PAST ACADEMY SHORT COURSES
Tank Thunderbird (COL) Tank Thunderbird a.k.a. od3sa, is a cartoon character turned human through the magic of computer programs from outer space. She is constantly reinventing herself. Previous personas include: programmer, manager, circus clown, animator, graphic designer, spiritual seeker, punk instrumentalist, installation artist, day trader, surfer, tech teacher, kendoka and more. Her post-Pictoplasma Academy […]
Ximena Gonzalez Alfonso (ARG) Ximena is a graphic, motion & character designer based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her interest in software & technology made her get into the 2D & 3D animation world that fascinated her. She designs and models her own characters in order to give them life in a story. What she […]
Swami Agria (CL) Swami Agria is a northern Chilean visual artist and sculptor whose work is mainly in the realm of character creation. Her characters are often cartoon style beings haunted by real life feelings or emotions expressed in a highly stylized manner.Swami’s technique is influenced by the use of different mediums and materials […]
Ulrich Jakob (GER) Ulrich Jakob is a sculptor and character designer located in Halle (Saale), Germany. Already in his youth he discovered his passion for sculpting, accompanied by a deep interest for creatures and characters, their stories and fantastic worlds. After his studies of ‘Design Of Playing And Learning’ the idea took shape to […]
Tania M. González (PRI) Tania M. González is Puertorican artist whose work is influenced by political struggles, latin american spirituality and pop culture. She specializes in digital painting but, having worked in the tech industry, she’s had experience with animation, character design, brand development, graphic design and UI UX. In recent years she’s traveled […]
Ron Hutt (USA) Ron Hutt is an internationally active artist whose innovative digital performances and site-specific installations leverage new strategies for creating relationships between auditory and visual elements in provisional spaces. Hutt’s creative practices focus on the relationships between technology, art and society – deterministic trends, cultural forms and media representations. In his work, […]
Roberta Sandri (IT/DK) Roberta is a visual designer and a maker based in Denmark. Truly enjoying getting her hands dirty, she’s experimented with a variety of media, from traditional illustration to felt, wood, paper and ceramics. Her work often features friendly furry monsters and animals, through which she comments and reinterprets the world around […]
Ola Liola (ISR) Ola Liola is an illustrator and artist born in Ukraine, raised in Israel, and now based in Berlin. Best known for her multicoloured and patterned animal illustrations, a lot of Ola’s work is self initiated and sold online, though recent works include commissioned tattoo designs, T-shirt designs, music album covers, and […]
Minotauro (ROM) Minotauro is a passionate director, animator and character designer based in Bucharest. His humorous kooky style can be seen throughout the stories that he imagines. Mostly inspired by day to day mundane events he adds a comical note, or more and they become not-mundane. Currently he is working in a 2D animation […]
Lucie Jančová (CZE) Lucie Jančová is an AR & VR designer currently based in Prague, Czechia. She has gradually evolved from a brand and print designer into a product designer, and now, she is exploring virtual worlds. She is driven by her love for dreamlike worlds, virtual avatars, user-centred design, interactivity, transformation of our […]
Liza Fishbone (USA) Liza Fishbone is a multidisciplinary artist and founder of Sneaky Planet Studios, based in Austin, TX. She uses her background in murals and scenic art, fashion design, and fabrication to transform space and unlock portals to other worlds. For the past several years, she has been working on her fantastical universe, […]
Lisa Vertudaches (AUS) Lisa Vertudaches is an illustrator & animator based in Adelaide, South Australia. Her characters are often based on her own life experiences, but appeal to anyone who has ever questioned themselves, faced their personal demons, or fallen in & out of love. Lisa specialises in creating short looping animations that stand […]
Liat Azulay (NL) Liat is an artist and creative coach, who has a background in advertising as a creative director, so should normally be really good with deadlines, but completely missed this one. (sorry Peter) Her work is always about cheering people up, through crazy concepts that she loves to bring to life herself […]
Lanyca Leng (KHM) Lanyca is an independent graphic designer and animator now based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Her works are often set in an abstract setting, using people’s everyday life experience and emotions to drive the concept. During the time spent in Australia where she completed her studies, Lanyca became fascinated by the world […]
