Faux Images: Michael Auerswald reports from Germany

By Michael Auerswald.

Faux Images” is a quarterly meeting in Berlin, organised by Andreas Fischer  & Mate Steinforth , where the animation, design and vfx scene meets to share ideas, present their latest work, network or just have a beer with like minded people.

It takes place right in the middle of Berlin, near the Alexanderplatz, at LEAP (Lab for Electronic Arts and Performance). At each meeting, there are a number of presentations being given by local and international filmmakers, designers and artists from related disciplines.

Emilia Forstreuter

This time, the artists showing their work were motion designer Emilia Forstreuter  from Berlin, vfx supervisor Chris Smallfield from Berlin and L.A., award winning concept artists Karakter  from Berlin and Amsterdam and finally creative allround stars Minivegas, also from Amsterdam. Emilia Forstreuter showed some of her latest work, sharing the conceptual thoughts and process that went into projects like the subway installation for Wall AG or her ADC Award Show trailers .


 

Chris Smallfield gave a detailed presentation on some of his commercial 3d work, like the making of the Miller Lite “Break from the crowd” spot he worked on for Method, the Pepsi Pinball commercial (http://vimeo.com/8632173), as well as several others like the fantastic IFA presentation for Panasonic. He also showed his matte painting process, starting from a basic 3d model, matte painting and then projecting the image back onto the model.

Miller – Break from the Crowd from Chris Smallfield on Vimeo.


Pepsi – Pinball from Chris Smallfield on Vimeo.


 

Karakter

Chris was followed by Emmy-award winning studio Karakter, the team responsible for the concept art of the PS3 game Killzone 3  and the award winning HBO show Game of Thrones. The four showed some of their designs, the process that led them there and how it influenced the final product.


 

The final presentation was held by Minivegas, who are behind the impressive CNN Ecosphere project   utilising WebGL to represent millions of Twitter messags in a truly impressive organic tree structure, within the browser. Equally impressive was their Championsleague project for Adidas, combining Arduino based installations in Munich’s town center to let people vote for their teams in all manner of ways, including through real-life avatars via the internet, which then led to a final projection mapping installation. As usual, the meeting was very well attended by an international crowd, enjoying the presentations and the ocassional cold brew. For Berlin based artists, or anyone close by, there is probably no other place to meet as many fellow artists, while at the same time being inspired by the broad spectrum of work shown by the presenters – plus, it’s free.