Pictoplasma Portfolio

Early 2011 Fashion Net e.V., Düsseldorf, approached us to help them bring some contemporary character chaos into the huge Fashion Net Night Party they were planning. To make this a visual overdose worth remembering we immediately snapped into action and flew over Japanese artist and VJ Motomichi Nakamura, who added the optical stimuli to the spinning tunes of DJ Mark Ronson. Our Character Ride installation not only served as the smiling back-drop to cat walk presentation by fashion designer Philippa Lindenthal, the same mechanism later on also had the honor of violently shaking off several of her surprisingly skinny models.

Additionally, professional dancers from the prestigious groups Sasha Waltz, Constanza Macras and Pina Bausch agreed to force themselves into the costumes of our PictoOrphanage and added the necessary bling to the night.

As un-official hosts of the evening they managed to turn the fashion event’s red carpet into their very own stage, randomly attacking the surprised paparazzi, mis-using every opportunity to roughly rub shoulders with the local celebrity, happily disturbing the cat-walk presentations, and ecstatically pole-dancing the night away before a rather bewildered Düsseldorf crowd.

Area Code, the most innovative agency for urban games based in New York, commissioned Pictoplasma to produce a family of more than 150 individual character designs, allowing visitors of the American pavilion at the Expo Shanghai 2010 to engage in a unique interactive adventure. The challenge was to enhance the exposure of Johnson & Johnson with an installation that not only engages the viewer into a playful experience, but also communicates notions of caring and connecting. Visitors were encouraged to give birth to their very own, individual character on a huge presentation screen by texting personal messages via their mobile phones.

The incoming messages acted as the DNA to create unique critters that would accompany the visitors during their long stroll through the exhibition, and could be given further instructions to playfully interact with other characters on their way. Each interaction was accompanied by a little, rewarding animation and generated points that were ultimately transferred to real currency and donated by Johnson & Johnson for Chinese charity purposes.
The individual characters live on and can be revisited while they continuously populate an ever-growing interactive website, where they can be re-transferred to the mobile phones of their creators.

In 1991 Nike produced the Air Max 180 sports-shoe, which became highly popular for its cutting-edge technology and artistic roots. For the first time, Nike collaborated with artists from the very beginning to tell the story of innovation born from creativity.

For their re-launch in 2006, Nike commissioned Pictoplasma to find a designer to revive the original spirit in a new, iconic character, giving tribute to air and zero gravity and at the same time transmitting an urban quality. Pictoplasma developed this idea a bit further to not only design a character, but to produce it as a costume that would incorporate the figure into our world.

The German artist Wayne Horse, known for his innovative graffiti, animation and art projects, designed a new character and took over the production of the full-body costume.

Max had his first appearance at the 2nd Pictoplasma Conference where he mingled with an international audience, was host of his own gallery exhibition, initiated urban interventions and had a big appearance at the main venue, animating attendees to sing at the closing karaoke party.

Pictoplasma further incorporated the character in its PR communication, which led to a wide visual circulation.

In 2005, Pictoplasma was commissioned to brand the re-launch party of the 1916 Lucky Strike packaging in Olso. The idea of the party was to recreate a classical “Green Ball” of the early 20th century, albeit with a modern, contemporary character twist. The “1916 Green Ball” theme referred to the original Lucky Strike packaging in 1916, when a Green Ball held in New York was set up and hence raised sales.

The concept incorporates the idea of blending the old and the new: an eclectic mix of the 1916 time, the Green Ball theme and a keen expression of contemporary graphic illustrations, street art, character design, club culture references and contexts, with a strong focus on adult Manga type cartoon and – obviously – the colour green. The resulting life sized stand-up characters and a vast amount of over-sized props created by Pictoplasma in close cooperation with artist dub99 where set up at a ballroom in Oslo, while the aesthetic was integrated across all elements of the event starting with the invitations through to the gifts.