Hi!

I want to thank you all for watching my recent submission ATLARTOR: GIRL & IT! It also instantly got featured at Newgrounds' front page and I was actually surprised! I also want to thank you all for giving me your honest feedback, they really helped me a lot to know what you loved and hated. The most important thing is to improve based on your feedback, especially from harsh ones. Many filmmakers and animators (from big to indie ones) these days usually ignore criticisms because they felt that they’re always right and not their viewers, they’ll always go for the ones who loved their movies and not the ones who didn’t enjoy.

Art concept for my upcoming animated film, HUJAN DAN HIJAU

When I joined the film/animation industry, and when I submitted by first animated film into film festivals, many filmmakers, all young and old ones, bragged to each that they make better films and each other and to be honest, I hated being dragged into these kind of topics or even moments. I usually tell them that I’m not exactly in the competitions to compete, but to learn almost everything from each other, in terms of storytelling, errors, technical and many other things. And the other reason (and this is important) on why I joined film festivals is because I need to know and understand audiences around the world, that that is the most difficult part because many of them have different tastes on what they enjoyed. I have yet to understand audiences who go to cinemas to watch big-budget films like Michael Bay (and no, I do NOT enjoy most of his work, especially his recent works). Christopher Nolan and his brother, Jonathan, are two of my favorite writers and Chris as a director. It was his movies who inspired me and got me into being serious when writing stories for either animated or live-action films (I haven’t done any live-action film yet). The Nolan brothers are my role model, but before you say anything, no, I’m not talking about making everything gritty-versions and all that, but coming up with originalities. I hope one day, just for once in my life, I want to meet both of them and give them a big hug to thank them for inspired me to get into the film industry. Just in case you’re wonder what Christopher Nolan film that got me into becoming what I am today. Well, that film would be The Prestige, 2006.

I also want to announce that in few months, I’m going to ditch Adobe Flash and moving to Toon Boom Harmony. The reason is because of the limitations in Adobe Flash. Now I know that there are many hardcore animators who still use Adobe Flash and does better job than many animators (I’m one of them, haha). Because of the limitations, I didn’t get how I needed for my recent works, especially ATLARTOR: GIRL & IT, and yes, the animation wasn’t great because, again, all was made in Adobe Flash. With Toon Boom Harmony 12, with their recent updates in it, all of my problems are about to be solved. I’m still learning and experimenting with the software and hopefully to master most of its tools within few months (I’m a fast learner, so there’s that).

Anyway, that’s all I can share with you and, again, thank you so much! Glad to know that most of you enjoyed ATLARTOR: GIRL & IT’s storyline. Some of you asked me if this is a prequel, well, I did announced a year ago that GIRL & IT is the first installment of the ATLARTOR Trilogy (winks), so yeah, expect two more sequels.

Take care and have an awesome weekend (it’s weekend here in Dubai, UAE).

Regards, Mohammad Ahmed Fikree www.mohdfikree.com