Irene López (SP) Irene López is an Animator, Motion Designer and Illustrator based in Madrid, Spain. She has worked in all kinds of projects, from short films to documentaries and art exhibitions. Her illustrations have appeared in books and magazines, and also in diverse products from coffee mugs to board games. She loves creating […]
Gabi Nagel (GER) Gabi Nagel is a graphic designer and illustrator based in Berlin. She has worked as a 2D/3D allrounder for commercials, music videos, projections and title designs. Besides her daily business her passion is to create characters mostly inspired by a walk through her home town Berlin, where you can find the […]
Felipe Fernandes (BRA) Felipe Fernandes is a Brazilian visual artist working mainly with painting since 2008. He has shown his work in some art galleries and cultural spaces in Brazil, while also working as an art assistant for the artist Luiz Zerbini. Since then he has flerted with design and illustration doing a few […]
Eva Münnich (GER) Eva is an animator and illustrator based in London. She is on a life long mission to find the perfect pair of shoes. A parade of chubby lumpy colorful body confident characters is on that mystical journey with her. It’s weird to have a body isn’t it? This feeling inspired her […]
Cristina Pirvu (RO) Cristina is an animator and a visual artist from Bucharest. She’s currently doing frame by frame animation and visual development in a small and quirky creative studio. Quite passionate about character design, she’s experimenting with the female form and wants to explore alternative beauty in her characters on a path of […]
Emily Knight (UK) Emily Knight is an animator and graphic designer based in London. She is attracted to bold, striking imagery often with a hint of darkness. As well as directing her own short films she has worked with a diverse range of different clients creating animation and design work for studios, multinational companies, […]
Chamisa Kellogg (USA) Chamisa is an illustrator, fine artist, and writer based in Portland, OR. She makes art for children’s books, editorial outlets and the textile design industry. Chamisa uses illustration as a way to highlight the magic and weirdness of everyday life. She also draws inspiration from nature, myths and folklore, and the […]
Pourcer (SP) Pourcer is a Spanish illustrator and multidisciplinary artist. Her naive world of tender characters reflect her love for harmony, her kind spirit and dreams. Her peculiar work emerged a few years ago while she was painting, giving free rein to her sensitivity. Her imagination and curiosity led her to explore new ideas […]
Catalina Matamoros Puerto (COL) Catalina is an animator filmmaker and illustrator. She holds a BFA in Design from Universidad de los Andes and an MFA in Animation from the University of Southern California. Her work is colorful, quirky, naif, and sometimes funny. She likes to spend time thinking about how memory and language shape […]
KerolZ! (BRA) KerolZ! is an illustrator, graphic designer and creative from Brazil based in Berlin. Her illustrations are inspired by daily self discovery and political and social problems. The design of her work is influenced by strip comics, urban art and cult films. Today her work goes from digital illustrations to companies walls.She is […]
Pape Ink (COL) Pape is an illustrator, muralist, and creative based in Panama. His work is a journey of self-discovery driven by imagination with a mix of hip hop, street art, skateboarding, and cartoons. His Universe is filled with fun characters and a lot of color, always bringing a feeling of freedom and good […]
Angela Gigica (RO) Angela Gigica is an independent motion graphic designer, art director and illustrator based in the UK. Originally from Romania, where she completed her education in decorative arts and design, she spent the past decade living and working in London. Here she collaborates with various global brands, agencies and broadcasters including Google […]
Andres Alarcon (COL) Andres Alarcon is an illustrator and character designer from Colombia based in Berlin. From a very young age, he showed a great fascination and talent for drawing this passion aroused him a great interest in discovering the world and communicating it through illustration. His stories and characters are inspired by daily […]
Alan Dunne (IRL) Alan is an illustrator and author based in Ireland, working in painting, picture books, graphic printmaking, paper-craft, animation and motion graphics. Aspects of vernacular design and archival records play a huge part in Alan’s practice. His illustration style is heavily influenced by mid 20th-century illustration, and his characters display playful, elegant proportions […]
CONCEPT & MENTORING
Artist, illustrator and visual philosopher James Jarvis challenges attendees to distill the relevance and meaning of their work and focus on how they can stage their projects to a wider audience in an exhibition at the upcoming Pictoplasma Festival.
