5th International Festival of Comics - Beirut 2012

This post should have been up sooner but here's the invite/poster for the 5th International Festival of Comics - Beirut 2012 (open it in a new tab to see it at a large size).

The opening is Saturday the 20th of October at 4:30 PM at UNESCO Palace, Beirut.

The program on the opening day includes:

An exhibition of Lebanese professional artists, international guest artists and the work produced in the Lets Comics workshops held in Lebanon this past year.

An awards ceremony declaring the winners of the Lets Comics competition 2012 (there's a change in the rules of the competition in that two winners were awarded a trip to the Lucca Comics and Games Festival 2012.

And my favorite activity: the Comics-Music Jam. We've essentially got the latest edition of the Kharbesh Bilsenak event organized by Karma Hamady but with some added tweaks this year. We got 12 illustrators (these include the international guests) jamming with two freestyle rappers (with superhuman abilities): Double A the Preacherman and Mazen El Sayed. We also got Rami Obeid (Stikfiggr) providing the beats. It's tough to do this thing justice with a description so I'll simply implore everyone to come check it out opening day.

The festival goes on till Monday the 22nd on October at 8 PM. The program on the last day includes a public jam open to all.

“Let’s Comics - A Euromed Window for Young Comics Artists” is a project co-funded by the European Union, run by COSV (Coordination of the Organizations for Voluntary Service, Italy) and SPGIL (Syndicate of Professional Graphic Designers and Illustrators in Lebanon). It is a long-running program initiated in Beirut in 2007 under the slogan of “Let’s Comics!” 

UPDATE 0ctober 19 at 10:49 PM from Beirut: Due to current events, several activities have been cancelled from the festival out of respect for the national day of mourning. The space will remain open for anyone who wishes to come see the exhibit at the previously announced times (Saturday Oct at 20th 4:30 PM till Monday 22nd at 8 PM). A space will also be open for artists to come in and jam.

UPDATE October 20: The festival has been postponed.

FINAL UPDATE October 22: The festival has been closed down.

Let's Comics 2012: THE COMPETITION

This is the visual for the Lets Comics 2012 Competition. I'd advise any comics artist from Lebanon or the surrounding region to apply considering that up to twelve winners are going to be selected for exhibition during the International Festival of Comics Beirut 2012 (as well as publication in the festival catalogue), and up to five winners are going to be selected for publication in the Italian magazine Popoli.

The competition rules are all available at this link.

For more information on the Let's Comics project, you can visit the official website.

Let's Comics 2012

This is the first visual for a series of promotional materials for the International Festival of Comics Beirut 2012. It's function is to get artists/students under 30 to apply to the Let's Comics workshops that form the first phase of the festival. The official statement is as follows:

The Syndicate of Professional Graphic Designers & Illustrators in Lebanon (SPGIL), the Italian association COSV and the International Festival of Comics Beirut are pleased to invite you to the 2012 Comics Workshop.

Send your digital sample work or portfolio to:
letscomics2012@gmail.com

or a hard copy to:

1) COSV
Sammout St. Najm El Din Bldg -5th floor
Furn el Chubbak-Beirut
Tel: 01/288717
From 10.00am to 3.00pm

or

2) SPGIL
National Museum Square
Behind Volvo Company
Moukarzel Bldg – Ground floor
Beirut-Lebanon
Tel: 01/616771
From 10.00am to 3.00pm

(photocopies are accepted)

Don't forget to specify your full name, age, city of provenience, email, fixed and mobile telephone number, and to choose your workshop:

BEIRUT: 21/04 - 05/05 - 19/05 , COSV or SPGIL

BAALBEK: 15/04 - 29/04 - 13/05, Daari association

TRIPOLI: 28/04 - 12/05 - 26/05, Azm Centre

SOUR: 02/06 - 16/06 - 30/06, Cutural Movement Center in Lebanon -Tyr

(all workshops are for free)

APPLY BEFORE APRIL 13 2012!

On a personal note, I'd like to say that apart from the occasional exception, my experience with the workshops I've applied to in Lebanon over the years hasn't been all that great. It's always apparent that a lot of effort goes into organizing them but my theory is that all the effort gets misdirected. Being one of the people helping out with the organization this year, I'm sensing the same hesitation (or lack of interest) that I'd normally expect from myself when it comes to these things. Having said that, here's my appeal to the two or three people reading this post:

I like the guys over at COSV. I've worked with them for a few years now and they've helped me out a lot early on in my career (they still do) so when they asked me to help instruct the workshops, I automatically agreed. I'm going to be instructing the Baalbek workshop and co-instructing the Beirut one. For my part, I can say that the intention is to avoid any lofty aspirations and focus on what's doable in a three day workshop and when I say "instruct," I'm using the word very loosely. The idea is to get out of the way and hopefully just give people the chance to draw or tell a good story. With any luck, enough people meet each other at the festival this year and we give the comics medium a much needed kick in the right direction here in Lebanon...

Lucca Comics and Games 2011

This first illustration is the cover image for a game entitled The Gang. It's a card game developed by DV Giochi that's based on the idea of playing odd versus even numbers. It's visualized in such a way that the two sets of numbers are rival gangs trying to capture each other (by collecting cards). There are also special cards (a spy, a lookout, and a boss) that give the gangs extra options in capturing each other. Here are the character cards:

An important aspect of the game-play is that the cards are sent to three cities to capture each other. Here are the illustrations for the cities (New York, Chicago and Detroit):

In addition to the game illustrations, I was asked to create a short comic as a promotional item to be distributed with the game during the festival. The title roughly translates to "Odds Against Evens" but I'm told that in Italian, it works with a double meaning that involves shooting.

 

During the second day of the festival, the game was presented at this conference:

After that, I was free to explore the rest of the festival and similarly to last year, I found the best part to be all the original artwork on display (both in the festival exhibitions and from collectors/dealers who had pages up on display). The work on display ranged from contemporary independent pages to the works of such figures as Jack Kirby. From what I managed to see, there was a grater variety of styles and techniques on display this year which made for a very interesting experience. There were also several renown artists in attendance and drawing before the audience. That was a real treat to watch.

My favorite part however, was this:

V for Vendetta was the book that got me to finally try and write a complete narrative through comics after many short attempts as a kid. Seeing a room full of David Lloyd's original work for the book brought out the fanboy in me more than anything else at the festival this year.

On an ending note, I'd like to thank DV Giochi, Gioco Inedito, ECF (for sponsoring the trip) and COSV for their continued support.

Beirut Animated Festival: Part 2

The Beirut Animated Festival held two workshops this year, one of which I got to participate in. It started on April 27th and ended on May 7th. In those ten days, a number of stop motion animation techniques were used to create a short film that was screened at the closing ceremony of the festival.

The other participants I got to work with were Ali Rafei, Huda Adra, Nuha Innab, Sandra Fatte and Rajwa Tohme under the direction of Isabelle Nouzha and Alex Baladi. They're a very nice bunch of people.

Beirut Animated Festival: Part 1

This is the illustration I submitted for the postcard design competition held by the 2nd Beirut Animated Festival. It was selected as one of the five postcards that were available for purchase at the festival this year.

The festival also held two workshops; one of which I was fortunate enough to take part in. More on that in the next post...