+ links of Interest +

1. eHow:  is an online knowledge resource with more than 337,000 articles and videos offering step-by-step instructions on "how to do just about everything".


Related link:
Basic Digital Media & Making Videos -- powered by eHow.com

2. TED: is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design.


(Talks : David Hanson: Robots that "show emotion")

People I admire : x3 ---> Walter Elias Disney

Walter Elias Disney is probably at the top of my list. He was one of the most famous people that succeeded in animation. He has touched the heart of many children and adults. He holds the record for winning the most Academy Awards and was a creative film producer and animator. He created some of the most successful characters, movies and theme parks of the 20th Century.

 From a young age he showed a strong interest in drawing. While he was still a kid, he would draw cartoons and sell them. People looked forward to seeing what he had to offer. As he got older, he began showing an interest in photography along with cartooning.
He set up his own animation company& created his animated cartoons, and experimented a new way to combine live action with animation.

Then, he began doing more features and then created the first full-length animated movie "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs". Because of the success of it, he continued making more full-length movies. His second success came with the creation of Mickey Mouse which was the first fully synchronized sound cartoon. Actually, he innovated the way of synchronizing sound and action.

He put back profits to make better pictures. His insistence on technical perfection and his gift as story editor pushed his firm ahead. Starting out with pencil sketches and then expanding into comics, toys, full featured films & action films that created for him a true financial empire.

 








Walt often worked 'til midnight and requested the same to his employees. He used stories to reveal his vision and inspire employees.Walt's life that explores the hardships he overcame to achieve what he did and want in his lifetime. He's only ambition was to make great cartoons. Imagination, optimism, creation, dreams, innovation and self-made success were most inspired ideals that I think Walter left for all artists & animators.

I really admire the way he developed his love in animation to bring his imagination to reality. What really affected me was how he didn't price his success in prizes or popularity,  or even wealth as he only sees what he longing of doing.

"All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them." Walter Elias Diseny (see below for reference*)

The idea of his courage meant alot to me as a practicitioner; if any door closed down on me, there will always be another one open to carry on my dreams with ambition. Disney had the courage to follow his dreams too. He ignored the critics and the disbelievers to become one of the most significant and successful founder. Disneyland was an evidence of passion and love and the result of which was an impressive success.

Bibliography: 

•  Qute: Scott Schulz, March 24, 2008,Glendale Community College Career Services, URL
  

• Walter Elias Disney, Encyclopedia of World Biography, Thomson Gale 2004, Encyclopedia.com. 18 Oct,  2009, URL
•  Brad A., JustDisney.com,July of 1999,URL
  

People I admire : 2x ---> Makoto Shinkai ( 新海 誠 ) '(^_^)'

Since my childhood, I loved watching Anime & reading Manga. I used to read & hear names of famous Anime producers and Manga publishers, but no one has got my full attention and admiration as Makoto Shinkai.I've been a big fan of Mokoto Shinkai who can't get enough off his master pieces since I saw his first work.

Makoto Shinkai is a famous young japanese Anime director, animator, picture book artist and principal voice actor. His name got popular in 1998 after he won many awards for his first personal animated short film that he made in his personal computer at home.

The passion came after graduating from Chuo University in Tokyo (1992) and majored in Japanese literature; Indepently, he developed his skills in painting and joined in a literature club to draw picture books for junior & senior high students.

In 1996 he got a job in a computer game company (Falcom) as a graphic designer and he practiced CG for 5 years by making video clips for games and graphic design in addition to web contents.

Even with his gained experience & the huge amount of produced work, he felt ungratified with his own desire to make longer clips with his own stories.

 He wanted that to express his creativity and thoughts with his own work. The lack of technology & equipments he owned at home didn’t turn him down to start creating his short film at night. 

This is the point of struggle that any one could face at the beginning. In my view, all the greatest people started their dreams positively with enthusiasm & few resources, but this didn’t bring them down as they were determined with continuation towards their success. 

He didn’t stop or throw away his aspiration. After three years of hard work he finished his first5 minutes short movie & got many rewards. Anime studios and companies looked up to offer a place for him but he refused to complete what he began.

I was really touched by his insistence to what he really wanted for three years to complete his first work that led him to be a master.

In 2000 he resigned from his job to concentrate with his new job as a free-lance anime creator with a small team that he personally selected to work with him in his studio at home.

There aren't too many creators like Makoto Shinkai. He is a true revolutionist in the world of anime.  His hands are master s of creating emotional landscapes with a visual treat of light, shadow, and color. He writes storyboards and directs his own projects. Shinkai’s successfulness comes from his ability to communicate in his visuals directly to his audience and that’s what keeps the audience interested. Also Shinkai’s love for computer graphics is the thing that made him enjoying his time working in his computer.

 “While I was using 3D modeling software, I could build a 3D world in front of my eyes as though I'm playing some kind of game. Thus I enjoyed the task itself.” (* see below for reference)
The way he impressed me most was by enjoying what he’s doing; which is the main aspect to accomplish his dreams.

