THE gallery was packed with young artists, graphic designers and animators, all with budding talents. Masina House Design Gallery has kicked off its 2008 events calendar by hosting Mohammed Saeed Harib, the creator and director of the first in the Middle East 3D animated successful series, Freej.
In his energetic, friendly and frank way, 29-year-old Mohammed Saeed Harib explained to the audience how with determination and confidence he went from nothing to absolute success. The young audience was enthralled and cheered his inspirational recount. It all began when he went to study architecture in the US, but after “failing miserably” in his first year of study he changed his major to animation and graphic design. In one of his classes, the professor asked the students to create a character, a superhero. “I thought to myself, that’s easy. Our history and old tales are full of heroes I can base my character on.” But his professor told him no — to think outside the box. “So I started researching our heritage and traditions, and there I discovered that when men went to sea for months to dive for pearls, they left behind the women to take care of everything and this gave me the idea of women as superheroes,” said Harib to the audience which was mainly women. The professor was surprised that he had chosen a woman for his character in a male-dominated society, but Harib explained how women are “the backbone of our society.”
His first — and later to become the main — character in the series is Um Saeed, who represents authenticity, wisdom, and loyalty to traditions and who looks like “our typical grandmother,” short and thin. The professor then asked the class to create the antithesis of the main character. That is Um Saloom, a forgetful fool who is tall and fat. Then another character had to be created to balance the two, and that is Um Allawi, the tallest of the four main characters, an Arab of Persian roots who is educated and a technology fanatic but whose decisions and behavior are not always wise. The last character is Um Khammas who is always angry about something.
After his graduation Harib returned to Dubai and worked in the Dubai Media City. His boss saw his drawings of the four characters and encouraged him to develop them into a cartoon series. “I couldn’t believe he was actually telling me to go ahead and do what I had dreamed of doing.”
In 2003 he had a three-minute demo done at an animation production company in Thailand. “It was the first time I had seen my drawings move and it was a great feeling.” He took the demo to the Mohamed bin Rashid Establishment for Young Business Leaders in order to develop the demo into a real film which would cost $2 million. The company loved the demo but did not have the budget and was not sure there was a market for the cartoons. “I went to nine UAE universities and completed 6000 surveys to confirm whether there was a market and a demand for my cartoons and there was.” He went to Dubai TV to ask for support, but they were not convinced. “Television is used to importing ready-made things and paying less for them or copying them in an Arabic version.”
He then traveled to India and found a production company to make the series for $500,000 (around 4 million UAE dirham). In 2005 he held a press conference with a representative of Mohamed bin Rashid Establishment, which by then had raised the ceiling of the budget for the project to 3 million UAE dirham, and announced Freej (which means neighborhood in the local dialect). He was given the 3 million loan with interest and asked to create 15 episodes in 18 months to be shown in Ramadan of 2006. It was an almost impossible deadline. He enlisted university students to volunteer in drawing the backgrounds, got his friends to do the voices of the characters, and through long intense days with a colleague from Dubai Media City wrote the episodes because professional writers refused to give their time.
Getting sponsors was another challenge. He went to all the big companies. The locals loved the series; the foreign bosses dismissed it as “too local.” Finally, Etisalat Company agreed to pay 3 million dirhams (less than the 4.1 million cost), but just before he signed the contract, the competing DU Company, offered 5.1 million for a three-year contract; he signed the contract with DU only ten days before the first showing on September 22, 2006. “I had been dreaming of this day since 1998 when I first began creating the characters.” The series was a great success. He became a celebrity overnight and received both local and international awards. But before he could savor the success, he worried about the next season which had to match the success of the first — and it did. Merchandising products were developed of the characters including stationary, videos, puzzles, toys, and soon juice stands.
“Next year will be the last season of the series,” announced Harib to the disappointed audience, but there are other plans for the characters. Within a few months, an entertainment theme park of Freej will be announced as one of seven big theme parks to be constructed in Dubai, and a movie will be released in 2012. “I think one of the factors that made Freej a success is that it captured traditions and a local dialect and lifestyle that is disappearing. We have perhaps documented the end of an era.”
The interior designer and owner of Masina House Design Gallery, Lina Bangash, was pleased with the event and the attendance. She announced: “We have an exciting year planned for Jeddah artists and designers, I want Masina House Design Gallery to become a cultural center for Jeddah’s art lovers and young designers, a place where they can greet and meet each other and see what’s new and what’s happening now in the world of design and artistic creations.”
Masina House Design Gallery is located behind Al-Hamra Sofitel, off Palestine Street. To learn more visit: www.masinahouse.com, www.freej.ae.
