Big crowd at the Babylon-Mitte film theatre and cheerful mood last weekend. I had spent the past few months looking forward to getting the full Pictoplasma Animation Festival experience but only managed to spend one afternoon there.

Pictoplasma is all about the art of contemporary character design. Whether they come from advertising, fine, urban art, music video, animation, or comics, Pictoplasma discovers, archives and showcases the best of them.

Because my previous post on the festival might have given you the impression that the screen was invaded by aquatic birds on Prozac, i thought i´d demonstrate in 3 moves that it wasn’t the case. At all:

Daniel Garcia and Nathan Love directed El-P Flyentology, the story of a guy who refuses to become a Church of Flyentology convert.

Then there´s the PSST project which has different teams of designers, directors, and animators collaborate to produce short films. The technique is derived from the Surrealist game of Exquisite Corpse and the children’s game Telephone and applied to the arts of motion graphics, animation and film-making. I particularly liked the Unreciprocated Surgery Zombie.

(image snatched at animawatch)

Eric Lerner´s series of 5 Mr cityMen which combines 3D animation with live video shots. We were introduced to Mr Fortune whose phlegm reminded me of Huggy Bear, Starsky & Hutch´s street contact and to Mr Sunken who moves through life in constant slow-motion. But there’s also Mr DejaVu who experiences the same day over and over again. Mr Scared and Mr Dreamer, who both to their best to deserve their name.

I didn’t embed any video this time, the plan is to have you explore the artists and designers’ websites and find more about their work. The videos mentioned are out there and pretty easy to spot.