Pictoplasma

I first heard about Pictoplasma around 2008. I was part of the vinyl toy scene; collecting and photographing art toys in various situations and posting them on Flickr with a short, cute narrative. It was a lovely community of toy makers and designers, collectors and admirers.

Around that time, I was fairly fresh into having a full time job, and therefore had a bit of spare income to spend on beautiful vinyl and resin figures to build up my collection. These were the days when Playlounge was a staple of any London visit, this was before Instagram, this was before I even had a smartphone.

I had wanted to go to Pictoplasma but never really took that thought any further. I fell out of the toy scene a bit due to a couple of life events, I left Flickr and moved to Instagram. I forgot about Pictoplasma. In 2020 I created a new Instagram account, got back into making art for fun and started connecting with old and new friends because of art, and a couple of years later remembered about Pictoplasma and started following their instagram account.

I attended Manchester Animation Festival (MAF (no, not MAFS)) last year because my friend Lucy Hackett (an excellent composer and all-round lovely, talented person) wanted to go, and I thought ‘I like cartoons and animation, I’ll go as well’. We had a great time and got to see some really brilliant talks and animations. Before MAF, (no, not MAFS), Lucy mentioned that she was interested in maybe going to Pictoplasma. Luckily enough, the Picto tickets went on sale in the middle of our MAF week, and while Lucy went to visit some colleagues in Manchester on the Wednesday morning, I sat at home and bought two early bird (cheaper) Picto tickets, thinking that I could probably easily sell the second one to another friend if Lucy decided that she didn’t want to come along. Years of practice at buying gig tickets meant that I was super fast and got tickets number 007 and 008. (Squirtle and Wartortle).

I finally had a ticket to Pictoplasma, about 16 years after first hearing about it and wanting to attend!

I suppose that by this point I should have already explained what Pictoplasma is. Here is the website, although that won’t really do its glory justice. It’s a conference and festival of contemporary character design and art and it’s absolutely brilliant.

To be surrounded by people excited by characters and art, to watch over an hour of animations every morning and then hear the creators answer questions about them, to listen to artists give talks about their work and process, and just generally - to be in Berlin, one of my favourite cities on the planet. What a great combination!

I wrote above that the Picto website wouldn’t do the experience justice, and am realising that it’s unlikely that I’ll be able to capture it with mere words, but I’ll give it a shot!

Lucy arrived in Berlin a few hours before me, and was already at the hotel. On my walk to the hotel I was of course looking at the collages of stickers all over signs and poles (as usual), and the first one that I recognised was a lovely little red guy by Andrew Bell, which put such a big smile on my already beaming face. One great thing about Berlin is that there is SO MUCH street art, and so many stickers all over the place.

I knew my friend Timothy Winchester was going to be at Picto, and had had a couple of emails with Booky, but that was about it for people I knew would be there that I’d met or had some form of communication with. On the Wednesday night there was a welcome party and a couple of people came up to me. I didn’t recognise them at first, but quickly realised that it was Mark and Abe who run Liverpool Print Fair! This is the second time I’ve seen them in a completely different place shortly after visiting the print fair (the first was at last year’s Thoughbubble, a week after the print fair!) What a nice surprise!

As I mentioned earlier, each morning Thursday-Saturday kicked off with an hour or so of animation that had been submitted to the festival, followed by a short Q&A with any of the creators who were there. These were all so cool to see, and it was such a great way to start the day! Sort of like watching awesome cartoons with breakfast! (recommended)

After this, there were six talks from artists, split into groups of two with a break in between. Some of my favourites were from:

Parn Aniwat (@wood.youmind), who spoke so nicely about creating his beautiful and sweet wooden characters. I really resonated with how he described the act of creation, as well as with the ethos behind his work. He said that he only started carving wood because his kiln broke! He had a great schedule diagram showing his monthly schedule (carving for two weeks, painting for a week, photographing and selling, packing and sending orders for a few days at the end of the month). Regular working hours, a regular working pattern and Saturdays off, with Sundays reserved for some hobby time (painting). One notable question was about how his work is all happy and light, and whether he ever felt sad and wanted to put that into his work. He responded with something to the effect of: of course he got sad sometimes, but that he didn’t feel that it was his place to put that into his work and pass that on to other people.

