Last weekend I was invited to give a talk at the NYC Pictoplasma festival, an event that brings together creators and lovers of character art for talks and screenings. It was seven hours packed with inspiration and adorable characters. I thought I’d share some of the love today!
Julia Pott lives in Brooklyn like me, and she creates animals with gorgeous detail and subtle personalities.
This is a short animation that she screened during her talk—it’s actually a bit unsettling, but also beautiful and mysterious, and it combines live-action footage with animation.
Random Acts – The Event from Julia Pott on Vimeo.
You can buy cards and prints and more starring Julia’s sweater-wearing characters from her Etsy shop.
Gemma Correll from England is another awesome lady making illustrations of animals, but hers are hilarious cartoony journal-like meditations on life.
She also has some awesome stuff available to buy, and I think we should all buy it.
Another person I was super-excited to meet was Sonni, an Argentina-born illustrator and animator who used to work for Friends With You (one of my favorite character art companies) and now lives in Brooklyn. I love his recent work, but my all-time favorite project of his has to be the Hello Kitty x Wish Come True toys that he designed while at Friends With You.
I wish these were still available, but I’m quite sure they’re hard to find now. But Sonni also has a couple of prints available from his website.
Other presenting artists, all of whose work I really admired, were Andy Rementer, David OReilly, Buff Monster, and Jason Freeny.
And here’s a photo of me giving my talk! (I was all nerves, but I think it went pretty well.)
(Thanks, Arkadium Art!)
Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone!
Wow. That is creepy. It makes me think of some of the animated sections of The Wall. Very cool.