Ahmed Nady: Secrets Of Successful Character Designing

Presented to: Merriam Hamdy

Design Theory

Final project

Submitted by: Hagar Mahmoud 10-2724

Heba El Kest 4-1801

Introduction

When we first learnt about the project, the first thought that came to us both was that we wanted to do something related to our field, which could be useful to us in the future. More specifically we wanted to discuss something related to animation as it is of our interest and we know how much hard work –as well as fun- it takes to develop a complete project. Unfortunately the field is limited in both amount as well as technology and development here in Egypt. Thus we had to narrow down our concern to what we view as the backbone of any animation, character design.

After much research, and watching various different styles, techniques and artists we both quickly fell in love with one specific artists work, Ahmed Nady. He caught our attention and stood out from other local – and even some international- caricature and comics designers. His characters were all based on unique forms and his coloring techniques were nothing less than breathtaking. His career history was a very enriched one with many exhibitions, national and international awards, workshops (inside and outside Cairo), and experiences in correlation with some of the most respectable agencies in Egypt. To surprise us even more while checking him out online, we found that he is just 27 years old and we were bedazzled by how far he has come in this very competitive field in such a short period. To say the truth his young age also encouraged us to contact him as we felt that this would make him more open to us.

After contacting him and hearing a very enthusiastic and friendly person on the other side of the phone, we started thinking about what we would like to learn from this very talented person. Aside from learning about him in person, we wanted to know how he goes ahead with the designing process, and how he develops his characters starting from forms up to colors and finalizing. We also wanted to learn more about this field in Egypt, and any hardships that could possibly face us in the future.

Biography:

Personal Information:

Ahmed Mohamed Nady, born in Cairo on the 31^st December 1981. He was graduated in 2003 from the Helwan University of fine Arts, EL Zamalek. He is majored in Painting. He is married and has 2 kids, a boy called Hamza and a girl called Khadija. His work title is a Senior Visualizer. Ahmeds’ main job is character design and development. He works in comics and creates characters including their different poses, drawing, coloring, and facial expressions. He proved himself in this job, as his work is unique. He is not known to have a certain style in his work or art as he doesn’t like to stick to a certain technique or style. He deals with each project/character according to what he wants to express therefore he uses different methods in his art which could show a great contrast between different pieces of his work.

Family background:

Born in an artistic family, his dad was an artist and his mum is the sculptural Iman Ezzat. Art is a precious thing in his family, which made him like art and made his family support him further in this path. He gained a lot of knowledge from both of his parents as they took him while visiting any art event such as exhibitions or Cairo Gallery to see the artistic pieces of work whether photography, graphics, paintings or sculptures. “My dad raised me on freedom of expressing my opinions. Honestly I was raised in a golden period of Egyptian Caricature” says Ahmed. At that time his dad was working in a Caricature magazine as a portrait Artist. He used to go and visit his dad at work to watch him while working and learn from him. His dad worked with a crew, which included people who were enhanced richly with art knowledge; Mustafa Hussein, Hassan Hakeem and Hassan EL Fedawy who had a great impact on him. Hassan El Fedawy taught him how to be brave and that the wealth of an artist is practicing a lot and broadening ones horizon. He also taught him that Reading about several topics related to the field and watching a lot of work from different places and for different artist is a great value for an artist personal development.

School period:

He graduated from Bahgat High School. He was not interested in any of the subjects except the Art class. His grades were average just to get a pass but he always got the full mark in Art. He joined a lot of art activities and exhibitions in school. His main time was spent in the drawing room with his art teachers to learn, as he would watch them drawing and later try practicing on what they do. He started his career life before going to the university as he was studying sculpturing in Mahmoud Mokhtars’ Museum, which lead him to work in an industry that creates pharaohnic statues. The owner of the industry was his teacher in school Mr. Assem who suggested that he could fulfill this job as he recognized his talent and knew that he is already studying sculpture. This was the first work experience for him and it was a great experience in his life. Ahmed had a good communication between him and his teachers and he was a hard worker only in what satisfied his interests.

