248 - Pictoplasma London 2025

Sitting in the 1st Floor cafe at the Royal College of Art, with an angled glass view of the Thames. Battersea Bridge used to be a great site to see (small) starling murmurations at dusk. It’s 4:10pm, and I do see a couple of tiny flocks circling. They swoop right under the bridge like bats. Anyway, this isn’t a nature blog…

And I don’t want to miss the next artist panel at 4:30pm.

This morning’s highlights and or most memorable parts:

The faceless Sula character and animated environment of Monument Valley. Beautiful, swooping, exploration of space and landscape. Apparently this is both a film and a game commissioned by Netflix. The creators were delighted to report that Netflix gave them a freehand creatively and it was mostly a two person collective brainstorming together in a studio for months.

Monument Valley

I was fascinated by the expressiveness of the bare essentials characters. One was literally a tower of 4 bricks. It must be a challenge to convey emotion in still images supporting the film and game. But maybe they don’t promote any of it in 3D. It contrasted with Clara Marcus (of the Jacky Winter agency) talking about a creative director’s assessment of characters: close inspection of the facial expression and quest for a feeling of connection.

Becky Perryman saying “Fuck That” to the anti-diversity / negativity movement.

The Association of Illustrators lead and member talking about AI copyright abuse. AOI v AI

I have a lot of forebodings about AI but more related to it’s speed and omnipotency (super intelligence levels).