with a character selfie!

Back in 2013—when 'selfie' was the Oxford English Dictionary’s freshly nominated word-of-the-year and the first Oscar celebrity group selfies went viral, no-one saw this as a harbinger of headshot hell. Then, just as we had become accustomed to the world wide spread of selfie sticks, blurry duck faces, and underexposed narcism, a new explosion of filters, stickers, and face-swapping began taking things to unprecedented levels of silliness.

What do the multiple trillions of photos now in circulation say about our identities?

Perfect time for Pictoplasma, the festival of character design and art, to issue a call for entries that puts creativity back in focus. Pictoplasma has teamed up with Adobe Project 1324 to invite all global youth (aged 18—24) to express their personalities in an artistically ‘characterized' self portrait. Starting with a regular photograph like a headshot aka mugshot or profile picture and overlaying it with a graphical rendition of their true identity, entrants are invited to express their personality with a self-portrait that lets their inner character shine! 

Five winners will be awarded with a full-blown Character Design Fellowship, including travel costs and participation at the Pictoplasma Academy masterclass in Mexico City October 2017, six-months of online mentoring, and attendance at the Pictoplasma Berlin Conference May 2018—including the opportunity to exhibit in an exclusive group show.

Any medium or tool may be used, from drawing, collage or digital painting, vector illustration, 3D graphics, masks, costume design or a mix of them all…

The Face-Off Challenge is open now, deadline for submissions is August 15, 2017. Additionally, the first 100 submissions are eligible to win one of ten year-long Creative Cloud subscriptions, donated by Adobe.

Show Character! #CharacterFaceOff

About Pictoplasma 

Each spring, Pictoplasma transforms Berlin into the international meeting point for a diverse scene of artists and creatives, trailblazing the face of tomorrow's visual culture. The annual festival showcases the latest character design trends in fine and urban arts, illustration, animation, and graphic design. Creators and producers meet for a fun-filled and offbeat conference, cutting-edge screenings bring the latest animation eye-candy to the big screen, and exhibitions invite the general public to experience original works and outstanding character craftsmanship. A second conference takes place later in the year in New York. 

As the educational counterpart, each fall the Pictoplasma Academy masterclasses in Berlin and Mexico City invite a selected group of international graduate students and young professionals to kick-start their careers as character designers in close collaboration with high-profile artists, filmmakers, and producers. 

The Face-Off Challenge follows in the footsteps of the Character Selfies Call for Entries back in 2014, where international illustrators and character designers were invited to create an original artwork depicting their characters taking a selfie of itself: character-selfies.tumblr.com