University period:

Ahmed started his university education period by applying in Luxor University of fine arts and he got accepted. He moved away from Cairo and his family to Luxor where he learned how to be independent. He stayed in Luxor for one year and then transferred his studies to Helwan University of Fine Arts because he was not comfortable with the life style there. One of the main things, which influenced his educational life positively, was competition. There was a strong sense of competition between him and his colleagues in university as everyday they would surprise each other with new work or new information. They would learn from each other’s work and take it as a support to work harder and improve. In his first year in Helwan University he got a work offer from his Interior Design doctor Ahmed Nabeeh. His job was to draw a storyboard for the series “ Semsems’ World” as it was still a new project in process. Doctor Nabeeh believed in Ahmed’s talent, he also knew that Ahmed had experience in the working field before university and brief information about his artistic family. Actually Ahmed at that time didn’t know anything about how to draw or create a storyboard and honestly confessed this to his mentor. Dr. Nabeeh decided to help him therefore he sent him to one of the director Tarek Rashad as he believed he could do the job and this was his real start as he liked the field and started to learn more about it and go deeply in it. Ahmed majored in painting which helped him a lot in the comics field and character development as he learned about colors in specific details, facial expressions and studying the human body in proportions. People knew about him when he started drawing storyboards as the templates he drew on were printed with his name and numbers. What made him unique at that time is that he got paid a little amount of money and he finished his tasks on time. His work was nicely done because he was interested and like what he is doing. Ahmed was not aiming for money at that point but for the experience at work.

After graduation (Official Work):

After graduation, he worked with a group of people in a production company. The team included him, Ahmed Abdul Wares and Mohamed Tawfeek. He was the team leader, as he would tell them about the project, character description, biography and features of characters to be assessed. “We think about it really well and have an image in mind and then each person in the group draws some sketches and trials for the character design on their own”. After two hours they would gather again with their sketches and would combine the best results. Ahmed would take the perfect design, idea and choose the perfect sketches for specific parts in the body such as the arm. Further on, he would finalize the character to give it to another person who does the character sheet (someone more professional in the 3d sketch and could draw the character from different perspectives). His job was to manage the project and direct each part of the team to his work. It is very important for the artist to like his work and belong to it.

Later on the company closed and he worked as a free lancer. He did some work for Maged, Noona and Basem Magazines. His job was designing characters for certain stories in the Magazines. Those are all Egyptian magazines for kids and teens.

Nowadays he works in Tarek Nour’s advertising agency. He has been working there for 2 years.

Ahmed is still not satisfied with his work and learns more everyday aiming to achieve the better, as he believes that an artist should always keep learning till death.

The A to Z of designing a character:

How does he deal with clients?

When he starts a new project whether 2d or 3d cartoon, he has to meet the client or contact with him to clarify certain points.

First, he has to understand clearly what is the project about in details, what is he asked for and what is the concept that the client would like to express. Second, what are the characters attributes (their description) tall, short, African, American, black, white, wide lips, thin lips etc. Exact details about the character of the story to have a full image about the character in mind. This is for the inspiration of the idea of the character. The script is not really his main concern at this point, as thinking of the character idea is the most important thing. He looks at exact details and exaggerations of the characters’ looks, as his own job and the client shouldn’t interfere. The client could tell him specific details if the drama is built on such features (example a crippled person or a hunchback for example). If the client were not clear about his idea or what he wants to show, Ahmed would never reach the clients point or satisfy his needs for the character because his imaginary image would be uncompleted.

Furthermore he likes to have a mixture of features and behavior in his characters’ personality, as he believes that there’s no one just evil or just kind. One character would have different behaviors just like real humans in life.

Exaggeration in the character is when you overstate certain things in your drawing but while doing this you still do it by proportions in consideration. Example: if the nose is too big it should still be in proportion to the body.

The actual designing process

“After the long discussion with the client, I reread the script and start imagining how the character may look like. I then start by sketching the character many times with many different styles. “

The first step of sketching is done using a pencil or poly color, Ahmed finds the lines he likes from all the sketches and goes over them using a normal pencil. “This is where the first check point comes and I show the client my work process so far. I ink my work (going over the lines with a fine liner) whether manually or digitally and then finally I color them.”

Setting the form

How Nady deals with the forms of his character has been a very controversial subject between many comic designers in Egypt. Some criticize his work because of what they see as extreme exaggeration and deformation to the extent that he loses the basics of anatomy. So I asked him how he chooses the form for his characters and how much he relies on anatomy.

“I first start by setting a number of characteristics in the personality of my character and try to show these characteristics without animation. I reach this by deformation, I don’t just exaggerate certain parts but I also have to make sure that these deformed parts fit perfectly with the whole form or character so that it looks very harmonious. I think about how to make the strangest things but they are still acceptable. Any artist needs to know very well about anatomy, one has to know about the bones of the body and how they work, so if I make a very long neck for example I have to think about how they will be connected to the shoulders whether they are very small or very wide.”

Coloring .. in details:

Ahmed actually got a sample of one of his latest works to show us his exact coloring process in great details. “This piece I first drew and inked manually then scanned as a JPEG format to the computer to start the coloring stage on Photoshop.”

