Pictoplasma Berlin 2011

At the start of April (6-10th to be precise), I attended the Pictoplasma Festival in Berlin with Mark Adamson and Will Adams.  The festival consisted of a very densely packed 4 days with a character walk and lectures from 25 illustrators, artists and people involved in character design in one way or another.

Character Walk

The Character Walk was hosted in 25 exhibition spaces/galleries around a small area of Berlin Mitte.

I really enjoyed seeing the work of so many talented artists and having the opportunity to speak to a few of them as we went around, particularly 3753% Tordal who we spent a while with talking about their work and customising boxes for Papp.

Instead of talking about them in depth here, I will try to write posts later on about the artists that inspired me the most or had interesting things to say in their lectures.

Characters in Motion

Each day started with the Characters in Motion screenings, showcasing some brilliant animation work selected by the organisers.

Some of my favourites included:

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On by Dean Fleischer Camp
Pixels by Patrick Jean
How Your Money Works by Musclebeaver
Giant by Céline Desrumaux & Yann Benedi

Doomed by Guillermo García Carsí
Let Go by David Wilson
Babiole by Matray
Logorama by H5

Baltimore Clap by Kristofer Ström
The External World by David OReilly
Umbra by Malcolm Sutherland

Lectures

The lectures ran over three days, from Thursday to Saturday, and were so densely packed together it was difficult to find the time to do anything else (especially since 50% of them ran late).

In this time we heard a number of very different artists speak about their projects, inspiration and work in development.  Again I will come back to the individuals whose work has inspired me or who I believe gave me something to think about!

The Missing Link Show

At the end of the 3 days on the Saturday night there was The Missing Link show, hosted at the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz.

The highlight of this for me was most definitely Motomichi Nakamura, though Dan Deacon’s set was fun to watch from the seats as he encouraged people from the audience to join him on stage and act out a few things whilst he played records.

Motomichi Nakamura’s dark videos in which he uses only red, white and black were the perfect accompaniment to the heavy music that he chose to add to the mix.

All in all the festival was entertaining and fun, so I think I will most likely be trying to get a ticket for next year too.  Roll on doomsday edition Pictoplasma!

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