Hasta La Ideas

New York City’s Illustration Week rolls on, and we suggest setting aside the latter part of your Saturday for Pictoplasma NYC at Parsons The New School for Design. Organized by Pictoplasma “brain-fathers” and curators Lars Denicke and Peter Thaler along with Parsons Illustration chair Steven Guarnaccia, the conference will celebrate the artistic creation of character design with lectures, panel discussions, and short film screenings. On the agenda: Peter de Seve, whose work you’ll recognize from New Yorker covers, Finding Nemo, and the Ice Age movies, will discuss the process of creating iconic characters. Other successful Parsons alums—animation director Aaron Stewart, artist Motomichi Nakamura, and ornamental painter Andy Kehoe—will chat with Guarnaccia about how creative skills developed in art school can translate into work-life projects and careers. Stick around for presentations by two members of the Australian design collective Rinzen: Craig Redman (fresh from his solo exhibition at Colette) and Rilla Alexander, who blends illustration, graphics, and 3D design in projects such as “Neighbourhood,” in which 20 blank plush dolls were passed around the world being reworked and remade. Just before attendees settle in for a climactic screening of short films, music videos, and motion graphics, illustrator Nathan Jurevicius will discuss Scarygirl, a “cute but slightly odd little girl who was abandoned late one night and is later found and brought up by a friendly octopus and guided by a mystic rabbit.” If that doesn’t convince you to e-mail pictoplasmaparsons@gmail.com to secure your free registration, we don’t know what will.

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