Saudi Film Festival Animated intro 2023

Saudi Film Festival Animated Intro 2023
Stills from the Animation 
Concept
Our History with Passion
The idea for this animation first came about a year before when I was planning for the Red Sea film Festival intro. One idea that really resonated with me was the fact the Festival's have changed the game in Saudi Society. Artists now don't look at objects in a familiar way. Objects glow and ignite our passion. All artistic tools are no longer useless. These tools can now be used to create something that will be seen, heard, and appreciated. 

So I started to imagine every passionate situation related to something that transcends the material in my lifetime. I always like to link stories to something personal that truly affects me. At first I thought of generic situations.. a Writer in his writers office, a Singer at a recording studio, and a young Artist at his toy-filled room.  
This was the first quick storyboard I sent to the client to hook them to the idea. I did not want to miss this chance with the Saudi Film Festival since I appreciate everything they have tried to offer this industry. I remember somewhere in 2009 I attended one of their installments in Jeddah. The movies were all amateurish, but I remember feeling a sense of pride being there. Seeing a lot of passionate men trying to make films was inspiring and I'm happy my father took me there to see such a thing. 

The initial idea as mentioned was pretty generic. so I decided to personalize every situation to moments I feel strongly about. 
Part of the Pitch to the Client with style options.
The essential people working on the project were Myself and Shifa the producer that organized everything incredibly. She was responsible for bringing all the artists together and achieving unity between everyone for maximum effect. She also stayed up in the last days with me working tirelessly on the Compositing of the project at the 35mm office using their strong computers. She is a gem in the Animation industry in Saudi. A true legend. Abdullatif was an interesting man to work with on the music. However a more essential person was Yasmine Salem. An Egyptian art goddess. She has accompanied me through and through at Zaini Studios. Her Art Direction on this project was spot on and she managed to achieve a look I was very happy with. She kept everybody consistent and everything throughout this Project had her touch. 
Early Explorations and Sketches
Characters from a lost past ... So yes.. I imagined the first thing I should do was dig in my past for passionate moments. This very much reminded me of my granfather Mahmoud who I am named after (God Rest His Soul).. He passed away a year after this Animation was made in 2024. My grandfather was a huge inspiration to me. He has a huge library filled with books and was a professor of Arabic and Lingustic at the University of Umm Alqura in Makkah. I always watched him read, write, and correct papers as a little kid. So I decided to base the writer on his character. The boy was myself as a young kid trying to draw and get inspired in my toy-filled room, and the little shy girl is my younger sister trying to overcome her stage fears. 
A traditional Arabic study inspired by my grandfather's very messy study he had in Al-Taif where he isolated himself to correct hundreds of papers with only a fan and his cup of tea as support. 
The school me and My sister went to as pre-schoolers... Dar Al-thikr school in Jeddah was a pink very cute school that I had funny memories at as a pre-schooler. Especially its triangular looking buildings and diamond shaped windows. I was also always involved in school plays so I am familiar with how the atmosphere was around these flimsy wooden stages and the freight we had as kids in attempting to stand upon them and speak to the crowd. 
Another very close place to my heart was my room at our new house at the time in 2006 in Jeddah almurjan district. I remember my father painted the walls in two colors but had them intersect like a puzzle in the corners. The room had an office, a mirrored wall, and lots of little toys on shelves etc. 
Music Inspiration
Surprisingly and unexpectedly the main source for inspiration throughout this project was this old Techno classic "Gamemaster". It has a very dreamy, driving, yet serene and nostalgic essence to it. It's uplifting, but with those female vocals it reminds you of a passion or a love that we must find. She interrupts the driving beats and melodies with her voice speaking and not singing about a world where Earth is kept clean and untouched. A place where passions are alive and innocence does not die. These were the feelings this music ignited in me.. and every time I ran on the treadmill and listened to this track come up in one of Markus Schuls classic podcasts.. it exploded my imagination with images and scenes related to this project. 

