This year's last ray of light shines upon icy rain, revealing miserable faces, swept away by Siberian winds. It's time to fight the spreading chill with an extra portion warmth, and we do so by emerging ourselves into the ever-sunny world of eternally smiling characters, albeit of an highly artistic flavour. This method is guaranteed to work - and this Newsletter is here to prove it:

Nothing makes you glow more from the inside, than the perfect harmony of sonic and visuals in love.

That's why we're proud to announce the immediate release of our first ever monograph book/DVD publication: Faits Divers by French duo Gangpol & Mit! Calibrate your monitor, pump up the stereo and expose yourself to 14 brand new tracks of music and animation straight from doomsday.
Their work has been described as "Residents meet South Park" and motionographer adds: "... If 8-bit Nintendo characters could reproduce and evolve, they might have grown into something like the cast of Faits Divers … Melodies run and jump like Super Mario himself, and warm analogue pads wrap around your head with nostalgic charm." Threat your own home entertainment system to a little "Motherboard Slaughter"!

What could be more comforting, than turning up the heating and spooning the character of your choice?

So we've lowered the prices of all publications in our online shop for a limited time (until December the 7th). Now you can pay your heating bill AND cuddle our latest character radiant releases and stocking filler solutions. Amongst the offers is our Characters in Motion 2 DVD, now allowing you to pre-feast your eyes on what to expect with a brand new teaser.
Minus 10 degrees is also the perfect temperature to go to your local pub, force yourself on strangers and impose your endless knowledge upon them. Should this knowledge be in any way character related we're here to help and have temporarily cut the price of the world's only publication that collects all you’ll ever need to know about character design and art on 328 colourful pages. Prepare for Pictopia assembles works and theoretical texts by international artists, designers and thinkers, all investigating the aesthetic principle of anthropomorphic characters. Information on all of the above will illuminate your computer screen as soon as you click this link!

Never forget: There's sunshine awaiting you at the horizon.

Et voilà - spring 2010 promises enlightenment with the coming of the next Pictoplasma Berlin Festival. Our focussed little sibling of the biannual conference awaits you with a fine line up of artist presentations, lectures and animation screenings. It's all happening on the 9th and 10th of April, at the Cinema Babylon Mitte in the heart of Berlin.
Head on over to the Festival's mini-site, watch it grow and save up to 50,- Euros on one of our limited Early Bird or Package Deal offers!

If you've never been embraced by a Pictoplasma Festival before, or if your memory seems frozen, we've started uploading little snippets of previous Pictoplasma Talks for your convenience, first in row being StudioAKA's Marc Craste with valuable advise on the ingredients of a good animation.

Speaking of which, good animation is exactly what we're looking for. Consider this an open CALL FOR ENTRIES for the Festival's big screen animation programs. Go grab the entry form, deadline for entries is the 1st of February!

While this newsletter comes to an end, future ones will continue to bring you up to date in regular chunks. However, since there's no better way to counteract the dark months than with a little social interaction, you now have the choice to be kept in the loop by a heart-warming bouquet of social network tools, including random PictoTweets and friendly real-time Facebook announcements. Your choice.

Best from yours always,

peter and lars