The Colombian Hottie, James

The day after Colombian midfielder made headlines with his World Cup 5-goal record we made an article about the new 22 year old sensation James Rodriguez. Not to mention he is kind of a heartthrob, in my opinion and in so many other girls around the globe. He is now known as King James, more like a super hottie James. hehehe

☺♥☺

THANKS FOR READING!

World Cup Semi-finals (a tile magazine cover)

For the World Cup semi-finals we have decided to make one artwork for the two-day match and cut them half for each day. A pretty clever idea i must say! So my task was to come up with the artwork.

As for the style of the illustration, my design director took inspiration from Cleon Peterson's works. We all agreed that it was a good direction and would definitely make sense. We wanted to a bloody battle, almost merciless. Using only limited colors representing the each teams.

July 8 magazine cover

July 9 magazine cover

This is the original artwork with the bleed

And then this is what happens if you put the two magazine covers together! :)

THANKS FOR DROPPING BY!

World Cup magazine supplement covers

More World Cup hype from from this part of the world and more design and illustrations from me! Here are four magazine covers that came out with my illustrations/designs for English and Arabic publication.

Let me tell you an inside scoop of this whole supplement: everyone in our design team is required to come up with at least three design covers and it's a MUST. Otherwise we will suffer the consequences.  And when our design director Adonis Durado says it, it has to be done. Everyone started coming up with ideas two months before the world cup even begun.

And here are mine so far. Here are the rest of the covers.

The First Kick

This came out on our maiden issue, concept, illustration and design are mine.

The Music of World Cup

This came out two days before the opening of world cup. Concept, illustration and design are mine.

David and Goliath
During the World Cup a David-and-Goliath match is bound to happen which was the case of Argentina x Bosnia and Herzegovina on June 15th.
Concept by Adonis Durado, Illustration\ Design by me


Eye Ball
Day 15th issue featured more on the women side of the event. This concept was by Gregory Fernandez while I was tasked to do the makeup. Photography by Cio Datan. Model: Jihan Attia
Check out the video of the behind the scene  here.

Check Times of Oman website dedicated to this year's World Cup!

T H A N K S ! :)

The Legends of Football

Here are another set of illustrations I made for Times of Oman and Al Shabiba magazine supplement for the World Cup. They are the football legends of football.

Fanz Beckenbauer of Bayern Munich, Ferenc Puskas of Real Madrid

Eusebio da Silva Ferreira of Benfica, Guiseppe Maezza of Juventus

THANKS!

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Hugo Chavez is Dead

When the news broke out, it was the first thing that my graphic editor asked me to work on. Hugo Chavez was a leader who left his country divided when he passed away. Like all the leaders, he had his shares of supporters and enemies. As a media, we stand in the middle and show only the necessary information. 

The story(page) talks about Chavez's life as a leader for 14 years and his impact on the Venezuelan people including its economic and political sate during his reign.

The picture above is based on an existing photo but modified to make him look asleep.

The concept was to use the colors of the Venezuelan flag. The red side will represent the leftists and the yellow will be the people against Chavez.

The final illustration above with Chavez in blue and additional illustrations by Marcelo Duhalde.

The final page that came out last Thursday, the day after his death.

A Lost Language

There is an old and almost lost language in Oman called Shahria. It's spoken by the southern part of the country. They hope to preserve this language so the future generation may still speak and understand this local tongue.

I only have a small spot of illustration for this article and below is how i interpreted the story. There's the hand gestures (to add more meat of my drawing) since Arabs are well-known for speaking with it.

Below is the scanned drawing with my reference which i found online (a picture of a tribal Omani girl, circa 1981from National Geographic)

Arabs are very well known of this particular hand gesture; i don't know what they call it but they usually use it when they want to say "wait" or "be patient" or something of that sort. In this case, "listen to me".

I wanted to achieve an antique look or sort of like a feel of "old" feel for this illustration, i have a strong feeling i wasn't able to achieve it but nevertheless it's not a bad one. :)

Benzema x Robben

A not-so usual rendering I use for match spreads, this is a watercolor portrait of Karim Benzema and Arjen Robben for the most anticipated Champion's League match this Tuesday.

