Amal Alshammari and Hossein Heydar
Doha: Growing up in the late 80s, Hossein Heydar was introduced to the world of animation through Spacetoon, a free to air TV channel specialising in animation and children programmes.
“I grew up with all the animation series including Captain Tsubasa, Grendizer, and Future Boy Conan among others.” It seemed clear what he wanted to do, being able to be exposed on these shows. “I was inspired by the stories and how they were made and that’s why I pursued animation as my course in college.”
The uninhibited sense of fun watching cartoons and animation is what excite Hossein. The vaudeville act, the fast sequence and the peculiar fantasy world of animation that seems anything is possible tweaked the imagination of the young animator, giving birth to Nefaish, a creative studio specialising in producing high-quality animation inspired by the Qatari culture. He is the Co-founder and Managing Director of the studio.
“Nefaish was established in 2018, we worked and directed commercial and awareness videos for local institutions, and our latest project is “Kawkabani” – the first Qatari animated web series. Its first episode will be aired on the first day of Eid,” he said.
The story revolves around an alien named Kawkabani, who has never missed a World Cup before. While travelling to Qatar two years before the event, his spaceship crashes in the middle of the desert and the three guys who find him decide to host him until the World Cup in 2022.
Nefaish was born out of passion and the love for Qatar. He explained that it was crucial and necessary to produce high-quality content, highlighting the country’s culture and values and tell the world the stories of Qatar. “I and my partner Amal Alshamari decided to establish Nefaish and produce high-quality animation with global standards. We want to represent the Qatari culture throughout our work, especially since my partner has a culture service provider in Qatar called Embrace Doha that offers cultural services that cater to the needs of newcomers, expatriates and visitors.”
Animation made possible with digital effects create a wide latitude of imaginative fantasies. The combination of preserving and presenting the cultural heritage and tradition to everyone is the core value of Nefaish. “The representation of culture is crucial as it tells the story of our country. Presenting it through animation is an entertaining and fun way that will help the global audience understand the Qatari society,” he said. “The most memorable project we did was the “Happy Blockade Day” which was released after a year of the blockade. The video went viral. Everyone was talking about it on the Internet and television channels. We showed to the world the achievements and development Qatar had made through that video. The strong positive reception of that became one of our motivations,” he said.
Nefaish’s metamorphosis is beginning, they are working on an online content targeting the children not only in Qatar but the whole MENA region, and the masterwork of Kawkabani is going places – they are now set to produce the season two of the web series!
The animation industry has a constant flow of animated cartoons, access can be found at a touch of the screen, you can make anything you imagined on animation, what seems to be easy takes days, weeks even months to finish, not to mention that it requires endurance and patience. “It requires a lot of hard work and thinking out of the box, nothing comes easy, a great animation is not to be rushed,” Hossein said.
“We see that animation is the most effective medium to engage communities and send messages. It says a picture is worth a thousand words, however, one minute of animation tells 1.8 million words,” Hossein concluded.
The fluidity of movement in animation speaks a lot more than words can, the computer-generated imagery fuse with digital effects create ripple stream of the free-flowing imagination world of an animator and designer. Anything seems possible in animation, Hossein and the whole Nefaish team proved that.
