Claxon City: Title Animation

This is an unused title sequence that I animated for a documentary that my friend and I shot in Beirut last May. I might eventually mix some sound to it just for kicks.

Don't sit on exercise balls...

...You might get pregnant!

Abi-Hanna by Beyró - Beyró by Abi-Hanna

Fabricanti

I've been so busy lately I forgot I had a blog. Here's some stuff I've been doing on the side for the Fabrica website. They're all inside jokes on people who work here, but hopefully you can get a laugh even if you don't know these people.

"Christopher Knowles is a naive little mermaid: a credulous human-fish, who for a frail love, signed his voice to Babactopus, the Wicked Sea Witch of the East."


"Phoebe Mutetsi is small and cranky, her ideas big and filthy.
In her dreams, Phoebe believes she's old, conservative, Chinese."


"Jen Osborne is a rogue and a libertine
who takes great pleasure in wrecking havoc on men and seducing their wives."


"To make a long story short. And without further to do; This is Babak Payami."


"In the land of Argentine, the kingdom of Melons,
lives little prince Diego, a mustache & a pussy called Siemens."


"Nicolo is a photographer, but when he grows up, he wants to be a Chinese ping-pong champion."

Thumbnails and Lord Lars

These are a bunch of thumbnails that I did my first week at Fabrica back in October. Unfortunately that's about all I can show from that project, so enjoy!

My friend Lars from Australia asked me to draw him as an English lord, so after much procrastination, I finally did. I'm quite happy with the result.



Happy Holidays!!

My bubble within a bubble

.I finally got my animation corner all set up at Fabrica.
Haven't animated in months, so I just did a quick little stick-figure exercise just to get warmed up again.



This is Diego, he works across the desk from me:

FLOWER.ZOOM.PUZZLE?

Took part in a workshop last week with Generative Art Critic/SciFi writer Bruce Sterling. The aim was to produce a piece of generative art created by simply writing a series of commands that can be reproduced almost exactly by anyone if they follow your instructions. We were given 3 rectangular elements to work with and nothing more.


This is what my team produced:





These are the commands to recreate these videos...break a leg!!

The Figments

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These are a few digital illustrations I did for a series of short stories called "The Figments" by Patrick Gaughan. They're pretty awesome stories, and a little bit on the darker side, so you should definitely give them a read!
...Or if you're so lazy that you can't read a few pages, you can watch this video of Patrick's reading of one of the stories when he was on trial at Fabrica.

Enjoy....and try not to cry!

Italiano!

I promised that I would start blogging again as soon as I get to Italy and I plan on sticking to my word, only I still don't have a scanner, so I'm just going to have to post some pretty old workshop drawings that I photographed just before coming here.











Thanks Rosie for helping me shoot these :)

ON AIR

This is a really old project I worked on in my first year of animation. I went overboard with the coloring and clean up and everything, but as trivial as that stuff is, I learned a lot from doing it; like the fact that performance is key, and all the polish in the world can't save a bad performance! But anyways, this was my first real dialog piece and everyone I've shown it to seems to be amused by it. So here it is!

Been a While

Haven't posted in forever! So here's a little illustration I was working on for a friend. I had planned on adding more characters to it, but I kind of like it as it is.


More Ink Blot Girls coming soon!...stay posted.

Ink Blot Girls

I've seen so many artists do pin-up girls yet I've never tried any of my own. So here are my first attempts:

I did these as an excuse to try out these packets of Chinese paper that my brother bought in Chinatown. The first one is done on calligraphy paper, which holds ink very well. But the rest are done on some kind of tissue-like paper...The ink just runs strait through them, but I really like the blotchy effect.

I added some color in Photoshop:

Pangea Day - part2

I'm back in SF after an incredibly inspiring weekend! I went into this thinking it was going to be just another film festival, but it was so much more than that! The films were all phenomenal (and all 51 are available for viewing online HERE), but what really stood out was the message behind the hole event, and the fact that it brought hundreds of communities from around the world to watch the same films and discuss humanitarian issues that seldom get this kind of global attention (My family watched it in Lebanon!!).

You can watch a 1 hour condensed version of the broadcast HERE or the entire 4 hour program in 12 segments HERE.

And if only my weekend wasn't perfect enough already, I met James Baxter and had a quick chat with him.

Pangea Day

"Pangea Day was the wish articulated by Egyptian-American documentary filmmaker Jehane Noujaim as a result of winning the $100,000 TED (stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design) Prize in 2006".

I've just arrived in LA for the 1st annual celebration of Pangea Day! I will have so much more to say about the even by the end of the weekend when this thing is over, but I'm posting to give you a heads up about the live Internet, TV, and Theater broadcast of the 4 hour event this Saturday, May 10th.

Pangea Day is basically a celebration of cultures and global awareness through film and music.
There are over 1000 screenings around the world, all happening at the same time! and directly broadcast here from LA. 51 short films are going to be available on the website (including my film!), only 24 of which are going to be part of the 4 hour broadcast...mine is not among those :(
But regardless, it's a huge honor to be a part of this event!!

Good News and Calling Cards

It's been a while since I've posted here, but all for good reason. I've been pretty busy freelancing on a couple different projects. Mostly illustration and character design related.

The even better news is that I recently got a grant to go work in Italy for a period of 12 months! WOOHOO!! I'll post more about this in the near future, but for now I'm trying to keep it on the down-low until all the details have been worked out.

And finally I found this cool website, thanks to Trung, that prints these cool little calling cards with your contact info on the back for a pretty reasonable price. So I went ahead and made 10 colorful designs with my drawings on them, and ordered me 100. These will be my first business cards EVER. I've designed several in the past, and never got around to printing them.