For our tenth birthday we took things back to basics in order to explore how far we've come, creating a series of extraordinary optical illusions through the medium of craft – and all in a tight, ten-hour window.
The canvas
We gave ourselves just ten days to concept and ten hours to create what would be this celebratory anniversary stunt at the Honourable Artillery Company in Moorgate, centrepiece for the NABS' (National Advertising Benevolent Society) Stranger than Summer fund-raising ball.
The physics
Calling on creators and craftsmen of all disciplines, our aim was to use the beauty and simplicity of their art to capture the magic and complexity of ours, drawing on origami, textiles, embroidery, model making, screen printing, illustration and simple stop-frame animation to showcase the dexterity, versatility and possibility of what we do. All that was captured was played back using our own D3 media server and two Barco HDX-W20 Flex 20,000 Lumen projectors.
The experience
We tried to use all the same principles that we'd use in a normal project (extrusion, occlusion, contrast, shadows, etc.) but used the physical rather than digital as our starting point. The result was a revolutionary show that revisited the past in order to embrace the future, going beyond the realm of ground-breaking motion graphics to express our art in a compellingly different way.
