Hanna S. Abi-Hanna's Blog

New prints and woodblock paintings!

2011-11-25T14:54:00.001-08:00

R vs G

2011-07-22T09:24:00.000-07:00

Stuff

2011-06-02T10:31:00.001-07:00

Cats

2011-04-20T22:15:00.001-07:00

Got to draw some big (and not so big) cats last week! Definitely a challenge when you're used to drawing perfectly still models all the time!
Was interesting seeing the different personalities of each cat.

Sketchbook prt.4

2011-03-05T13:52:00.000-08:00

Sketchbook Prt.3:

2011-01-02T14:34:00.000-08:00

More Drawing workshops and random sketchbook pages:
Happy New Year!!

Sketchbook Randomness - Part 2

2010-12-20T12:17:00.001-08:00

Sketchbook Randomness

2010-12-05T14:55:00.000-08:00

CTN animation Expo

2010-11-12T01:31:00.000-08:00

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If you happen to be at CTN next weekend, be sure to pay us a visit at table T-72.
I will be sharing a table with the uber talented Eunjung (June) Kim.
Here is a sneak preview of the flipbook I will be selling at the Expo:

Found these on an old hard drive

2010-11-11T13:41:00.000-08:00

Blackwing Pencils

2010-10-30T18:54:00.000-07:00

I'm not in the habit of reviewing products on my blog, but there's a first time for everything I guess!
I just got my order of 2 dozen Blackwing Pencils in the mail today. If you're not familiar with Blackwings, they were a very popular brand of pencils among artists and writers until they were discontinued in 1998. They were originally made by Eberhard Faber. The few remaining ones sell for $20 to $40 dollars a pencil!
A few weeks ago Palomino brought these pencils back on the market!

I took these photos with my brand new Canon :)

And here's a comparison with some other pencils that were lying on my desk.

My first impression of the Blacking is how smooth and easy it is to draw with! It's a great pencil for loose and quick sketching and produces beautiful dark lines.
I would probably still prefer to use a tombow to tie down my animation, mainly for its even tone and general cleanliness, but the Blackwing is definitely going to become a sketchbook favorite!

Alfa Romeo Art Prints

2010-10-07T10:41:00.000-07:00

These are the first 2 prints in a series I'm doing for Alfa Romeo.
They are being sold HERE.

2010-08-30T22:25:00.000-07:00

Sample illustration I did a while ago for a friend's book...

WC

2010-08-22T19:34:00.000-07:00

Bathroom signs I made for my friend's restaurant.

Revista Traspatio

2010-07-28T13:35:00.000-07:00

A full-spread illustration I contributed to my good friend Victor Hugo Cabañas' magazine, Revista Traspatio.

Gracias Hugito!

Horse Locomotion

2010-05-24T11:58:00.000-07:00

Did these for my class to show the different walk, trot, and run cycles in a quadruped.
They're not perfect but they do the trick in illustrating the contacts and extremes of the different cycles.

You can download the source file HERE to step through the video.

Layouts

2010-05-15T15:13:00.000-07:00

Found these in my old hard drive.
Layouts from my student film.

Gold Minors

2010-05-02T14:28:00.001-07:00

Pictoplasma / Citrus Cel

2010-04-09T13:59:00.000-07:00

Penguins is premiering at both Pictoplasma in Berlin, and Citrus Cel Animation Festival in Florida this weekend.

If you happen to be in either part of the world, go see it and all the other awesome animation that will show at both festivals!

Citrus Cel will also be holding an animation art show and several of my character designs from various projects will be on display.

And finally some sketches from a Gallery Girls event I went to recently. Thanks for the invite Shawna!
It was so hard to start drawing from life again! I promised myself I would start going to workshops again...Let's see how that goes...

Clarity Kaufmann - Careless

2010-03-27T15:02:00.000-07:00

Clarity Kaufmann's album 'Careless' is now on Itunes!
Listen to it, buy it, it's awesome!!!