Zsuzsanna Ilijin (GER) Zsuzsanna Ilijin is an Illustrator and Graphic Designer based in Berlin. She is driven by the love for bright colours and graphic shapes inspired by the techniques of screen printing and riso printing. Characteristic to her work are the pure vector shapes and transparent layers that bloom into bold and colourful compositions. […]
Yasmin Islas (MX) Yasmín is a nugget that enjoys watching pizza and eating frogs, no, actually is the other way around. She studied digital animation. She enjoys observing human beings as if watching them for the first time. Like an alien that just arrived on Earth she is fascinated by nature. Mix all this and […]
Timo Langhorst (GER) Timo Langhorst is a Senior Designer and Character Artist based in Berlin, Germany. His hyperrealistic, vector based characters play with soft shades and subtle photo collages in order to create a weird play between attraction and disgust. Already during his time at the university his heard beats for both directions – Communication […]
Till Machmer (GER) Till Machmer is an illustrator & animator interested in drawing quiet watching creatures and obscure rituals. To bring his characters to life he combines analog and digital techniques, experimenting with scribbly lines, shapes and patterns. His characters have appeared in comics, books, magazines and online. To take it one step further, Till […]
Thales Contri (BR) Thales Contri is a Brazilian designer and art director, who is based in Sao Paulo. Graduated in graphic design, Thales works in an advertising agency that aims to create digital campaigns. He produces his illustrations like a hobby and seeks in his works to use saturated colors, in addition to simple traits. Lately he […]
Serge Rodas (GTM) Serge Rodas is a self taught digital illustrator from Guatemala, based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. His love for cartoons and animated films pushed him into pursuing a career in illustration and design.His work has been applied to different medias such as music and book covers, murals, t-shirts, apps and digital editorials, he […]
Sarah Kuehnle (USA) Sarah Kuehnle (aka @ursooperduper) is a character designer and illustrator who loves using technology in many ways in her creative process. Whether it’s programming generative art, using the latest gear, or investigating the dark corners of a new software package, she finds inspiration from it all and is always game to try […]
Sara Velázquez (SP) Sara Velázquez aka SAVELGA is a Spanish artist and Reiki therapist based in Hamburg.Besides her professional career in animation and gaming, she wanted to bring her art to a new level and connect it with her spiritual side.That’s how her personal project CREATURES OF LIGHT was born. Her creatures are feelings, […]
Nadia Cardoso (PT) Nadia Cardoso was born in Lisbon, Portugal but has been living in Dublin, Ireland since 2011. Nadia graduated in cinema but has been working in the animation industry for almost 10 years, first as an Animator and Compositor and more recently as a Lead Compositor, on TV shows for Disney, BBC […]
Myrto Petrou (CYP) Myrto Petrou is a Cypriot character designer and illustrator Her work is heavily influenced by the illustrative styles of 90s cartoons and video games, the lowbrow and Kustom Kulture movements and the 60s underground comix scene. She enjoys experimenting with a variety of mediums including acrylics, ink, digital and sculpture.She is […]
Meghan Newell (USA) Meghan is a designer, technologist, and medium agnostic visual communicator. Fluent in many styles and techniques, she strives to create artifacts that look, move, and respond beautifully.As a commercial practitioner, she has completed art direction, design, illustration, and animation projects for a host of high profile clients including Google, Lyft, Nike, […]
Matthew Salton (USA) Matthew Salton is a video director and artist raised in the Pacific Northwest of the USA. His most recent output has been in the field of non-fiction filmmaking. What began as a side interest, playing with sketches, led him to develop a peculiar style when there was a necessity to create […]
Mariia Kudryk (UKR) Mariia Kudryk is an artist and motion designer based in Kyiv, Ukraine. Starting her career as an artist deeply interested in classic graphic techniques and printmaking, she became interested in animation. Today her artistic interest is focused on the theme of human perception of animal world, ephemerality and metamorphoses of living […]
Makoto Koji (JP) Makoto Koji is a Japanese Animator and Illustrator, born in Hiroshima and raised in the wilderness of rural Australia. Her work blends Japanese and Western aesthetics with a vibrant, pop energy. It reflects her upbringing full of cartoons and art from both cultures.Makoto has animated for feature films, games, television series […]
Lidia Morales (SP) Lidia Morales is a character designer and illustrator based in Barcelona (Spain) who is experienced in videogames, illustration and animation. She loves drawing with pencils or digital media and collecting hundred of notebooks with rough sketches.Since she was a child, she has been passionate about animation movies and comic books. And […]
Julia Mueller (GER) Julia Mueller is an animator, illustrator and writer from Bremen, Germany, where she graduated in design. Online she appears under her synonym Yool N.During several residences abroad her work has taken influence by British comic, Japanese anime and French illustration- all resulting in a distinct colour palette, line quality and a […]
Ida Perišić (SRB) Ida Perišić is a freelence illustrator and character designer based in Belgrade, Serbia. Since early childhood she used her mothers soft pastels and clay to create her own colorful universes. Later on she fell in love with the world of literature and cinema, and worked in the theater and TV industry […]
Hleb Kuftseryn (BLR) Hleb Kuftseryn is an animator and artist from Belarus who is working in a sphere of commercial and noncommercial animation.His work experience consists of cases of work for Belarusian, Lithuanian and Russian animation studios on festival and children’s cartoons along with freelance and studio works on commercial advertising animation. Besides he […]
Helena Covell (UK) Helena Covell is an author, freelance illustrator and character designer from Yorkshire in the UK, whose work encompasses bright and playful characters. She’s written and illustrated a children’s book, painted a custom arcade machine for the V&A and given talks for universities. She’s growing with her work, beginning to exhibit throughout […]
Guillaume Lefevre (FR) Guillaume Lefevre is a french Artist and animal lover who believes in the possibility of an invisible world. He likes to draw what the human eye can’t see and has created «Les Châmes», an illustration project starring souls of cats.Guillaume wants to spread a poetic vision of the afterlife to help […]
Franco Salazar (PER) Franco Salazar was a graphic designer from Lima, Peru. He’s still around, only he’s an animator now—surprisingly—working most recently on films, post-production, and visual development. He can’t remember when exactly that idea came to his mind, but it was probably foreshadowed by his fascination with animals, fantastic creatures and weird stories […]