Snugglepot & Cuddlepie Anniversary

In the early weeks of production, Lucy and Nick started by producing a 7 minute animatic of a complete show. This part of the project consisted of reviewing the text and illustrations of all three books, and choosing a sequence of moments from the original stories that we could cobble together to create a story that is representative of the May Gibbs body of work. We then storyboarded the primary scenes of the show (based on a collection of Gibbs’s key illustrations) onto a Customs House building storyboard template, this first process produced about 80% of the primary visual moments that ended up in the show. The remaining 20% were added to the show along the way as we realised what additional elements the narrative required.

From the beginning we made the decision with the Artistic Director of the festival Ignatius Jones to include text as if the projection show was a story book, and we hoped to include a voice over so that the audience could read and listen to the story being told by a May Gibbs-esque voice. The pitch included Nick’s grandmother, Ursula Laverty reading the voiceover narrator script that Lucy had compiled from the books, and then the fabulous None Hazlehurst was brought on to the project to read the final script, that had gone through multiple revisions by the time of the V/O recording! Noni’s involvement gave so much to the story, we are very honoured to have her as part of the project.

Throughout the process Lucy and nick managed a master show animatic, which at the beginning consisted of the storyboard sketches and simple key animations included in our pitch, and then expanded in duration as we added to the show, and was constantly updated with animation and design elements as they were developed by the team. early on this animatic was shared with our composer and soundtrack designer, Miles, along with our thoughts on what the soundtrack and music should sound like, and Miles brought this to life from the beginning, allowing us to really feel what the show needed to be, as the sound and music is the glue that binds the experience of the show together.

Vivid Sydney’s Artistic Director Ignatius Jones met with the team regularly to check on progress and given any feedback that he and the team at the festival thought necessary along the way.

We are so proud of this achievement. We have all been working in this medium for 10 years or more, and for many years now we have felt that architectural projection has enormous potential as a medium, and this potential is often not realised in recent years at these sorts of festivals. We essentially create an enormous moving sculpture in a location that is recognisable to everyone as a part of the fabric of a familiar city space, and we get to show people a way of looking at a familiar place in a new way. Like cinema in its early years, architectural projection has only discovered a small percentage of it’s language, and we feel that Vivid has provided an enormous opportunity to push the medium forward in terms of narrative and design.

Lucy Keeler and Nicholas Tory
Miles Nicholas
Julian Reinhold
Oliver Abbott
Bonnie Forsyth
Tumen-Erdene Altangadas
Iva Coburn
Jelena Sinik
Nicolette Axiak
Alex Dray
Lester Chan
Erika Ju
Yori Narpati
Deborah Szapiro
Karen Etherington
Atticus Gough
Amy Bell
Bel Holborow
Will Thompson
Isabella Meagher
Sandra Ye
Genevieve Stewart
Kylie Kwok
Jeremy Cox
Erin Sutherland

Voiceover by:
Noni Hazlehurst, Frank Cotton, Samantha Campbell, Orson Keeler and Alice Keeler.

University of Technology Sydney – Bachelor of Design in Animation