TAAFI 2016

Interestingly enough, over the 6 years I've been immersed in the animation world, I've never experienced an animation event. I've been at Sheridan for 4 years now and am officially done school (which is crazy! I'll speak more to that later), and in all that time I've never felt the need to experience TAAFI or any other animation event.

I was given the opportunity to go to TAAFI this past weekend with my friend, Becca (check out her awesome work here!), and it made me realize what a foolish decision it was to pass on it for so long. I only went for one day, but in that day I was able to connect with so many industry professionals in a friendly environment.

When I arrived I was a tad overwhelmed. I'm not at my most confident when it comes to selling myself, as many artists can relate to. We're a breed that prefers to be behind the scenes, more often than not. After settling down, I managed to work up the nerve to chat with some of the people manning the different studio booths, and was met with nothing but positivity.

I was also able to attend two lectures that day. One by Allison Rutland of Pixar (and also a Sheridan Alumni), and one by a panel of short film makers, consisting of Marv Newland, Michael Rianda, Michel Gagne, Rob Silvestri, and Eric Goldberg. As a character animation fanatic, I was obviously most thrilled to hear Eric talk. For those who aren't aware, I was fortunate enough to be mentored by Eric during my time at Disney, and this was the first time I had seen him since my internship. We discussed his role on Moana, as well as his most recent work, this Simpsons Couch gag. It was fantastic getting to reconnect with someone so influential to my career as an artist.

(See if you can spot Becca and I!)


I was actually fortunate enough to see Allison's talk twice, as she also gave a lecture at Sheridan a few days prior. I was pleased to see there were some small differences in each talk, so I was able to get every morsel of information she so kindly provided. Her talk was much more practical than the Birth of a Short Film talk, I found, as it was more about workflow. Allison is an incredible CG animator responsible for the bulk of Riley's emotional scenes in Inside Out, and she was recognized for that by ASIFA when she won an Annie Award this year for her contributions. She has a nuanced understanding of subtlety in animation. I learned a lot about texture, muscle tension, and performance during her talk.


I think the coolest part of TAAFI was in its reminder that the industry is so incredibly small. I saw so many familiar faces, people I've known for years, people I've met once or twice, and a host of Sheridan classmates. It was a really fun time!

Stay tuned for an obligatory "I've graduated!!" post coming soon!

Third Year Film

Overcast [Sheridan Third Year Film 2015] from Carly Dziob on Vimeo.


Finally!

Here's my third year group film!

It was super fun, and we were one of the few groups who essentially went through the whole year without any inter-personal issues.

For those interested in what I animated, the most notable shots would be the opening shot of the rabbit, the two kids looking at the clouds as the camera rotates, the squid exploding the train, the robot deflecting lighting, and the main clouds blowing away all the dark clouds (lets try to not get into the intricacies and politics of the cloud world and why certain clouds are sentient and others aren't). I wish I was able to animate more, but I was also the head of animation for the project, and so my time was largely spent assisting others.


I was mostly found animating on this film, but my biggest responsibility outside of that was cloud character design. Below you'll find some of the vis dev and character design I was responsible for.

Chef Animation Test

Chef Test from Omar Elhindi on Vimeo.

Here's something I debated on including in my reel for the summer of 2014, but decided against it. Either way I think it would be nice for it to see the light of day in all of its poorly rendered glory.

Updates

So once again, it's been a while. This summer has been a very interesting one for me, as I was given the incredible opportunity to work on my first feature film, while still being able to return to my fourth year at school this September.

I was fortunate enough to be animating on Hotel Transylvania 2 at SPI, where I interned during the summer of my first year at school. It seemed fitting that my first internship gave way to my first real job. Obviously I'm not able to share any of the work I contributed quite yet, but be sure to see it in theaters this September! I'll be sure to post my (small) contributions to the film as soon as I'm able.


As far as my third year film, my group and I are involved in several smaller festivals and are waiting on the OK to put the film online. Stay tuned!

Third Year Preview

So I'm saving the majority of my third year related stuff for when the thing is done this April, but until then here's a bit of exploratory work I did. Both of these are radically different takes on how our film (about clouds) could look.

Action Analysis

Action Analysis from Omar Elhindi on Vimeo.

This is my third year action analysis. I really don't have anything else to say to make this make any sense. All I will say is that the screams are from a goat.

Stop Motion

Year 3 Stop Motion from Omar Elhindi on Vimeo.

If my terrible memory serves, there were only 3 stop motion assignments for the semester. The first one was boring, so here are the second two!

Third Year!

The first semester of third year has come to an end! I've decided not to post any film related work I've done until after we post the finished product. Until then, here are some sketches. Check back soon for some hand drawn animation, and stop motion animation!



  

My Summer At Disney

Hello, faithful readers! I've been guilty of neglecting my blog this summer, and that was largely due to the impossible circumstances I found myself in over the past two months. I was selected to be an intern at Walt Disney Animation Studios.

I have recently returned to lovely Ontario (totally not being sarcastic at all) after my summer in California, and it seemed about time to write a blog post about my experiences.

The feeling of being told that I'll be spending my summer at Disney was indescribable. I was laying in my bed at the time, certain that if I didn't get a call that day it wouldn't be coming at all. Thankfully, the call came. It was a release of every sort of emotion, the words coming through the phone became a jumble and I couldn't think straight. All I knew was that somehow, my dream had come true.

Once I arrived at the studio, a second flood of emotion washed over me. I was standing in front of the animation building. Not the hat building, but the old animation building on the studio lot. The one that produced the hand drawn classics I grew up on. Walking inside was mesmerising. I didn't care that there weren't any of the old animation desks or a 2D feature being made inside or any of that. I was standing in the old animation building, and that was all that mattered. Also, there is a giant damned building with the seven dwarfs sculpted on it. How cool is that?

Next was the hat building, or the Roy E Disney Animation building. This had a different kind of magic to it, as it was where Disney was currently producing the films I dreamed to be a part of, housing it's army of talent. Filled with the names of people who I would slavishly search the credits for, whose names I would scour the internet for. And all of these names were now accessible to me as an intern. I could walk down to the animation wing and bother any of the incredible animators at work on Big Hero 6 (coming to theatres near you, November 7th!). Or walk upstairs and marvel at the art on the third floor, and those making it. I made sure to meet every one of my art inspirations during my time at the studio, and not once was I met with anything but kindness. People love interns I guess.

Looking back at the whole summer, I find myself smiling uncontrollably. It was one of the greatest experiences of my life, and it felt that much sweeter knowing how hard I worked to achieve it.

Hopefully I'll be back soon.

Sheridan Sketch Dump

Here's a self caricature, a few character design assignments, and two painting assignments. None of these are really shining examples of artistry, but in each of them I tried something new, whether that be through the use of line, color, or shape.

Demo Reel Summer 2014

May as well post the new reel.

Getting new shots this year was a challenge. My summer was spent at Sony in Vancouver, and sadly I was unable to keep any of the test shots for my reel. In addition, second year at Sheridan throws you a significantly larger work load than last year, so it was tough to find time for my own work.

I'll probably be updating it within a month though as I'd like to get one or two more new shots in there.

But anyway, here she is.


Demo Reel Summer 2014 from Omar Elhindi on Vimeo.

Girls

Here are some drawings I did with reference from a fashion tumblr, I wanted to try out different rendering styles.

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.