A Symphony of Horror in Beirut

This illustration's for the group Masha3, and is to be distributed as a t-shirt and poster at an event to be held at the St. Georges Bay, Downtown Beirut on the 28th of September, 8pm (it's free, public and open to everyone).

The action currently being undertaken is to stop the transfer of 40% of the water front from public property to the property of Solidere (291,800 m2 from Biel to Ajram Beach).

Note: if you're attending, the idea with the shirts is that you bring your own and it gets silkscreened there.

The Runaways

This was my first contribution to F/I/M²/P magazine. Although I was very happy with it when I drew it, it's somehow escaped publication on this blog up until now. It was an illustration for a review of Floria Sigismondi's film, The Runaways. I'll admit I haven't watched it but having to research it got me excited about the prospect of doing so.

The best part about drawing this was the reaction I got from the guys at F/I/M²/P when I sent in the pencil sketch. I originally intended to ink it but upon consideration, I agreed with them that the blacks looked good rough for this drawing (open it in a new tab to see it at full size). I believe it might be the roughest drawing I've ever agreed to let go to print and I'm pretty happy with that decision.

The Rules of Jerky-Boy Engagement

I'm not sure why I thought of Leprechaun II while drawing this.

The character's supposed to live in New Jersey so for the sake of accuracy, I ran this sketch by my trusted guide in the ways of all things Jersey, Daniel Drennan. What follows is a selection from a series of emails on the subject:

Me: Does this sound authentically Jersey?

Daniel: Oh my God. Now you have me analyzing authentic Jerseyness?

Okay, if I think about it, she wouldn't be laughing. She would be sympathetic, empathetic, and the stuff she is saying would be more a corrective; a kind of asking: "What did you do that for?" while understanding it all the same on some level.

Her cursing needs to reflect either a kind of escalation or a de-escalation; and it would be "frickin'" more than "friggin'"...

And contrasted with the "dumb" talk would be revelations of "knowing"...the Jersey debate, as it were... Lucky Charms for example had a leprechaun as a mascot and the tag line "Magically Delicious"...

So maybe:

1) "What are you, a frickin' leprechaun?"

2) "Dude! How many times did you watch Leprechaun II?"

3) "What, is someone after your Lucky Charms?"

4) "Cuz you look "Magically Ridiculous!"

Me: I think I'm starting to get the hang of it...

But... I'm also thinking of the times when I go out of my way to win an argument through sheer douchebagery. Would it make sense for her to be super-mean sometimes or is the standard boilerplate to approach the debate with faux-diplomacy and then invert the nature of the cosmos?

Daniel: It really depends on the nature of the discussion and with whom. If I'm talking with a friend, then I assume the diplomatic stance and let them have it in the debate but with the nuance that shows I'm kidding, and things will de-escalate.

If I'm talking with an enemy, then I assume the diplomatic stance and let them have it in the debate but with the nuance that shows I'm *not* kidding, and that things could escalate.

"Invert the nature of the cosmos" LOL

The meanness in this situation is more to show that the other person has let you down somehow; there's no real gratuitous meanness....when you listen to Glen Jones and XRay burns going at it, XRay will often go way overboard, and the best weapon of Glen is his dead silence on the air, as XRay has to slowly back down....

Me: Considering most of [the story is] just gonna be a bunch of depressed people complaining about their lives, I'm thinking more and more about how to use this escalating/de-escalating as a framework for how the characters articulate what's really going on in their head... Like when one of them goes silent, we know we're hitting a sour note and the discussion doesn't need to go further for the reader to understand what to make out of the jerky-boy discussion that just ensued. So the silent moments punctuate the overall structure of the narrative. Whatcha think?

Daniel: Perfect. It also allows for a projection from the reader into what is going on....I'm very much about the "unsaid" saying more than the "said" these days.

Although I feel like I'm giving away "house secrets"!

* * *

If there's a lesson to be learned about the creative process here, it's that one shouldn't ignore Leprechaun II.

A Boy-Genius, A Couple of Pervs, Super-powered Little Girls and Yet Another Monkey

These illustrations were for a series featured in the second issue of F/I/M²/P magazine. The theme was a revival of the 90s so I decided to recreate my experience of that decade by drawing what pretty much consumed all my time back then: cartoons. I'll leave it to you to figure out what cartoon series these are...

Superheroes and Monkeys Extended

It's all in the title. If you'd like to catch it, check the LAST POSTER
for all the details...

Superheroes and Monkeys

This is the poster for an exhibition I've got coming up this Friday (the 13th!). If you agree that it looks pretty badass, it's because it was designed by the fine folks at A Fish in Sea who are hosting the event (my only contribution to it was the Monkey tail and those spotty things).

There's going to be a bunch of original pages and sketches from comic book and kid's book projects I've worked on (and an Evil Penguin!). If you're in Beirut between the 13th and the 20th of July and would like to check it out, open the poster in a new tab to see it at a larger size for all the details. Hoping to run into some readers there!

Character Doodle

This was a quick sketch on a note pad while doing a very remedial job. I liked the way this girl looked and then figured she would fit into a larger narrative I'm working on. The moral of this story: be mindful of your office supplies.

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.

A Zombie With Big Teeth

Five Minute Comic: The Sequel

PREVIOUSLY (Click here to see)

The latest installment:

Monkeys!

The Adventures of the Little Monkey is the second book I illustrated for Ghayaat to be displayed in the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair. It revolves around a young boy who learns about rules by going on a (possibly imagined) adventure to a jungle with his toy monkey. The lessons about following rules weren't particularly interesting but the adventure itself was very informative (I actually learned a lot about chimps from this story) and also very fun to draw... mostly because of the baby chimps.

