People Sketches

It seems I only wind up posting the work I do in character design class, but at least it's something. Here are a few pages of drawings. The assignment was basically just to draw from life.

The observant viewer may notice a self caricature in there somewhere.

Character Design Assignment 1

Here's my latest character design assignment for school. We had to design a character which would then be animated performing a weight lift and toss. Try to ignore how terribly off model she is between the rotation and the pose sheet. Although I suppose now that I've mentioned it, you can't ignore it. Well... ignore it anyways.

Doodle

Here is a page of a few sketches I did in my spare time at Sheridan. Just something else to keep this blog relatively active.

Oh, and the top right drawing is a caricature of my classmate, Nick. Creep his shit, he's got skills.

Vancouver/ROM life doodles

Regrettably, I did very little cafe sketches while I was in Vancouver, however I did manage to get a little bit in. Here are some of the few unsuspecting victims of my pen while in Vancouver, and during a recent trip to the ROM.

I've also decided not to compile my best drawings, and instead just upload the full sketchbook pages. Enjoy my unedited scribbles.

Back to Sheridan

This silly drawing is for a group-draw among my students in my year. We decided to draw ourselves as Monsters University characters and then compile all the drawings. So that ugly thing is me as a monster! I'll post the compiled drawing to show off some of my uber talented class mates as soon as the image arises.

On a semi related note - I'm going to be going into my second year of animation at Sheridan, and I'm very excited overall! As far as I'm aware, second year provides far more opportunities to explore artistry, rather than fundamentals - especially with animation.

 I've also had a renewed interest in visual development since being at Sony this summer, so I'd really like to learn more about painting and character design.

 Either way, it looks to be a good year.

ALSO: I just got a tumblr cause it's what the cool kids are doing, and I have no idea what I'm doing.
http://omarsanimation.tumblr.com/

Demo reel tips from Sony!

Hey check it out, Sony featured my work (as well as some incredibly other talented individuals) in this video on demo reels!


 

Just a wee little update

So it's been nearly two months since my last post, and I thought I may as well write... something.

As a start to my meanderings, here are some quick and shitty sketches I did while at work that I had time to scan in.

So I suppose I should discuss my experience thus far, given that this blog IS dedicated to my silly thoughts, silly drawings and silly animations. In this case, my silly thoughts.

FIRSTLY, something I've always wanted to say: The thoughts and opinions written on this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent that of my employer or it's affiliates. 

Okay, thoughts and opinions.

My first day at work was June 17th. Lotta paperwork as you might expect. Soon after though, we were given the floor to animate.

The feeling was indescribable. Maybe I'm just a romantic when it comes to art, but all I know is that I was pretty overwhelmed. This was what I had been actively working towards for half a decade - which may not seem like a lot, but hell that's a quarter of my life! All of a sudden I'm surrounded by artists animating Flint and freakin' Spiderman to be seen by millions. Now this may sound silly to the individual with a boring enough life to read this, but it meant quite a bit to me. It still does.

That whole, "Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life" has been completely confirmed in my mind. Now this all may come off as pointless gushing, and it is. But beyond that, I think it's important to recognize that as artists we may go through ups and downs; creative hurdles and quite often horrible job security. But in the end, you get to create art for a living. I've had a taste of it now and I don't think that hunger will ever be fully quenched.

Anyhow, I'm unable to discuss in detail the nature of the internship at the moment, however I can confidently say that Sony is one hell of a creative giant. I'm incredibly excited to see what they create, and in the future, hopefully be a part of it.

Good News Everyone!

I'm going to be an intern!



I was lucky enough to be selected to be an intern at Sony Pictures Imageworks this summer! Some of their most notable contributions to the world of film would be: Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, Hotel Transylvania, Oz The Great and Powerful, The Amazing Spiderman, and many more!

Needless to say, I'm very, very excited.

My Demo Reel

So here is the last demo reel I'll post for a while on here. Due to several circumstances I've pretty much had a new demo reel every month with very insignificant changes, so I've been hesitant to post yet another one.

No new demo reels will be uploaded until a much more extravagant changes would be made.
For those who've seen my infinite amounts of previous demo reels, this one isn't really too different.

Demo Reel April 2013 from Omar Elhindi on Vimeo.

The reel is currently being used for things that I can only hope will work out, and I shall elaborate further if they do!

Being cryptic is fun.

Anyhow, that is all.

Character Package

So here is my final character design project of the year. I made an attempt to finish strong on this one, but in light of all the other assignments I have - as well as some other cool animationy' things that, depending on future events, may or may not be elaborated on - I just found myself 'settling' more than I would have liked.

"No one remembers how fast it was done, only how well it was done." - Matt Williames

I'm disappointed that I couldn't live up to that mantra, but sadly, I'm human. But how cool would it be if I was like a robot human hybrid instead... Yeah, that would be cool.

That being said - the bit about art, not about robots - I am still fairly pleased with how it turned out, and I definitely feel I've improved in my sense of design, and ability to execute it.

One Drawing A Week

I'm going to try and make the effort do make one finished drawing a week. Whether that be a pencil sketch, or Photoshop illustration. I mean, I'm in a drawing program, but the amount of time I get to work on my own drawings is abysmally small.

This way I can experiment with new styles and techniques and hopefully get some cool results.

So here's the first drawing, and what better way to start than with a pretty girl?

Character Timeline

Here is my latest assignment for Character Design class. We had to design an anthropomorphic character and show them in 5 different stages of their life: Infant, youth, teen, adult, and elderly. 

Overall, I'm a bit back and forth on this one. There are poses I like, and poses I don't. I really don't think it's one of my best assignments, so hopefully my next one will turn out better.

I went to a Zoo

I gotta say, I've never drawn animals at the Zoo before, and it's like, the most fun thing ever. Better than eating ice cream even.

Anyhow, these are the results of that day at the zoo. Drawing the Gibbons and the Orangutans were probably the highlight of the whole trip.

Life Drawings and Such

So here are some drawings done in my Life Drawing class. They range from caricatures - my favorite of which is currently in my teachers possession for grading, I'll upload it later - to exercises in movement, to standard life drawings.

Look at them if you'd like. Hell, look twice even. But don't you dare look a third time.

Some Excitingly Good Pencil Tests

No, they're not mine. I said they were excitingly good didn't I?

We were lucky enough to have John Musker come in to Sheridan a few days ago, and
I decided to record the lecture. I'm still trying to get the whole thing ready to upload, but in the meantime I've uploaded a particular segment of his 2 hour lecture.

Here are some pencil tests from Glen Keane (and at least one or two other animators I'm sure) for the "Part
of your world" sequence from The Little Mermaid, as well as early tests from Eric Goldberg for Aladdin.


Enjoy!

Sketch Dump

Here are some sketches that reside in my sketchbook - bad drawings and all. Thought it would be cool to upload full pages instead of only select drawings.

These vary from concepts and rough drawings for assignments, to my own studies outside of school.

                                     

Winter 2013 Animation Reel

So this is my current demo reel. It's very tough to crank out some solid CG animation with a full time school schedule keeping me busy.