Client: City of Sydney
Agency: Imagination
Role: Creative Director - Screen, Animator
Year: 2015

For the third year in a row, I was given the chance to create the pylon projection content for Sydney New Years Eve celebrations. However, as an added twist, we found out that for the first time we would projecting on the entire eastern face of both pylons, rather than the smaller, less conspicuous window from the previous years (which was now used on the western faces). Befitting this larger canvas, we came up with extra content to really showcase our capabilities as an agency, including a powerful Welcome to Country piece, and a “seven minute pylon show” that riffed loosely on the theme of City of Colour. This was all in addition to the standard show run of pylon content.

The seven minute show was a particular highlight, a chance to let loose with the creative with only the words “City of Colour” as a hook. I devised a concept that divided the show into four chapters: An abstract colour and light show the provided the opportunity to play directly with the architecture of the pylon; a vertical garden, covering the pylon with a menagerie of Australian flora and fauna drawn from the logo; a diorama that took elements from the logo and remixed them into a three dimensional scene; finally an up and comers section that showcased some of the work of the artists that the City of Sydney patrons.

There were some challenges, not least the fact that the projections on both sides of the pylons were at two vastly different resolutions and aspect ratios. For much of the content, this was solved by animating the content in the west’s 4:3 aspect ratio, with a pylon shaped “safe area” in the middle, that would be cropped out for the east face. In a few cases, a small 4:3 crop was taken of east content for the west face.

All in all the NYE pylon projections were an even bigger success than before.