InkTober -2019

In this year’s Inktober we are keen to collaborate with the top artists in illustration, animation, and design, allowing the participants to have a constructive experience, coming from the leading artists in the local scene. It was also important to host fully-fledged workshops, starting from the opening talk to the hands-on exercise, followed by feedback.

Samaka Studio

By:Ahmad Abdel Hameed and Ahmad Thabit

"Sometimes inspiration finds you when you train your eyes to look for triggers” - Abdelhameed

This is how Samaka Studio kicked off; It is how you constantly observe the outer world that affects the way you obtain inspiration and look for triggers. We contemplated about the importance of putting inspiration into a visual glossary for future reference, let that be a sketchbook or a personal archive.

Samaka is a dynamic animation studio, working with a wide range of styles in 2D animation, and they are constantly questioning what comes first, inspiration or research? A question that took a lengthy amount of time to analyze and dismantle, for its nature to overlap through-out the creative process and the various interpretations of what is considered ‘research’ and what is considered ‘inspiration.’

What made this workshop fully-fledged is the insightful and eye-opening approach Samaka adopted to illustrate the process of animation making, starting from research, to concept development and later creation.

Artworks By: A.Wahby - M.Ibrahim - M.Marakby - T.Foad - Abdel Hameed - Hefnawy

*click on the right side of the image to view more work.

We also dwelled around complementary topics like how to utilize references and inspirational works without mimicking, how to develop a visual identity and translate emotions into a visual representation.

Cheb Makhlouf

"You need to have a set of ideas and emotions to put a visual sentence together and subsequently you will come up with an illustration." – Makhlouf

For the second year in a row Makhlouf is part of our Inktober program, and this year as our opening workshop for 2019, to build on last year’s success.

The workshop started by an introduction to the fundamentals of creative thinking and illustration, followed by a hands-on implementation by the participants and feedback to the outcome.

It was key to differentiate between illustrations based on a specific brief for a newspaper or an advertising agency, and illustrations that don’t serve any goal but an artistic expression. Accordingly, participants were given a brief in the form of a sentence, and each had to come up with an illustration that visually reflects this statement.

Artworks By: H.Moussa - N.Adel

*click on the right side of the image to view more work.

A selection of artists were mentioned to explain the different techniques of illustrating, inking and hatching. Some of which are Frank Miller and Gamil Shafeek.

MOHEEB

“If you still have time, your sketch is not finished.” - Moheeb

The third and last workshop this week was by Moheeb, an Art Director and Tattoo Artist that took the body art scene by storm with his exceptional talent and distinctive illustration style.

Moheeb decided to be a loyal fellow to the Inktober prompt list for 2019, and go with the ‘Dragon’ as his subject for the workshop.

The participants were asked to follow three steps, first, drawing a sketch in pencil, then inking on the pencil lines, and finally, adding the finalizing details for the illustration. It was a good exercise to see the diverse outcomes, which reflects the individuality of each participant even though the subject and the process were the same.