I imagined all the different artists around Saudi and the Arab world .. feeling something in the air.. a golden breeze coming in from the world.. a new atmosphere where passion is appreciated, where art works and films can be displayed in a Festival that brings together all Saudis to watch and appreciate Transcendence. These were the feelings I felt throughout. 
I then decided to change the direction and make something more orchestral. Similar to a Miyazaki Track. I think this was the decision I wish I did not make. It really degraded the strength and our composer Abullatif was confused. An orchestra is not easy to make and the final music result was not my favorite. 
Storyboards
Early Thumbnails
This was the First Iteration on top of the small thumbnails. I explored different endings and sequences. As you can see I had the filmmakers stuck in a desert at first, but would then change locations and film on top of a car near Jeddah's famous Sinking Fish installation. However that turned out to be a little confusing every time I watched it in my head. So I decided to have them just follow the same car in the desert together and end with a shot that reminded me of an old time where I was part of the shooting of a short film in 2013. During that shooting we were all stuffed in the SUV as the driver went crazy on the dirt road following another car. The camera man was sitting in the back squeezed next to the camera man and had to film the whole thing intensely. This was a real experience I went through during college at the Art Institute of Santa Monica. It was a unique experience and was completely profound to me. Those filmmakers ended up losing all the footage they shot during that car chase, but only one shot of myself in an epic pose in the car remained. 
ُThe Picture was taken by Dalia al-Kassar .. part of the team with Keith Brooks, Jorge Yan, and Eric Zahde who housed us in his humble Cabin
The Final storyboard version... However in this version editing was still an issue. Do we show the transformation of each object to Gold from the very beginning.. or do we first show each character in their sad state, and then show the gold transformation? Or do we show the beginning of each gold transformation, and then line them all together quickly where the final transformation appears? I must credit my Wife Abrar for inspiring at that dark moment with the suggestion that each should have their full sad moment, and then we show for each a full golden transformation. 
Animatic
Early Concept Art
In a joint collaboration between myself and Yasmine. We determined how the Animation will look like in its final form through these experiments. Yasmine really nailed the Golden orange look which I was really keen on having. Gold when tinted towards computer yellow looks and feel quite green and ugly. However once you give it a red tint or an orange burn to it, it becomes a lot more alive and exciting. 
Other concept explorations for how the gold will act around these objects and turn them to Gold by the great Yasmine. 
Color Script 
Of course the Color Wizard Yasmine worked on these color scrips .. and her work is phenomenal as usual. She is super fast and has a quick sense for color theory and their combinations. We had to go over a few attempts at first. 
I then commented with some references to guide her and she enhanced what she already made and the result was beyond beautiful and cinematic. 
Style Studies, Guides and Research
This must be the most comprehensive and impressive work I have ever seen done by Yasmine Salem the Art Director on this project. She has managed to create a detailed style illustration guide for all the incoming painters and artists that will join the team. Filled with images and detailed explanations for line quality, brush textures, particles, lighting, shading, simplification, etc. This is something worth studying. 
Yasmine managed to give each environment upon my direction very elaborate mood boards and references to make everything much easier for the Artists who are about to take this Giga-task. Types of clouds, style of tea cups, notebooks in the library and actual images from my grandfather's study and library. The plants in Taif, along with pictures I took on the way to makkah to capture that rocky desert look we wished to capture in the Filmmakers sequence. Dar althikr school references, and an old Nissan Patrol Safari. Even the action figure that comes to life, I wished that he be from the classic Islamic Cartoon "Mohammad Alfateh" as a tribute to him. This old classic animation I watched as a young kid hundreds of times. So I thought he must be part of the action figures on the shelf in the animators room. 
And Mooooooooore References!! Lovely lovely work and the result paid off. 
Character Designs
The first initial character designs were made by myself. The artist Ahmad Adel then took these sketches and elaborated on them and turned them into great character turn arounds for the Animators to base their work off. 
In Tribute to Yasmine and her great work on the project. We made the final editor that worked on combining all the animated sequences in the end shot look like Yasmin herself with her cat eye glasses.
Backgrounds
Beautiful work by the great painters Serah Oey, Rahma Sulaiman, Abdulrahman Haj, Yasmine Salem, Candice Kang. Along with constant revisions and paint overs by Yassmin and Myself to reach a perfect final result. 

Paintings for the Writer's Study in Al-Taif (al-hada).
Paintings for the pink Al-thikr school from the shy girl stage freight sequence. 
Paintings for the young Animator sequence and his toys inspiring him. 
Paintings from the rocky Makkah desert and the filmmakers sequence. Excellent work by Rahma and Abdulrahman here.
Paintings for the final editor sequence. 
Character Animation and VFX 
So many great animators worked on this project most notably Fabrizio and Geovani. One of the toughest was of the girl swirling and then creating that golden stage. Another compositing challenge was turning things to gold. We would have had to draw every single thing twice. Once in normal colors and again as a golden object. However Shifa managed to come up with solutions that would color up these objects in a very good way and have them look Golden very elegantly in After Effects without having to recolor them in photoshop. Also let's not forget our great colorist and clean up artist Alex who managed to clean all these animations in record time. He also introduced us to some softwares that gave us very detailed control over the line work of each animation and even the cel shading. His clean lines always made all our Frame by Frame Animation looks spectacular at the end. 
Also we had the great music composer Andre create an alternative music track for this project. However the Client Rejected it. I don't blame him. He managed to do it in 3 days only. Which was insane and I thank him for that. 
Credits​​​​​​​
Writer and Director
Mahmood Zaini

Producers
Shifa Albar
Mahmood Zaini

Storyboard Artist
Mahmood Zaini

Art Director
Yasmine Salem

VFX Supervisor
Shifa Albar

Character Designer
Ahmad Adel
Geovani Angelo

Background Painters
Serah Oey
Rahma Sulaiman
Abdulrahman Haj
Yasmine Salem
Candice Kang

Character Animators
Fabrizio Strusciolo
Geovani Angelo
Carlos Yuri
Marcello Perrella
Giorgia Giorgi

Coloring Artists
Alexander Praga
Juliana Constantino

Compositing and VFX Artists
Mahmood Zaini
Shifa Albar
Kareem Elakabawy

Editor and Sound Designer
Mahmood Zaini

Music Composer
Abdulatif Almethn

Special Thanks to
35MM
Abrar Alrekabi
Ithra
Fatima Alluiwm
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