First Work released in 1999 (She and Her Cat):

Samples of Work ( Click on the work title to watch the trailer):

5 Centimeters Per Second
The Place Promised in Our Early Days
Voices of a Distant Star

   Bibliography:

•  Shinkai's Quite, Patrick Drazen, 26 Mar 2008,  Do-It-Yourself Animator, URL
  
• An interview with Makoto Shinkai, 2008 June 22nd Sunday, Joe, Otako News, the URL link
  
• Another interview with Makoto Shinkai, 20-22 June 2008, London, Alex Fitch, Electric Sheep website, URL
• Makoto Shinkai's Anime, June 2006, Jenny Rae, intergalactic medicine show website, URL
• Shinkai’s Biography, Anime Site, Lesley Aeschliman, BellaOnline's Anime Editor, 2009, URL
  

Other links of interest (Google translate used to translate):

1. Makoto Shinkai’s personal website
2. Makoto Shinkai’s Fan web
3. Makoto’s work

People I admire: 1x ---> Pierre Omidyar ( E-Bay founder )

My first HTML page was created at the age of 13 in after-school IT club that drove me into interest in web development.

More Exploration had held an important reflection in my life, which had an impact of me knowing more about those who made difference in the world.

Pierre Omidyar is one of the outstanding names I admire who changed e-commerce. He had a key point of life that opened the doors to harness the power of markets and create opportunity to improve the lives of many people.

His earlier life was an example of constancy, purposefulness and independence of learning his interest in web programming.  Similarly, I was self- disciplined to learn and independent to seek information & look for my own resources.

This thirst to his own desire was faced against obstacles later in his full time job in Apple after his graduation. Personal online trading community was his first experiment & he put a lot of effort & time with passion to make his dream succeed.

Even though I faced many obstacles to overcome, it didn't stop me from launching my first website online three years ago.  

Whenever I think about it, it always made me determined to push myself further in my dreams with a lot of passion and time, no matter what or how difficult it is to achieve noticeable progress.

"You should pursue your passion. If you’re passionate about something and you work hard, then I think you will be successful. “ 

Pierre Omidyar , (for reference see below)*

Putting a meaningful passion in work that has been reflected in his success at the end was such motivated reason to focus on our efforts

As a practitioner, I think it's required to choose the work that has a true expression of who we are and what's important to us to lead our work with this awareness and understanding.

Bibliography:

• * Matthew Toren, Adam Toren, Pursue Your Passion – Pierre Omidyar (founder of eBay), young entrepreneur , 29 April 2008 , the URL link
  
•  Cohen, Adam (2002), The Perfect Store: Inside eBay, Back Bay Books, ISBN 978-0316164931
• Viegas, Jennifer (2006), Pierre Omidyar: The Founder of eBay, Rosen Publishing Group, ISBN 978-1404207158

:: Top 5 Pro Resources from my Professional Practise ::

I'll focus here on websites that I do really use as a learning resource in daily basis in professional practice. Not mentioning networking websites e.g. Facebook, news, rich techno & historical/ biographical websites that are in general use for research/educational purposes for the majority of us.

1. Adobe ::

Adobe Systems Incorporated is a computer software company headquartered in USA. The company has historically focused upon the creation of multimedia and creativity software products, with a more-recent foray towards rich Internet application software development.

Adobe's products include:

• Desktop software: Adobe Creative Suite + Adobe Audition
• Server software: Adobe ColdFusion + Adobe LiveCycle
• Technologies: Portable Document Format (PDF) reader/ editor, PostScript, and Flash.
• Web hosted services as Adobe Kuler, Photoshop Express, and Acrobat.com
• Web design programs: Adobe Dreamweaver and Adobe GoLive
• Video editing and special effects: Adobe Premiere and Adobe After Effects

 What Information I've found & How can they be used : 

I think Adobe’s platform is a great choice for any designer/ developer because they can get benefit of  the new design software, updates, related techno/user manual documents & online tutorials:

• To further enrich the user’s experience of these rich applications for more professional work , knowledge tools and techniques that leads to improve/ enhance process skills of their organisation quality and implementing/ production skills.
• Improve designer/developer workflow, fix bugs, updated documentation, etc,
• get support for real-time collaboration between all the products
• applications can work across different operating systems

2. Lynda.com: 

lynda.com's Online Training Library is a provider of online training for creative computer software. As president of lynda.com, it also oversees the publishing of books, CD-ROM and DVD training materials.

Lynda.com is an award-winning provider of educational materials, including instructional books, the Online Training Library, CD- and DVD-based video training, and events for creative designers, instructors, students, and hobbyists.


 What Information I've found & How can they be used :

It provides comprehensive video-based training by authors who are experts in their field ( 676 online training courses) to an international membership of  subscribers. Considering the speed at which technology evolves, the Online Training Library is a great solution for me keeping my skills current.

Whether I need to get trained in digital photography, web design and development, motion graphics, or just need to brush up or master on any other new creative software, I can learn all the software skills any time I want, as many times as I need to gain the competitive edge with the online tutorials.

3. Computer Arts:

Computer Arts is the one-stop shop for professional advice on creating digital art and illustrations.
 It's the world’s best-selling magazine for digital artists and designers, boasts a strong line-up of tutorials every issue, covering everything from manipulating photographs to creating  vector illustrations. 

