The Vale of Glamorgan Council invited TPS back to rock the town of Barry again this year following the massive success of last year's inaugural festive son et lumiere created from scratch by Ross Ashton and the TPS team and marking the town's festive light switch-on.
The humorous, fun and spectacular 10-minute large format video show - with seasonal artwork and an array of animated images like dancing penguins and Santa Claus' elf-powered present factory production line - was beamed on to the front of the municipal library building in King Square, Barry, getting everyone vibed up for Christmas.
The biggest physical challenge was dealing with getting the projections around the large Christmas tree right in the centre of King Square.
Ross's solution involved building a complete 10m staging / roofing system at the 'back' of the Square - provided and built by Sound Base from Cardiff - which enabled the six Panasonic DZ 21K projectors to be positioned exactly where needed to cover the front of the library with the impressive 50m wide images.
The projectors were run as three double-stacked pairs, with two stacks cross-shooting at 45 degree angles - to miss the tree - and the third pair at a slightly shallower angle.
A d3 server was used for control and the necessary mapping onto the building, programmed by Dan Grey from QED, the projection hardware supplier.
Ross's entertaining storyboard was a lively, colourful and action-packed show that ran three times on the evening, and was enjoyed by large crowds watching live and thousands more via internet sharing.
A serious amount of 3D modelling and animation was required, undertaken by The Projection Studio's Thierry Noyer and San Gun Kim and sound artist Karen Monid was engaged to compile and edit a special soundtrack. Sound Base supplied the audio system plus generators to power all the equipment.
For the second year running Projection Studio produced stunning festive projections onto the central tower Windsor Castle.
Windsor's town centre manager Paul Roach commissioned more digital artworks after the 2014 project was so well received, and Ross was delighted to deliver again. "It's fantastic that projected art is being recognised as something that can unify and entertain communities and also boost local businesses very cost-effectively as a result," he stated.
The Castle's central tower is 20m tall, 11m wide, highly visible and conveniently, almost a 16:9 size in format, and the image is projected via a single Panasonic PZ21K projector fitted with a portrait adaption kit, located in a disused office block opposite.
TPS's on-site installation team was led by Karen Monid who also programmed the control system. The files were uploaded to a MiniMac server running Millumin software.
(Jim Evans)
