Ahmad Nady

Nady was born on December 31, 1981, into a family of artists. His father, Mohammad Nady, was a cartoonist and his mother, Iman Ezzat, is a sculptor and writer.[1] In addition to his parents, Nady has cited his childhood and upbringing in the 10th of Ramadan City[note 1] as an early influence in becoming an artist. As a child, he was an avid reader of comic books and magazines and he would occasionally create comics about his relatives, basing his characters on their features.

Over time, this became a hobby with his father acting as mentor. He drew caricatures of schoolmates and teachers. Among his first comic characters was the "Amazing Mido" (Arabic: ميدو العجيب Mido al-'Ajeeb), a young inventor who was subjected to radiation that allowed him to easily control and change his shape and form.[2][3]

According to Nady, his first published cartoon was political. The cartoon was made during the Gulf War, while Nady was in elementary school, and it portrayed Sindbad hitting Saddam Hussein on the head, saying, "You've made the children of the world hate me now that they know I'm an Iraqi." In 1992, at barely 11 years of age, he won his first award in a workshop at the Mahmoud Mukhtar Museum. The following year, he was given the best caricature award by a caricature magazine.[2][3]

Ahmad Nady began his professional career at the age of 14 when his father was suffering from fatigue and overwork. Nady asked him if he could draw for a Lebanese magazine and his father agreed and encouraged him. He started out at first as an assistant at a workshop producing Pharaonic sculptures, before working with a number of magazines, including Karma (Arabic: كرمة) company, known for several of its comics: Simsim's World (Arabic: عالم سمسم The Egyptian version of Sesame Street), Sameer and Alaa el-Din (Arabic: سمير علاء الدين) and the Young Arab (Arabic: العربي الصغير), among others.[2]

During this time, Nady started mailing several comic magazine editors with samples of his work and his ideas, all of which were rejected in Egypt. One of these, among his very first professional work, was a series of adventures called Fayek w Rayek (Arabic: فايق ورايق) after its two main characters, a chimpanzee and a sloth. The series was published by the Saudi comic magazine Basme (Arabic: باسم) and was popular among children.[2]

While steadily advancing as a comic artist, Nady began entering the realm of political cartoons. In 1996, he won third place in a UNESCO exhibition, "Where We Live", and in 2004, participated in an art exhibition organized by the Artists' Syndicate in solidarity with Palestine. He promoted comics and cartoons by setting up numerous workshops across Egypt, including at least one in the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. He has also won three awards from deviantArt, an online community of artists.[2]