In exactly one week our special Early Bird Pictoplasma NYC offer is about to end - perfect timing to squeeze in one last newsletter with some juicy details to help you make up your mind.

PICTOPLASMA NYC Conference
November 4+5, 2011
Hosted by Parsons The New School for Design
Tishman Auditorium, 66 W 12 St, 10011 New York

Now in its third US edition, the Pictoplasma Conference returns to New York and presents a marathon of 12+ inspiring lectures, talks and panel discussions by some of the most outstanding artists and designers pushing the edge of contemporary character visualization. Embedded in a series of accompanying exhibitions, art happenings and group shows (from November 3 - 6), the conference invites a diverse audience of graphic designers, illustrators, animation filmmakers and producers, fine and urban artists and character connoisseurs to gather under one roof and discourse freely about the world of character-related art and design.

While we are still hiding a few conference speaker highlights up our sleeves, here's a little list of confirmed reasons why you shouldn't let this opportunity pass you by...

Marek Michalowski and Hideki Kozima are the founders of BeatBots (JP/USA), a group of roboticists who design interactive characters and machines for entertainment, research, therapy, art and toys.
Their popular robot Keepon was built to engage in nonverbal interaction with children, particularly those with autism. Michalowski holds a Ph.D. in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University and B.A. and M.S. degrees in Computer Science and Psychology from Yale University. He has held visiting researcher positions at institutions in Japan (ATR, NICT), Korea (KAIST), and France (CNRS).

Jon Burgerman was born in the UK and has risen to be one of the prominent key artists in the recent boom of modern day practitioners who traverse the disciplines of urban art, design, illustration and entrepreneurism. A sense of British self-deprecation, dry humour and modern-day anxiety imbues his work along with an enthusiasm for salad.
Burgerman has pushed the character obsession of the late 90s into a new direction, with his monster-like characters layered into compositions where cartoon-like forms are crammed on top of each other until they create a screaming mass of energy.

Geneviève Gauckler is a French artist, illustrator and art director who is best known for her ever-evolving procession of lovable characters and Technicolor digital mashes. Her works are bright, fun and hectic – often combining symmetrical designs with soft-edged computer generated images laid against photographed backgrounds. She has exhibited all over the world and has had art commissioned by many advertising agencies and magazines. In recent years she has been dividing her time between advertising works and creating her own artwork, which she refers to in good humour as "silly and absurd".

Mark Jenkins, born 1970 in Fairfax, Virginia, is an American artist most widely known for the street installations he creates using box sealing tape. His work, through the use figure installation, explores absurdist and surreal themes. Projects include converting traffic circles to merry go rounds, parking meters into lollipops, and hyper realistic figures designed to create public spectacles that absorb passersby as actors on situations.
He maintains the Website tapesculpture.org and teaches his tape casting process in workshops in the cities he visits.

Jeremyville is an artist, product designer and author. He self produced his first 3D inflatable designer toy in 1995, and wrote the first book in the world on designer toys called 'Vinyl Will Kill', in 2003. He has also written and produced his 2nd book 'Jeremyville Sessions', and has had several designer toys released through Kidrobot.
Jeremyville has been in group shows at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburg, the Madre Museum of Modern Art in Napoli, the 796 Arts District in Beijing, and solo shows at Area B Gallery in Milan and Bunkamura Gallery in Shibuya Tokyo.

Dutch designer Raymond Lemstra started fully focussing on drawing in 2010. In his work he makes references to the illustrative nature of primitive drawing and sculpture, while his main interest is the distortion as a result of selective emphasis; parts of interest are emphasized, unimportant parts reduced or left out.
His characters are often big headed, with a strong focus on the face while the body is trimmed to its essential properties. This contrast evokes a clash of intent, simultaneously assuming simplicity and complexity, randomness and reason, flaws and perfection.

Allyson Mellberg Taylor's drawings are intimate, reminiscent of things seen in an artist's most personal journal/diary. Gentle figures find a stage on the page to breathe, to interact with others.
Allyson makes her own ink, boiling walnuts to produce a dark brown color, and extracting pigment from pokeberries to make magenta. The characters she creates often suffer from some sort of malady or disfiguration. She pictures a world in which unseen toxins bubble up to the surface, making their adverse impact visible.

Gary Taxali (CA) is an award-winning illustrator whose work has appeared in many major magazines and exhibited in galleries and museums throughout America and Europe. In 2005, he launched his first vinyl toy, The Toy Monkey, which included a special edition along with a silkscreen print commissioned by The Whitney Museum of American Art. This led Gary to create his own toy company, Chump Toys, which recently saw the release of his OH NO and OH OH vinyl figures. Aside from his gallery shows and illustration work, Gary also devotes a portion of his time teaching and lecturing at various arts organizations and schools.

If the above has caught your attention, it might make sense to act fast:

OUR EARLY BIRD OFFER IS ABOUT TO END - Until September the 12th we are still offering full conference passes for $180,- only - instead of the regular $260,-!

For more details on the overall program, the growing speaker line up, the animation screenings and information on the accompanying 'Character Walk' exhibitions in various venues, please visit the central website
http://nyc.pictoplasma.com

Looking forwards to seeing you all soon,

peter and lars