Here's a 1min preview of the video I did for them:

Elephants

2010-03-19T17:17:00.000-07:00

In 2008 I worked at Red Giant Studios in San Francisco. For about 4 months I drew and animated nothing but elephants. These are a just few of them!

Flower Girl

2010-03-05T14:04:00.000-08:00

2009-12-27T08:34:00.000-08:00

Penguins - Music Video Sneak Preview!

2009-11-27T03:24:00.000-08:00

Now that it's very very near completion, I thought I'd post some sketches and production stills from the music video I've been working on for the last couple months; shot and animated by yours truly, co-directed by Maia Ruth Lee.

Bad People

2009-10-26T04:29:00.000-07:00

Rejects

2009-09-25T10:27:00.000-07:00

Here's a bunch of random old stuff that's been sitting in my computer for a long time. Most of it is development work that either fell through the cracks or was part of proposals that were rejected.

Penguins

2009-09-14T10:40:00.000-07:00

I'm working on a music video that mixes animation and live action...This is a test I did to learn how to use the motion tracking tool in After Effects. I'm pretty happy with the result :)

Claxon City: Title Animation

2009-07-07T12:18:00.000-07:00

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...

2009-06-19T05:28:00.000-07:00

...You might get pregnant!

Fabricanti

2009-03-10T03:02:00.000-07:00

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

2008-12-19T10:31:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-10T03:41:00.000-08:00

.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:

The Figments

2008-11-14T13:23:00.000-08:00

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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!

2008-10-15T12:01:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-11T22:21:00.000-07:00

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

2008-07-07T00:03:00.001-07:00

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

2008-05-27T17:42:00.001-07:00

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:

Good News and Calling Cards

2008-04-22T22:59:00.000-07:00

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.

"Worst Looking Hat" Work-in-Progress

2008-03-23T20:24:00.000-07:00

This is a dialog test that I'm currently working on for my reel. These are some of the ideas and designs that I went through before settling on the final characters. Some of these overlap with the Film Noir project (guess I was trying to hit 2 birds with one stone) but I realized that wasn't going to work because we've decided to take a much more graphic approach on the Noir project.

Anyways, the animation is at the bottom of this post...still needs a tone of work, but I would love to get some feedback at this point. That's the downside to working alone at home...you don't get constant feedback form your peers!

"Worst Looking Hat" (Work-in-Progress) from Hanna on Vimeo.

The nice thing about working from home is I have a nice little work station right in my bedroom, so I can literally role out of bed in the morning and get strait to work.

The desk was an old drafting table donated by my good friend Mark Chun (he was moving to Hawaii). I had a hole carved into it and built a light fixture in the back out of scrap pieces of wood. The only real investment was the disc which I ordered from Alan Gordon.

Spread the Fred!

2008-03-12T13:25:00.000-07:00

'Beneath the Rubber Tree' is in Channel Frederator's latest episode!

Also check out their interview with me on the Channel Fred Blog.

Sketchbooks

2008-03-07T12:31:00.000-08:00

Finally went through my sketchbooks and scanned in some of the latest pages. Enjoy:

That's Say in the top left corner :)

Woohoo! Finally went to the zoo! Spent at least an hours just drawing Giraffes...

...no trip to the zoo is complete without a visit to the petting zoo!..

...We even made some new friends - Note the 2 kids hunched over in the top right corner - this 9 year old came up to me and asked if he could draw too, so we gave him and his friend some paper and pencils and they joined in the fun! Their monsters and dragons put my doodly scribbles to shame!! ...never drawing next to a 9 year old again!

Morning Hair: Self Portrait

2008-02-15T09:50:00.000-08:00

More Noir stuff

2008-01-24T20:44:00.000-08:00

Some character designs and story ideas that I did for the project...

All the above material is copyrighted.

If you use any of it we will have to hunt you down, film noir style!

My Animation Demo Reel

2007-12-23T15:32:00.000-08:00

Hanna Abi-Hanna's Animation Demo Reel (12/19/07) from Hanna on Vimeo.

MFA

2007-12-21T13:39:00.000-08:00

I had my final thesis review yesterday where I presented my short film and demo reel. It went pretty well.