Coloring layers

I break down my coloring to layers, and try to keep areas with different colors in different layers ( e.g hair color is in a different layer than face colors). In this case I have 5 layers; skin , skin shadow and highlights, clothes, clothes shadows and highlights and background. To me organization is very important, I name each one of my layers, and also through the layer properties I choose a color for each one.”

The “inked” layer:

“I put my inked layer on top and any color layer I place below that and I set the layer mode to multiply –so the white background becomes transparent and the grays become a little darker and the black lines become even more solid. And to make it even smoother I go to the menu Layer -> Adjustments-> Levels, and start adjusting the balance so that all the “dirt” on the paper disappears (that result from the sketching phase), and also so that the black is very dark.”

Background layer:

“I chose two solid colors, one for the ground and one for the walls, and sort of merged them together using “masks”, I then added textures to each one; craft paper for the walls and ceramic for the floor. I also give them different layer modes like soft light or overlay, just to give them a unique effect.”

Choosing the right colors:

This usually takes 3 phases. First of which is selecting the white area of the character (for example his face) and fill it in with a solid color, depending on the characters ethnicity. Then start to choose the dark (shadow) and lighter (highlights) colors. “Usually some comic artists chose these by opening the color picker menu and drag towards the darker or lighter colors, however I personally don’t do this, I open the same menu but instead of choosing a color from the default menu, I choose it from any other menu (so instead of H I choose L or CMYK etc.). What happens is I start playing around with the color, and start mixing the color a little with red or blue or so on, this gives me a darker color but without adding any black. The same goes with the highlights.”

Shadows are never black based, choosing the color of a shadow mainly depends on the mood or atmosphere of the whole frame. If the character is in a field then the shadow color is green based, if the frame is in the morning then the shadow is blue based and during the sunset the whole mood is reddish and then so is the shadow.

Adding reflection:

Besides highlights, which are very soft white brush strokes placed in certain places, there is a very important aspect called reflection. No object has a dark outline there is always a very thin light that follows the end of a dark area. This is usually a very bright color like turquoise for example with a very soft brushes and high tonality.

Coloring technique and palettes

“I usually try to follow the oil painting technique, where I set a background and start coloring layer after layer on top. I also try to diversify my techniques so in some occasions I copy the watercolor technique. On Photoshop I usually prefer one of the TOYO COLOR Finder palettes which are very earthy.”

Adding effects:

“Even though I try to avoid it from the start, but sometimes after I’m done the whole color mood seems off. To fix this I place a color on top like yellow or orange and set the mode to overlay or multiply or something. Or I could add gradients or mask some parts.

Also you should know that in comic strips the more inking there is, the better the page looks and also the less need for painting. This is seen a lot abroad.”

Designing the characters of this example

The head master is inspired from a turkey because he’s like very cocky and so on. He has a chin like the turkeys and his nose looks a little bit like a beak, also his legs are very long and thin while he has a huge butt. So how can his deformation be acceptable by the viewer? His very thin legs are imitated elsewhere in other parts of his body, the exaggeration in the foot itself is also reproduced in his foot, and so some parts are pointing outwards while others are looking inside.

The Teacher as well is inspired by a rock; he’s like a rock that has been shaken after the little kid has put him in an awkward position. He has very huge forms, where the shape of his head is the same as the shape of his body, however they go out in very explicable lines to the very short and small legs. He also has tiny hands, which symbolizes how he can’t hide himself from the awkwardness.

The little kid is also very symbolic, he is a very tiny child but to show that he has a point of view he is first of all wearing very big glasses, and has not only a very big head but also a gnarling huge mouth.

Competitors:

Anyone who works in my field is my competitor, any artist. If I saw a nice piece of work by a certain person, I would want to know about him and also learn from his work and his techniques. I would call them if I know them and tell them that I like latest work and learn from it. He communicates and makes friends with a lot of them to learn from different artist (good contacts in general). He respects everyone (any good work) even if the artist is young or new to the field.

The field in Egypt

“There are a lot of problems with comics, education and knowledge in the whole country. “

His point of view is that no one in Egypt knows exactly what is and the importance of pre-production which is a lot of work including, how to do pre- production, `design character, Model sheet and storyboard. This is a lot of work, which could be done by several people. This is not one job but there is no one who knows how to do them.

Advice

“It is important for a designer to do a lot of quick sketches in order to train his hands on drawing quickly and his eyes on catching the whole form of the object or human body. Finally, it would help the designer understanding and analyzing the shape of the body. Only visualizing the main form with no details draws a fast sketch. Your tool is your hand not your equipment because your hand expresses what you have in your mind or imagination. We have to enhance our visual knowledge by watching a lot of things and analyzing/understanding them.”

Examples of his work:

Digital painting:

Illustrations:

Comic strips: