yall in beirut can watch it and other

juicy animations on big screen in the

much awaited BEIRUT ANIMATED FESTIVAL !!!!

Not with my Toys

Not With My Toys

In 2008 , i visited a withdrawn family in Valenciennes.

A family, people called "les gitans ".

And to them , We were known as  the "gadji ".

Yes they dont live in regular houses , neither have regular jobs,

they dont spend regular salaries in regular ways .
but these people , irregular in all ways know real family love .

 Here's to the kids without toys .

a bit of 3d action

Carré Production from Carré Production on Vimeo.

Here's the project i had the chance to work on with the talented people at Carre Productions in Paris .
i had to take care of the ro- ro- ro--bot

One minute film

Ramure en Mer

A project at Supinfocom in my second year. 

We had to choose a japanese haiku and develop it into a one minute scenario 

At that time , there were a bit of complications back home

in Lebanon ( not like there's ever a time where there arent any )

But there i was just another immigrant obsessed with a thought

i had to get out of my head .

so i decided to choose this haiku

"my country, 

flooded with rain 

i discover it barefoot "

As abstract as it is , i intended to keep the scenario abstract too .

i wanted to join all the complex conflicts our country dealt with for years and

make them simple to understand.
because thats what it is finally .

theres nothing more to this middle eastern conflict .

its as simple as it gets.

were in a small boat that will never sail.

wel be always slowed down by bigger waves and even when it gets calmer 

there will be other bigger boats to block us .

because there it was, the lot of my country , and maybe even yours.

because

" ah oui le liban , cest le coin du monde ou tout le monde fait caca dedans "

"oh yes lebanon , its just another part of the world where everyone takes a shit in ."

and because nothing ever changes .

there it was my one minute of vent .

In search of the graphic style

I wanted to stay illustrative and frontal .

no cuts just one frontal sequence shot .

i wanted to keep a simple "mise-en-scene" and naive .

its a fable we dont want to get too close to and the moment we do 

we back away again.

The tree on the boat is meant to be the Cedar (the tree that represents lebanon)

its there as a vessel and at the same time it adds weight to the boat making it more 

unstable . 

i also wanted it to be bendable and without any leaves .

so at the end the only remaining characteristic of the cedar is its progressive 

branches by size .

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"