By Daniel Katz
After travelling the world making a name for himself in the realms of filmmaking and photography, a local visual artist has made his way back to Algonquin to finish his studies in the marketing program.
Luaiy A., whose given name is Luaiy Agial, is a visual artist and the founder of CreationsOfLA. He produces visual art and has worked with world-famous creative people such as: Nick Cannon, Fefe Dobson and Kreesha Turner with more projects in the works.
While he delves into many varieties of visual art, including photography, film, modeling and fashion, he focuses on the one form of art which made him want to direct and produce videos in the first place – cinematography.
“I like shooting things from different angles that people haven’t seen,” LA said. “I like telling a story with how I put it together.”
LA, as he is known online, travels between Toronto, where he is based, and Los Angeles producing film and photography projects that have gained recognition within artistic circles. He is currently the cinematographer for the Young Astronauts, a filmmaking collective which just won the VMA for Directing a Music Video for Ariana Grande’s Problems.
Filmmaking came naturally to LA, who started out as a hip-hop dancer and wanted to find ways to capture the movements he was creating.
“I just wanted to film myself dancing in a different perspective with different angles to make it look like a movie. Then I traveled to the Middle East and what I saw there got me into filming and I realized that this is what I wanted to do.”
Validation from his peers and people who he looked up to kept him going while he was still starting up in the industry.
“To be able to have the people you look up to sit down with you and tell you they love your work, that’s the stuff that’s really inspiring. When I had Snoop Dogg and Fefe Dobson and Ginuwine tell me they loved my work, and that really motivated me to a whole different level.”
His 12 Months of Summer series, in which he films his life as he travels throughout North America, Europe and the Middle East, contains five videos of a 12-part series on YouTube and collectively has over 40,000 views. The photography from his Instagram account – titled creationsofla – recently gained the attention of Top Dawg Entertainment, the management team behind rappers Kendrick Lamar and Schoolboy Q. He is also brand ambassador and former creative media director for The Escape Movement, a popular start-up urban clothing label based in North Bay.
Much of his success is a result of aggressive self-marketing and branding, something he stresses is important for any visual artist starting out in the industry.
“Focus on your image more than you focus on your art. People need to know what you represent, what your look is and who you are as a product before you push yourself as an artist. No one will know about your art or support you as a person if your branding doesn’t portray quality.”