The website has a gallery, online tutorials, competitions & creative directory.







 What Information I've found & How can they be used : 

Tones of tips and tricks for web design, typography, 3D, animation, motion graphics and multimedia. That keep me up-to-date with the:

• New designs, typefaces and the new approach of imagery
• Creative projects from all over the industry and the world
• Techniques of creative tutorials  
• New interviews with creative design industry leaders& their studio profiles 
• check out the Inspiration Workshop articles
• Read  issues affecting creativity in the commercial world & articles that are focusing on the key business and technology issues that are affecting the design industry
• Video Training by using the free CD that  highlights a lot of great work in video format, along with essential software video training.

4. Creative Cow:

Creative Cow is a support community for media professionals in the film, video, broadcast industry, motion graphics & special FX.

What Information I've found & How can they be used : 

• Forum that is headed by many of the top authors and other professionals to help members getting their tech-problems solved..
• Get training online by free tutorials for professional graphic artists and other dynamic media producers.
• Library of articles, tutorials, and video tutorials related to digital video products like Adobe After Effects, Apple Final Cut that help to get with the latest tips & techniques.
• Podcast tutorials episodes with many video & audio tutorials, tips and tricks that can be exported & carried away anywhere in mobile devices.
  
• Technology news and press releases for film, video, design, software& hardware to be updated with latest news of the media industry world-wide.

 5. Getty Images:

 GettyImages is the leading provider of digital media worldwide, creating and distributing a range of assets from royalty-free stock photography and editorial images to footage, music and multimedia . It is a supplier of stock images for business and consumers with an archive of 70 million still images and illustrations and more than 30,000 hours of stock film footage. It targets three markets; the creative professionals (advertising and graphic design), the media (print and online publishing), and corporate (in-house design, marketing and communication departments).

What Information I've found & How can they be used :

It offers the industry's best photos and broadest collections of imagery and footage ( including award-winning news, sport and entertainment content, plus rare and contemporary archival imagery) that meet the demands of  fully digital publishing industries..

Getty Images can be used as a good resource to get a quick online access to images, footage and music tools to create inspiring work. Also designers can use Catalyst inspiration search engine to get more ideas & be inspired by the suggested keywords. As a customer it will allow me to quickly and effectively search, license and download the industry's broadest, most relevant selection to my digital content.

{ C V }

 QUALITIES:

Computer-literate, reliable, organized, self-confident, practical, self-motivated, thoughtful, work well with others, positive, methodical, independent worker, logical, imaginative, hardworking, friendly, adaptable, co-operative, competent and patient.

EMPLOYMENT HISTORY:

•    Self-employed in Weekends: Private classes teaching Arabic language. 

•    Self-employed in summer holidays: Work with my friend’s studio as:

1. A Photographer & image editor/manipulator.
2. Advertiser & Graphic Designer
3. Creative Videographer for special events: weddings, birthday’s celebrations.

•    2003-2005 I worked in Reignsoft Ltd Freelance Broadcast station (part time) as:

1. Web Designer
2. Online Advertiser
3. Video/Sound Editor – Post Production - Credits

•    April 2009 I worked in Abu Dhabi Media Company for The National Newspaper as:

1. A multimedia producer
2. Reporter
3. Translator (Arabic to English).

ACTIVITIES: 

•    D&AD student 2009 Awards.

•    YCN competitions.

•    London Design Exhibition in the Old Free Range -Truman Brewery.

EDUCATION:

• Middlesex University: BA(Hons) Work Based Learning (WBL)Professional Practice : Digital Media & Multimedia Design (2009 – Present)

• Middlesex University & Barnet College (School of Art): FdA Graphics & Multimedia Design (2007-2009)
• Barnet College: GCE Applied ICT Double Award (2005-2007)
• John Kelly Technology College:  (2003-2005): Math’s GCSE, ICT GCSE, Arabic 'A' Level, Technology GCSE, English GCSE, Arabic GCSE
• Other: Summer courses in Photoshop, Astronomy and HTML.

EXPERIENCED IN :

• Web Design Development & promotion.
• Graphic and Multimedia Design.
• Software: Adobe Creative master collections, CorelDraw, Swish, Sony Vegas, Sony Sound Forge, Microsoft Office, iStopMotion, Final Cut & Aperture.
• Platforms: comfortable working in both Mac OS and Windows environments with good user/technical skills.
  

SPECIFIC SKILLS : 

Cards Design, Postcards, Posters, TV stings/idents, logos, animated banners, 2D animation, post production, Graphic Motion, Stop Motion, Typography, photography, Crafting,  Layout/Press design (Magazines, books covers, newspapers, newsletters), image manipulation, storyboarding, graphical illustrating, printing skills, business stationary, experienced with digital cameras, Super8 cameras, podcasting, web design (HTML, XHTML, XML, PhP, JavaScript and CSS), programming (Visual Basic), formatting computer & installment new Hardware/Software and security programs.

Contact :

Email: amaal.fm@gmail.com

 * Personal Details :   

Personal Details are not viewable to public.