I went on the character walk around Berlin to see the different artists work that was on display here is a few photo's of each of the artists work and a brief analysis of what i either liked or disliked about there work.
Alexanderplatz we got very familiar with this station, probably because it was right next to what i can only describe as a big tower spike thing in the centre of Berlin which became sort of out meeting place for the trip. none of the pictures below are in any real order of where we went on the character walk first.
we stopped by a place where a company called the Bee Kingdom were putting on a demonstration of what they do, it was four artists from Canada that had decided to take up working with glass as a new medium but not really doing your regular stuff with it. it was very interesting and fretting to see some new interesting character designs being made from glass it made for a very nice change from looking at mostly computer based work!
This place was defiantly my favourite place on the character if not the whole trip itself really, it was shop called the Dudes Factory and i spent rather a large amount of time and money there mainly because you could choose from a very large amount of different artists work to have printed onto T-shirts, bags, sketchbooks, hoodies and much more and not only could you choose what artists design you wanted but you could also have your own designs put onto a T-shirt or add to a artist work by maybe putting a name or phrase somewhere near it.
one of my favourite artist from the Dudes factory would definitely have to be Mcbess his work isn't like anyone else's i have seen before i love how he only uses black and white in most of his work and how it really stands out when placed on a T-shirt and also the way he draws hair is very interesting when you look closely at the images but probably my favourite things about his work is the overall shape of his character designs i have always been interested in that bendy spaghetti character and i think he has designed them very well, because i really liked his work i decided to get a T-shirt with the top left image printed on it and also a sketch book with another piece from him.
another artist called Gemma Correll had her work displayed in a very small room that looked like it had been squeezed between two other larger shops, although her work doesn't really have a huge amount of detail and a lot of people would probably say well anyone could draw that and to be honest at first i was thinking that but when you take a closer look and actually read what has been put next to the characters and the way she incorporates little things like she has done with the image of the robot you can see why she is a popular artist she has a lot of fun with it and can also pick flaws in her own work and make light of them.
Another artist work that i found very inspiring on the character walk was Mark Gmehling who used cinema 4D to create all of his pieces which i found very interesting because i am really looking to get better at cinema 4D and i am probably going to choose it as my main area to work in next year and to see the different things that he has made using the program that are so alike to some of the things i had been wanting to make myself was very interesting.
i likes how he made some of his pieces into into moulds and cast them into these praying hand sort o characters thats another things i like about cinema 4D is that you do get this 3d object that can be looked at from any angle and it will be 100% accurate to what you want its not like a drawing that could be slightly off anywhere you could use the cinema 4D file to go on to making cast and real like pieces that aren't just prints of the work.
its not only his character designs that i find very interesting in the way that he has these characters that look bendy and twisted that i have shown great interest in before but a lot the great detail he goes into with the different areas of his pieces like the crown this one is wearing in the image about that i a zoomed in an cropped version of the top right piece if you look you can see how detailed inspired the design for it really is, and finally for this piece it is not just a random image from his imagination in its entirety it also has something to say like the symbols on the character are reference to a games console playstation and the crown and people praying below him shows that it is seen as some sort of symbol of power and that it is worshipped by many people which is very much true!
he did another pieces that was very beautiful in the way it as put together and that was the three pieces that looked like stained glass windows the two different layers and the bright colours agains the black really made them pop and the detail in them like much of his other work was amazing.
we spent a few days doing he whole character walk in-between going to lectures and eating we did rather a lot of eating on this trip! apart from the Dudes Factory we probably spent most of out time at the HBC where they were making the worlds largest felt monster probably a large claim to have put as i don't thing it was the largest felt monster by any means but anyway thats not the point, it did manage to get us very involved and hooked on creating our own little monsters that would be placed around the one large gorilla looking thing at the end closing party. so we started by cutting out our shape it was a pre designed shape that everyone was given but this didn't limit your creativity and a rather liked the simply shape of the character is just meant you could so more with it.
Sowing something i haven't done in a very long time probably in about six or seven years so it was a rather large learning curve for me in that way but i battled through the hand stitching and was left with this basic creation for me to work on.
and this below id the final result i wanted it to look and little bit like a totem pole so i kept is simple in its design and wanted it to have just one eye to save time but also because i thought it gave him a very grumpy and mysterious mistermina
the final gorilla moister at the closing party for Pictoplasma luckily me went searching for out monsters quick as someone had disguised Jonny's with extra add ons so that he wouldn't be able to tell it was his but luckily he spotted his from some very distinctive pen work he has done to it! we thought why someone had done this to his at first but we found out the next day that some of the other people's monsters from our group had been stolen why someone would want to steal a personalised felt monster is beyond me!