I am officially graduated with an MFA in Traditional Animation!

Film Noir

2007-12-17T23:58:00.001-08:00

So we're officially starting work on a new intro for the Academy of Art's Spring Show. Same idea as "Freakers' Ball", only this time the theme is San Francisco Film Noir! We're still working out the story and the characters at this point but it's looking like a really cool project already!!

These are some of the first sketches that I did, just to get the juices flowing...

"Freaker's Ball" Concept Art

2007-12-16T13:49:00.000-08:00

These are some of the early character designs and concept drawing I did for "Freaker's Ball"...

Click the image below to see the final model sheets of all the characters. I did these final designs based on the concept art that everyone produced and tried to unify the style of all the characters while tailoring the designs for animation.

"Awful Man" rough keys and breakdowns

2007-12-12T23:13:00.000-08:00

Finally got some work done on the dialog. I haven't been able to work on it much lately, with my final review coming up next week and all. But it's getting there.

Feedback and critiques are most welcome!

Awful Man! from Hanna on Vimeo.

Workshops

2007-12-12T15:56:00.000-08:00

It's the last week of workshops so I'm trying to go to as many as I can. Who's with me?!

Here's a collection of random workshop drawings. Mostly 1 to 3 min poses from "Quick Studies" and "Drawing for Animators". There's a couple longer poses from Bill Sanchez's workshop.

I used to draw a lot more with charcoal on large newsprint, but lately I've just been drawing in my small sketchbooks. I guess they're more portable, but I miss drawing big!

Bill as Rambo!

London, Paris, San Francisco

2007-12-03T18:48:00.000-08:00

"You are an awful man!!..."

2007-11-30T21:29:00.000-08:00

Here is some stuff that I'm working on for a dialog test. I've done a couple dialogs before, but non that I'm entirely happy with, so I figured I'd work on this to add to my demo reel.

The amazing Rosie Sullivan was nice enough to offer me the use of one of her awesome character designs, so I'm using him on the receiving end of the dialog.

Here are some of the early character designs that I went through before finding the sound clip that I wanted to use...

I finally settled on THIS piece of dialog from 'Anchorman' (which I haven't seen):
"Little Girl:"You are an awful man! You are truly a disappointment to us all Mr Burgundy!"

Some animation thumbnails...

I tried changing 'Mr. Burgundy's' proportions a little to make him taller than the little girl, but I ended up going back to Rosie's original design because it was way too appealing to change any part of it!

I'll post some pencil tests in the next few days...

'Beneath the Rubber Tree'

2007-11-27T14:03:00.000-08:00

This is the latest cut of my short film, "Beneath the Rubber Tree"...

Beneath the Rubber Tree from Hanna on Vimeo.

...I already cut it with the sound and credits so it could be screened in the Fall Festival, but you'll notice that there's a lot more work to be done on it. I'm honestly a little burned out from working on it for so long so I'm taking a little break to work on a small dialog piece.

The Freakers' Ball blog has gone public!!

2007-11-24T13:02:00.000-08:00

This is a project that I directed and a bunch of us worked on over the last few months. It's the opening for the academy's Fall Animation Festival.
It started as a 30 sec. spot with 5 or 6 of us working on it, and snowballed into a 1 min and 30 sec piece with over 20 contributors!
I couldn't be more proud of the end result, and I'm really going to miss working with all the amazingly talented people who were a part of this film.

The Freakers' Ball- Final Render from 2DANM8R on Vimeo.

...and as an extra treat, the private blog that we set up to share our ideas and post our progress on the film has gone public! So you can track our progress over the course of production and look at all the concept art and production art work that went into creating the film. You'll have to navigate through the archives section of the blog to get to the older posts.

I'll post more about my personal film ('Beneath the Rubber Tree') soon.

Updating my Website!

2007-11-24T11:10:00.000-08:00

I've temporarily redirected my website to this blog because it is in dire need of an update!
For now, you can enjoy some of my sketches and ramblings here until I find the time to update my site.

Enjoy,

Hanna