Polar Bear and Penguin is the tale of an unlikely encounter. It is the story of polar opposite characters meeting for the first time, getting to know one another and learning how to survive in a world that is melting beneath their feet … paws … flippers.

– from the production description.

The show was originally staged at Draiocht, Blanchardstown in December 2021. It went on to have a three week run at The Ark Cultural Centre for Children in 2022 before embarking on a national tour of Ireland in 2023. It was selected for a 12 show engagement as part of the family programme at Sydney Opera House in April 2024 with the support of Culture Ireland.

Myself and artist Gary Gowran created a series of projection mapped animations for the show to complement and add to the story of the unlikely friends. Ger Clancy, who we had worked with on The Examination, had been involved with the project from early in it’s conception as set designer and asked us to come on board to see what might be possible. It was a different set of challenges to our previous work as we were now creating projections for three surfaces, two icebergs and a background on the cyc.

The creative brief for the production was to use the animation and digital content to help create a picture book type aesthetic. We achieved this through the use of texture and subtle colour work which helped also to add complexity to the flat planes of the icebergs set pieces and transform the background cyc into the night sky.

For the animated sections we used handmade techniques including; stop motion paper waves to break against the ice bergs; clouds made of layers of tissue paper and chalk pastel; ink pen penguin footprints traversing the ice; and digital techniques to animate a night sky of twinkling stars, a tissue paper moon traversing the sky and glowing down on Polar Bear and Penguin.

Software used in the production included Adobe Photoshop, After Effects and Premiere Pro, Qlab and Madmapper.

You can find a trailer for the show at this link.