Tuesday 11 / March / 2025
Muscat: Few Omani women dare to pursue a job in the animation industry, but Aya Mohammed Al Hajri, a 25-year-old Omani girl working with Cartoon Network as a background artist, is planning her own comic show.
Inspired by comic book artist JH Williams III and comic book artist and writer Mike Mignola, this Omani woman background artist is scaling new heights in the animation industry, which is quite an achievement for Omani women.
Born in Muscat, after graduating high school, Aya studied Information Technology at Higher College of Technology in Muscat. However, she realised that it was not her passion and so she dropped out after three years and took a one year animation course at Cartoon Network Animation Academy in Abu Dhabi.
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“After I graduated the Academy, I was given the opportunity to intern at the Cartoon Network Studios Arabia and even though the internship was only three months, I learned a lot from everyone there and a year after the internship I got a job there as a background artist,” Aya told Times of Oman.
In the academy, she focused more on doing backgrounds and storyboards. “I had a good sense for them and so I decided to put more effort and focus into those two departments,” Aya added.
While talking about the challenges she faces in the animation industry, Aya said that most of the time they have strict or short deadlines and maintaining the quality while working fast.
“And even though not many people pay much attention to backgrounds in animation they do take a lot of effort to be done right and greatly affect the mood of the scene and to establish that the artist should have good knowledge of perspective, composition, and color theory among many other principles,” Aya said.
However, in between her busy work schedule, Aya plans to create her own show one day that is aimed for young Arab kids which should be funny, smart, and encourage kids to pursue their passion and dreams instead of the more historical or purely educational shows that are overflowing on TV channels right now.
“I have a long way ahead of me and I need to improve a lot before I can truly be on the same skill level as artists on an international level,” Aya added.
Aya’s works can be viewed at https://www.behance.net/awrugro.