On another positive note, I probably learned more on this book than on any other project I ever worked on mostly because of an unexpected scheduling issue that came up. The original plan was to illustrate this book completely digitally in the same manner as the previous book but given the time constraints, it was necessary to find a faster way to shade everything. I decided to do the entire book in ink wash and then add the colors digitally. I’ve done a lot of work with this technique before but never for a project of this size so I started with a certain amount of trepidation, as I was unsure I could maintain a consistent look. The great thing about having to work with a near impossible deadline is that you don’t get the chance to reconsider or second-guess yourself, and that forces you to stick with every decision you make. Having to constantly adapt to unexpected strokes or shades ended up teaching me a lot about the medium of ink wash that I hadn’t previously considered, so although it would have probably been easier to teach a baby seal how to mingle in high society, this project ended up being a highlight in terms of practical application. I’m also very happy with it because out of all the kid’s books I’ve worked on so far, this one has the most manual work.

Five Minute Comic

This is what happens when you have a post-it, a bic pen, a highlighter and five minutes to kill...

Jazz, Organs and Dancing Buildings

This was by far one of the best projects I've gotten the chance to work on. When I was first approached about it and given a sample of the music, I was completely blown away and decided I had to work on it somehow. We started out with an idea from our director, Darine Hotait and set off from there hoping people wouldn't freak out at the sight of a musician's innards. It was also great to finally get the chance to work with one of my best friends, Rafic Saab on the animation. Although we've thrown projects to each other for feedback quite a bit in the past, we had never gotten the chance to actually work on something together before so the timing for this came together nicely. It also didn't hurt that this project got nominated for an Emmy!


Here's a description with credits:


ASHUR is a jazz record by award winning pianist and composer Tarek Yamani on Edict Records. 
The album is available in online stores. 

Tarek Yamani - piano
Goran Krmac- tuba
Kristijan Krajncan - drums

Video credits:
Directed by Darine Hotait 
Illustration & Animation by Fouad Mezher and Rafic Saab 
Produced by Cinephilia Productions 

Track: "Sama'i Yamani"

©2012 Cinephilia Productions


The video is available in better quality here.

Hind Loses Her Stories

This book was illustrated for Ghayaat and released in the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair. It's the second kid's book I worked on that revolves around a little girl (the titular Hind) and how reading affects her life. The difference is that this book starts out with Hind forgetting her stories at the airport, leading the remainder of the story to explore her interactions with the other passengers and how they cheer her up by bringing up different ways to tell/hear a story (such as making it up yourself). The best thing about illustrating this book was how nosey and curious Hind was.

The process on this book was very different from what I've become accustomed to. Usually, I prefer breaking down the story myself so it was a bit of a challenge to try and figure out how to visualize the description assigned for each page/spread. Given that everything takes place on a plane, it was difficult figuring out how to block the action clearly considering that there were always chairs in everyone's way.

The other challenge on this book was the amount of detail that was requested in the amount of time that I ended up having for coloring (twelve drawings in two weeks). Needless to say, this book led to many discoveries in the late hours of the night. By the time I got to the last page, I decided I wanted to try and document what I was doing so here's a brief overview:

Overall, it was a very similar process to the sort of work I've done before with ink wash except that the final execution was entirely digital. The first step was to select all the individual elements and place them on separate layers. The benefit of that was the ability to select everything easily and create a constrained area while painting in the details for every character. It's also a good way to cheat by letting a brushstroke keep going for the parts of a layer that are covered by another overlapping layer.

After everything is painted in greyscale, the image is flattened, saved as a new file and a texture is placed over it (preferably with the "soft light" blending mode). After it's textured, it's given a color cast to determine the basic light quality. I usually do that by first going to "Hue/Saturation" and using the "Colorize" option and then going into "Levels" and messing with the separate channels to give the different tonalities a variation in hue to try and match the feel of how film is affected by different temperatures.

The final step is to add color. What I do is bring back my original layers at this point because they're already organized and named selections. I use these selections to place a flat color over every item (or part of it). I place the layer of color of in "Soft Light"so that the color is affected by the color cast already present in the image. The benefit of this is that it saves a lot of time that would have otherwise been spent guessing what something might look like under a certain light setting. Sometimes, the results are surprising so it's a technique I'd highly recommend...

"I Like It When We Read Together"

I Like It When We Read Together is the latest book I've illustrated for Asala. As the title suggests, the story follows a little girl who reads with her mom every night and highlights the positive impact it has on her life.

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...

Vampire Walrus

If penguins can be evil, it follows that a walrus can be a vampire.

Evil Penguin!

It's an evil penguin! Nuff Said.

Alone in the Cold

These two started as random sketches while blocked on a project. I'm generally prone to obsessing over something and these days, it happens to be David Fincher's version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. My favorite thing about the film was how well it captured a feeling of loneliness in the cold and by the time I was done drawing these, it became apparent where they came from.

Something else I enjoyed about drawing these was messing around with a new medium. They both started with a pack of markers I recently decided to try out, a Letraset Promarker Sketching Set. What's really good about these is that they take a long time to dry so the colors can be blended in very interesting ways. The color palette is also limited (at least with the set I got) so in trying to find combinations with the existing colors, it ended up making the results even more interesting.

The first sketch ended up alright but the second one came out too colorful for my liking so I ended up going over it with white acrylic. The combination of the two mediums ended up creating a texture that I can only describe as "frosty." It was still a little too cheerful for the purposes of this drawing so I ended up digitally giving it a blue cast and there you go...

Roy the New Year Monster

(Click image to enlarge)

Meet Roy, the New Year Monster and his trusty snail (who has yet to be named). Like all the other bic drawings on this blog thus far, he started out as a product of boredom. As I looked at him again recently, I noticed that he looks like a guy who may have partied a little too hard, hence his name...