In 1991 Nike produced the Air Max 180 sports-shoe, which became highly popular for its cutting-edge technology and artistic roots. For the first time, Nike collaborated with artists from the very beginning to tell the story of innovation born from creativity.
For their re-launch in 2006, Nike commissioned Pictoplasma to find a designer to revive the original spirit in a new, iconic character, giving tribute to air and zero gravity and at the same time transmitting an urban quality. Pictoplasma developed this idea a bit further to not only design a character, but to produce it as a costume that would incorporate the figure into our world.
The German artist Wayne Horse, known for his innovative graffiti, animation and art projects, designed a new character and took over the production of the full-body costume.
Max had his first appearance at the 2nd Pictoplasma Conference where he mingled with an international audience, was host of his own gallery exhibition, initiated urban interventions and had a big appearance at the main venue, animating attendees to sing at the closing karaoke party.
Pictoplasma further incorporated the character in its PR communication, which led to a wide visual circulation.
Area Code, the most innovative agency for urban games based in New York, commissioned Pictoplasma to produce a family of more than 150 individual character designs, allowing visitors of the American pavilion at the Expo Shanghai 2010 to engage in a unique interactive adventure. The challenge was to enhance the exposure of Johnson & Johnson with an installation that not only engages the viewer into a playful experience, but also communicates notions of caring and connecting. Visitors were encouraged to give birth to their very own, individual character on a huge presentation screen by texting personal messages via their mobile phones.
The incoming messages acted as the DNA to create unique critters that would accompany the visitors during their long stroll through the exhibition, and could be given further instructions to playfully interact with other characters on their way. Each interaction was accompanied by a little, rewarding animation and generated points that were ultimately transferred to real currency and donated by Johnson & Johnson for Chinese charity purposes.
The individual characters live on and can be revisited while they continuously populate an ever-growing interactive website, where they can be re-transferred to the mobile phones of their creators.
In 2005, MTV UK was looking for an infinite family of diverse, high quality characters to populate their brand new multi-media platform MY MTV. A perfect opportunity for Pictoplasma to pull all strings and secure that the resulting designs truly stand up to the high standard desired. The challenge was to produce a large quantity of unique, individual characters to ensure that the various target groups can each invest, instantly recognise and relate to their own avatar, while keeping the overall appeal of the design harmonious and coherent.
The resulting vast quantity of avatars, lovingly created especially for the project by more than 20 select international artists, designers and illustrators, were further customisable by the user to ultimately interact throughout such diverse media as mobile phone devices, the MTV website and TV broadcast.
No other living creature features as heavily in contemporary character design and art as the humble hare. Bunnies are definitely the most depicted creatures of all times, a fact that was also reflected by the endless stream of rabbits daily submitted to Pictoplasma’s archives by international artists. But what exactly makes bunnies so irresistible?
There’s no such thing as too much bunnies! And just to prove it, in 2006 Pictoplasma intentionally asked internationally established and upcoming character designers, illustrators and artists around the globe to send in their versions of rabbits, bunnies, hares and everything in between.
The result is a full-scale bunny overdose, with far more than 1.500 individual rabbits from 500+ international contributers. By condensing the endless variations of the rabbit motif into one ultimate system – a perfect bunny mandala – the true nature of the beast emerges: the eternal essence of rabbit.
“The Bunny Mandala Shrine” was installed at the sous-station of Projet Diligence in Nice (France), during the onedotzero Festival in London (UK), at Bios Athens (Greece) and the South Eastern Centre for Contemporary Arts (SECCA) in North Carolina (USA).
In 2005, Pictoplasma was commissioned to brand the re-launch party of the 1916 Lucky Strike packaging in Olso. The idea of the party was to recreate a classical “Green Ball” of the early 20th century, albeit with a modern, contemporary character twist. The “1916 Green Ball” theme referred to the original Lucky Strike packaging in 1916, when a Green Ball held in New York was set up and hence raised sales.
The concept incorporates the idea of blending the old and the new: an eclectic mix of the 1916 time, the Green Ball theme and a keen expression of contemporary graphic illustrations, street art, character design, club culture references and contexts, with a strong focus on adult Manga type cartoon and – obviously – the colour green. The resulting life sized stand-up characters and a vast amount of over-sized props created by Pictoplasma in close cooperation with artist dub99 where set up at a ballroom in Oslo, while the aesthetic was integrated across all elements of the event starting with the invitations through to the gifts.