So Lazo (@sonialazo), who shared their love of clowns and colour, and spoke about their artistic journey, fashion, and how there is sadness hidden in plain sight in their seemingly colourful and upbeat artworks. So’s love of dressing colourfully and wearing things that bring them joy was really great to hear, and it was really interesting to hear about their work and that they have so many products and sales!

Ana Seixas (@anaseixassantos), spoke about creating her colourful, charming work and the process of having a physical shop and studio in Porto. This was a lovely talk, in which she mentioned that she loved pin badges. I managed to spot her outside later in the day and gave her one of my skull pin badges and a sticker, because being nice is fun! I spoke to her again later in the festival about her work in the exhibition and we had a lovely chat about riso! She has some really nice riso flowers and skaters that you should check out!

Joe Bennett (@joe_bennett_animation), shared loads of short animations that had me laughing really, really hard. I was crying with laughter after a couple of the shorts. He shared about his process and then towards the end showed loads of concept art about Scavengers Reign (which I still haven’t watched yet - I’m saving it for when I’m in the mood to enjoy it fully which I know is ridiculous). I’ve seen people saying how good it is on insta and I’m even more excited to watch it now! Perhaps I’ll start it this weekend with breakfast (recommended). I really recommend watching some of his shorts on instagram. A few of my favs are the hey how’s it goin, Iggy, you see somethin? and Debra you’ve got a problem. Absolutely brilliant.

There were loads more great talks but I’m still feeling pretty tired from the whole event/travelling home and getting straight back to work so I’ll leave it at those four.

One of my absolute favourite things about Picto was leaving small piles of badges in the badge bowl (next to a badge maker, where you could make your own). I brought along about 80-90 simple colourful skull button badges and dropped about 5 or 6 in the bowl each time I passed by. And the best part was that they were all gone each time I returned to put more in!

I also loved leaving a handful of stickers on a table by the front door - again they disappeared really quickly! I must have left about 300+ stickers over the course of a few days! I had rubber stamped my instagram handle on the back of them all so that people would know who they were made by. It felt like a really cute dead drop between character fans! Sometimes I’d leave a few stickers on the table, then go to the loo and by the time I passed the table again, they were all gone!

Before I left for Picto I cut a load of A6 pieces of white card in half, making mini half-sized A7 postcards. I rubber stamped my instagram handle at the bottom and packed a couple of brand new black Posca pens. Initially my idea was to meet people and do a drawing for them there and then, but as Thursday moved on I realised that this probably wouldn’t happen, so I drew three skull doodles and left them in the postcard rack. These also disappeared super quickly, so I drew five more that evening back at the hotel. In the morning I drew about thirteen more and dropped them in batches of six in the postcard rack, They all vanished really quickly, so I kept topping it up. The following morning I drew another twelve, and then next day another twenty. I managed to put most of them in the postcard rack but at the end of Picto I had about ten that I didn’t manage to get into the postcard rack, as it had moved on Sunday so that the market could be set up. In total I managed to draw fifty doodles across those few days, and I got such a thrill each time I passed the rack and saw that they had gone.

I loved the feeling of giving away free stickers, badges and little piece of art to Picto attendees, and I can’t wait to level this up for next time I attend! I don’t even know who picked these up - I met a few people who recognised me due to my nerdy skull t-shirt (I packed three because I knew I wanted to wear it and also that no one else would be wearing one!)

I got such a boost from seeing how people responded (simply by them picking up my stickers/badges/art) and it made me feel such a sense of excitement and joyful satisfaction that there was this silent exchange, these moments of secret joy for them in finding little treasures dotted around the place. I’d love to have been a fly on the wall to see people’s reactions when they saw my gifts, to see them deciding which postcard piece to take.

I traded stickers with a few people I bumped into while leaving stickers on the table, and on Sunday I drew in a sketchbook at the market in exchange for a free sticker (thanks @dina.gif - great idea!)

I’ve got a big pile of stickers and postcards to unpack and share photos of, but I’m being slow to unpack because I don’t want to the dream to end, and unpacking feels like it might bring that closer.

Thank you so much Pictoplasma, you were such a magical and wonderful experience and I miss you terribly already. 💚

I can’t wait for next year.