Hani El-Masri
My blogs
| Industry | Arts |
|---|---|
| Occupation | Designer, Illustrator, Visual Development Artist & Storyteller. |
| Location | Cairo, Egypt & Burbank, California |
| Introduction | Born in Cairo, Egypt, in 1951, Hani El-Masri received a world-class education first at the Jesuit Institute, then at Cairo's School of Fine Arts. By the time he left Egypt to come to America at the age of 35, he had an entire career behind him. After freelancing for three years in New York City, he joined Walt Disney Imagineering in 1990 where he worked as a concept and show designer for the next five years. At Imagineering he brought his knowledge and expertise to such projects as Disneyland's ToonTown, Tokyo Disneyland's Critter Country and the Arabian Coast at the recently opened Tokyo Disney Seas, to name only a few. In 1995, Hani went to work on the animated movie, "The Prince of Egypt", for Dreamworks, SKG, as a visual development artist and stayed to work on "The Road to El Dorado" and "Spirit: Mustang of the Cimarron". He later moved on to do visual development work for the animated feature, "Osmosis Jones", for Warner Bros. Studios. Back in Egypt since 2005, Hani is working on his own children oriented version of the Thousand a One Nights in a book format, the first to be illustrated by an Arab/Egyptian artist. |
| Interests | History, Objects, Calligraphy, Cinema, Animation, Etymology, Anthropology. |
| Favorite movies | Fantasia, Star Wars, Pinocchio, 101 Dalmatians (Animated), Pan's Labyrinth... |
| Favorite music | Good Music. |
| Favorite books | Cyrano de Bergerac (Edmond Rostand), The Egyptian (Mika Waltari), Ishmael (Daniel Quinn), The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight (Thom Heartmann), Les Miserables (Victor Hugo) |
If you could peer far enough into the night sky, you'd see a star in any direction you looked. When would you sleep?
Qvo Vadis?