Hussain Almsosawi’s prolific and pleasing motion practice

Hailing from Bahrain, which he describes as “a small island with a big heart” 3D motion designer Hussain Almsosawi has since moved to Brooklyn, New York, and started his own studio – Mossawi Studios. Although now focusing on CGI, VFX, and product design, Hussain originally began his creative journey studying graphic design at the University of Illinois, before gaining a masters in Industrial Design, with a focus on innovation and biomimicry, from the University of Alberta. “My love and passion for different areas of design, from 2D to 3D, from stills to animation, always sparked my interest to keep learning and growing my skills, and most importantly,” Hussain tells us, “to find a way to blur the lines between the different fields I like, and fuse them together to come up with something unique and exciting.”

Across his already exciting career, that is equally striking as it is satisfying, Hussain has worked for incredibly large brands, including Adidas Football, Adidas Basketball and EA. Unable to choose a landmark project he is most proud of, in fact quite spoilt for choice, Hussain tells us: “there has definitely been a lot of exciting milestones,” with each project both taking a place in his heart, as well as adding to the building blocks of his practice, continuing to elevate his work. “With Nike, I worked on a few interesting projects with Nike Basketball that were for some of the world's best athletes,” he recalls, working on projects that are nothing short of really really cool – “such as the design of the last series of Kobe Bryant shoes ‘Kobe Fade to Black’, or the graphics of a special Olympics Edition shoe for players like Lebron James, Kevin Durant, and Kyrie Irving called ‘Shoes of Paradise.’” 

Alongside other work for Nike, including Nike Football during the 2014 Brazillian World Cup which saw it launch a new football boot, Hussain took great pride in working with EA sports for its Fifa 2015 game, telling us that it was “a game that I always played growing up, and still enjoy playing.”

“Aside from some of these projects with the big brands in the industry, a huge part of what I love working on are self-initiated projects,” Hussain explains. This has led the creative to garner a large following on social media, with followers captivated by his gratifying and eye-catching outcomes. “I would say these have the highest impact in becoming a landmark project because the project purely comes out in your own name,” Hussain adds, thriving in having total control over the work, its marketing and importantly its messaging. Gaining more client work as a result of these self-initiated projects, Hussain has many more projects in the pipeline, including work for brands the likes of Reebok, Versace, Pepsi, Ford, General Motors, Samsung, and Adobe. “Hopefully, I will be able to share these projects and the collaborations I had with each as soon as they are out,” he adds. 

The strength of Hussain’s work lies in its confident simplicity, flourishing in intelligently reserved aesthetic and concept. In discussing the process of his work, Hussain tells us: “I believe that every project needs to start with inspiration,” explaining that if this isn’t the case, “I can’t see a good outcome, or at least not something that you will be excited and proud of.”

In loving a project and the idea behind it, your imagination will develop your inspiration, detailing that in “growing your creative muscles,” you can cultivate fresh and exciting ideas which shape the foundation and narrative behind the design. From this bedrock, one can now set out to explore where to lay your creative hat. “On a more philosophical level,” Hussain concludes, “I truly believe that every design should evoke an emotion inside of you, and make you feel a certain way, and that is what good design creates if done right.”

Obviously not having enough on his already stacked plate, Hussain started Project 365; an endeavour to create a daily 3D still render. “The whole idea of creating something on a daily basis has a lot of benefits,” Hussain explains, finding a rhythm and persistence in one's work, as well as a technical improvement in your skillset. “But on the contrary,” he adds, “the more creative work you do you could also run out of cool ideas,” therefore setting out with the intention to keep his creativity flowing upstream and challenge himself in learning new things along the way.

Hussain recalls “the outcome of the project ended up being a very beautiful intersection between science, technology, and art,” whereby Hussain found himself examining the “forces, simulations, patterns” found within nature – bringing them to life in a digital space.  “The final results would sometimes break the boundaries of how things would and should look in reality,” he adds, pushing the confines of softwares and playing with every possible variable; including colour, composition, direction and technique, bringing with it an ingrained emotive tone, from Hussain dedication and forethought. 

“On a personal level, some of these visuals have already inspired me to push some of the still frames I like,” Hussain reveals, in his move towards re-animating his previously rendered scenes as live tableaus. “My goal is to keep exploring more ideas in motion, keep sparking my curiosities, explore, have fun, blur the lines between different fields,” he adds, “and last but not least, continue “Evoking Emotions through Motion.’”