PIXEL SHOW 2023

Pixel Show is the biggest festival dedicated to art, creativity, design, technology, innovation and creative economy in Latin America. In the 2022 edition of the event, the first to be held in real life since the COVID-19 pandemic started, a couple of LOBO directors participated as guest speakers. It was an outstanding experience, and this year our studio was commissioned to create a teaser film for the upcoming installment.Since the briefing was very open-ended, LOBO’s approach was to bring together five different directors – Felipe Machado, Diogo Kalil, Fabio Acorsi, Felipe Frazão, Fabiano Broki  – to brainstorm a concept for the short, based on lengthy reflections on the state of the creative industry after the paradigm shifts brought about by the pandemic, and on the eve of another seismic event: the arrival of AI-based image making technologies.Those talks, infused by each director’s own personal history and individual frame of mind towards the creative field, led to the conception of seven archetypal characters representing different kinds of professionals – established or aspiring – that can be found at a Pixel Show event: The Maker, The Digital, The Graphic, The Sound-Oriented, The Visual, The Student and The Manager.The teaser introduces those characters in a mysterious, suggestive mood that at the same time feels epic, as if presenting a team of superheroes before they band together and jump into the fray. Each character was depicted in different styles and techniques, from the figurative to the completely abstract, but what they all have in common is the use of AI tools in their creation. That was done in various degrees: for example, the basis for The Visual is a live action shoot of a vintage camera, with AI used to add texture to the picture, while others, like The Maker, were generated entirely with artificial intelligence.