Maradona twice

I made an illustration of Maradona twice, not because i wasn't able to capture the 'Maradona face' but it just didn't capture the article's story or the editor's fancy. And also because there was a bit of a misunderstanding in between.

First Maradona: Instruction was the article is just a small story about him managing a team in Oman. Something about it is not right, the story. So i thought of drawing him in a simple 'manager look' with very simple lines.

 

Second Maradona: "Action I want action!" the editor insists. OK Fine. Then i find out that it's a whole page and the illustration will be quarter of the page's size. Sheessh. And Maradona is training a team in the Mideast.

Nuffsed. @-)

No tablet week

Last week the graphics team in the office were given a challenge: working without the Wacom tablet! I swallowed a lump of surprise when i heard it from our design director. The whole idea was to challenge our skills and resourcefulness while being deprived from our comfort zones. Yes, the tablet pen has already become a part of our fingers and without it, i personally felt impaired!

So, when this spread came i thought i'd go back to using my old Staedler Graphic 3000 Duo. I was faster and still comfortable using it. But, it occurred to me that i am not challenging myself. So i decided to use fine line pens and make more detailed work without having to render them digitally with realistic colors. And waaallllah! :)

 

 

Husein Al Hadari of Oman national team

 

Nnam Tai Hee of South Korea national team

Them faces

I loooove making portraits, it's one of my most anticipated task at work. There is a section in the Arabic paper that gives me the opportunity to do this. Although it's quite small in dimension, i am always eager to do it. BUT, for some reason it has been decided to stop making portraits/caricatures on this small section ( i hope it is only temporary). There has been too much load at work now and for something so small, we can't put too much effort and time for it.

So here are the last few portraits i made for the last page of Al Shabiba section A. You might recognize these faces. The first one, I adore her so much!:)

 

Blogging

Yes blogging is the 'in' thing now. And some people are worried because it might replace the old tradition of paper-writing and stuff. Of course there is more option in writing an online diary and more audience too with less restrictions as you can speak your mind even hiding your identity. Not to mention it's eco-friendly. But paper is paper, it has its own beauty.

This is how i usually work in a page-- i see to it that my illustration is right where it should be with the body texts and the headline. So the page designer wont take too much time figuring out what to do with the illustration. It is always best to coordinate with them on how i want the page to look with my illustration on. They usually give us the freehand on the page (coz most of them are lazy). hhihihi

Quick post: super model turned actress

Molly Sims y'all! :)

Got carried away with pencil shading! haha! OK, now moving on to the next illustration. :D

Vector lines in one day

Three days ago i made two illustrations all in the same style. One for a small article and a celebrity portrait. I like doing this sometimes, not shifting style on illustrations specially within a day. It allows me to continue the momentum and explore a particular style. This is a happy-fun-loving-colorful and random vector lines. It's very easy and quick! Good for some rush tasks.

Food Chemicals

About the junks we put in our body that causes cancer and even blindness. Foods that are chemically preserved.

 

Orlando Bloom

I just made him so gay in in 30 minutes!

My first anime page

I am not a fan of anime. It never really bothered me that it's a huge culture probably even bigger than life and there are a lot of really good movies, series and comics of anime. Just didn't took my fancy at all. What bothers me is if someone makes a comment of my illustrations and calls it anime. It's so not right!

But i am not a biased artist. Whatever works for a nice article to convey in my art and design, i will pursue it. For this article, it is once again related to Japan and its nuclear crisis and how it is affecting the investors. I thought what a better way to make an anime of it because anime is sooo Japanese (duhh palot)! By the way this is my very first ever to make an anime art. Very first.

The actual newspaper print was really good-- that's me expecting a really bad and poor attempt of an anime comic. Considering i'm a first timer! This page even made it to the wall of 'Best Pages of the Week'! :)

I made each frame in one A3, making sure my drawings are in good quality and very detailed. But i don't know how these anime artist do it. Their lines are just clean and perfect. And doing it in Arabic- my orientation has o be right to left. I was trying so hard to make it look like a pro anime comic-- but it was just a poor attempt. I need more years of practice.

 

 

Here are a few of my references. Just random google search. And since i am clueless on how to make anime, i had to have a crash course! I didn't wanna break any rules in anime. I have always had high respect for this art, even if i cannot really appreciate it,  now it just got higher.