James Curran

SEE YOU AGAIN MAY 8—12, 2019

14th

Pictoplasma
Conference & Festival
Berlin

02 – 06 MAY 2018

From avant-garde urban art to global recognition value, award-winning animation to viral Internet phenomena: the 14th Pictoplasma festival presented true virtuosos of contemporary character design and art. The featured artists challenge the way we recognize familiar facial patterns and demonstrate character power at its most emotive—radically abstracting the portrait, playfully flipping heads inside out, covering the inner void with grimacing masks, or pushing minimalist reduction to its limits.

21 CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS

Alex Norris

‘Webcomic Name’ creator Alex Norris is famed for his viral meta-gags fusing tragedy and comedy. In his talk he reflects on the frustrations of false expectations, human relationships, and the existential insignificance of everything we do—and confesses that he struggles to write a comic without an ‘oh no’ punchline.

Mike Perry

2018 NYC USA

USA/ Mike Perry Mike Perry is an artist, animator, creative director, brand consultant, poet, and designer. His work encompasses paintings, drawings, sculptures, art installations, books, murals, all of which are made to conjure that feeling of soul-soaring you have when you stare into distant galaxies on a dark night, when you go on long journeys […]

Miranda Tacchia

2018 NYC, 2020 USA

USA

Orion Tait

USA

USA/ Orion Tait / Buck Orion Tait is creative director and partner at Buck, a design-driven production company with offices in New York, Los Angeles and Sydney. Buck’s directors and artists use animation, visual effects and live action to deliver work that is visceral, innovative, fun and ego-free. Buck understands itself as an integrated collective […]

Paul Budnitz

2018 NYC USA

USA

Peter Sluszka

2018 NYC USA

USA/ Peter Sluszka Peter Sluszka has spent a career trying to coax personality and character out of inanimate objects. With strong roots in stop motion, it’s not uncommon to find him fully immersed in a project and getting his hands dirty with set design, fabrication, or animation. It also helps that he’s gleaned a thing […]

Réka Bucsi

Hungary

Taili Wu

2021 Taiwan

TWN

03 – 05 MAY/

ARTIST TALKS,
LECTURES AND PRESENTATIONS

BABYLON
ROSA-LUXEMBURGSTR. 30
10178 BERLIN – MITTE

At the heart of the Festival, the central Pictoplasma Conference presented 20+ key lectures by the world’s most influential artists and upcoming talents, cutting-edge graphic, toy and game designers and leading animation filmmakers, offering the chance to learn from and be inspired by some of today’s most innovative and avant-garde artists.

17 CHARACTER WALK EXHIBITIONS

#FaceOff exhibition 2018

02 – 06 MAY/

EXHIBITIONS AND
GROUP SHOWS
THROUGHOUT
BERLIN

The accompanying Festival exhibitions staged new work by an impressive line-up of participating artists – presenting sculptures, paintings, installations, art editions and multiples – many of them for the first time in Berlin.

VIEW EXHIBITIONS

100 ANIMATION SCREENINGS

© César Pelizer

03 – 05 MAY/

Big screen
psychedelic
eye-candy and
storytelling genius

The Festival\’s film section brought animated newborns to the big screen, whisking the audience around the world in freshly curated programmes brimming with psychedelic eye-candy and storytelling genius.

VIEW SCREENING PROGRAM