Updated October 2026
Worth the drive...
Photo Moments for Venues
One way to use Oddtoe...
The Photo Moment
For venue, precinct, council and brand marketing teams
Use Case: The Photo Moment
Oddtoe is an experiential design and generative-AI animation studio based in Melbourne, creating projection, installation, and animated work for events, venues, and galleries. This use case follows the studio’s simplest product: one sculptural object, strange enough to photograph, placed where your visitors already are.
The photo moment is drawn on your site first, then fabricated by specialist workshops near the venue — wherever the venue is.
Most venues answer the photo question with a vinyl wall and some neon script, and visitors photograph it once, politely. An object works differently: people photograph it from every angle, with themselves in it, and the picture carries your venue’s name wherever it goes.
Australia already ran the experiment at national scale. Towns with one giant object are searched by that object’s name — “big banana” alone, about 22,200 times a month.
Let's look at three steps in the process...
Three Drawings from the Sketchbook
Every piece starts on paper, and the drawing stage is where a photo moment earns its strangeness.
Ideation
The concept sketches answer one question: what object, in this place, would make a stranger stop? We sketch more options than you need, so the safe answers get thrown out while a rejection is still a piece of paper.
Drawn onto Your Site
The chosen object is rendered onto photographs of your site at true size — the courtyard, the forecourt, the entry — so you approve it with your eyes. Wind, footings, approvals and maintenance are designed in here, before fabrication is quoted.
Materials & Freight
Most pieces are a sculpted form in venue-grade materials over a steel structure, built in a workshop and delivered whole or in sections. Outdoor pieces are specified for sun, wind and footings.
What the marketing team counts afterwards...
What It Does to Your Numbers
One strange object where the visitors already are, and out come the phones. Afterwards the marketing team has a report to write. It should be an easy one.
The third number is the quiet one: when a piece becomes a destination, its name becomes a search phrase, and that traffic belongs to you for as long as the piece stands. Oddtoe shares a founder with the Datalabs Agency, a data visualization studio, so a dashboard that shows whether it worked can be part of the project.
Steal one of these
6 OBJECTS A VENUE COULD OWN
Six commissions, each designed to be photographed. Roll over a circle and pick the one your site could carry.
![The Big [Your Thing]](https://www.oddtoe.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/oddtoe-big-thing-landmark.jpg)
The Big [Your Thing]
The classic commission: one giant object that belongs to your place — the thing your town, venue or brand is quietly known for, built large enough to be the reason people pull over.
The Melting Ice Cream
A half-melted ice cream cast in bronze with verdigris, like a serious public artwork that lost its nerve on a hot day.
The Oversized Armchair
A chair built far too big. Everyone who climbs into it becomes small, and nobody leaves without the picture.
The Door That Argues With Gravity
A crooked entry — a doorway or facade piece leaning at an angle architecture does not allow. People photograph themselves pretending to hold it up.
The Giant Pencil
A pencil the size of a flagpole, mid-write, as if the building were being drawn. Works as a gate or a corner marker.
The Egg That Hatched Something
A cracked giant egg with evidence nearby that something large has recently left. The story is told in two objects, and visitors finish it themselves.
Have a site and a hunch? Send the brief — the stranger the better.
Venues, centers, towns and brands
Who Commissions Work Like This?
Venues and hotels commission a photo moment to give the visit a souvenir that markets the place. Shopping centers and attractions commission them as the anchor of a season or a precinct.
Councils and tourism bodies commission them the way towns always have — one object, owned by the place.
Brands commission them for launches and activations, where the object travels and the photos carry the campaign.
In every case the buyer’s question is the same: what is the one thing here people will photograph on purpose?
The bit that is not a service
Why Oddtoe Likes the Big Ones
I trained as a cartoonist, and a cartoonist’s whole trade is one wrong thing drawn with a straight face. A giant object in a real place is that joke, built.
The surreal leaning is the point: catalogs sell realism, so the piece that gets photographed is the one that should not quite exist. That is the work I most want on my drawing board.
Light enough to carry, built to last...
Designed to be Carried »
Crated, shipped, and back for the next one...
« Built to Travel Easily
The object, the drawings, and the quiet bit
What Does a Photo Moment Actually Get?
The object, the approved drawings, and the care guide. Design ownership and exclusivity are agreed in writing; if a traveling version or a second site is likely, the build is planned so repeats cost less than the original.
And the thing that outlasts the campaign: a place that photographs itself. The marketing happens in other people’s pockets, every weekend, without an invoice.
Everything in the box
What the Package Covers
Ideation
We work out what the place needs before we work out what to build. Bring the site and the date that matters.
Visualisation
The object is rendered onto photographs of your actual site at true size. You sign off on a picture of the thing, at the size it will be.
Feasibility
Wind, footings, approvals and maintenance are designed in from the first sketch, before fabrication is quoted.
Fabrication
A fixed quote from a specialist workshop near your site, then the build, delivered whole or in sections — wherever the site is.
Project Management
Oddtoe directs the build and the install around your operation, and hands over the care guide with the object.
One
object, strange on purpose
22,200
monthly searches for one banana
Six
commissions to pick from
Fifty
years a Big Thing can work
Anywhere
designed in Melbourne, built near you
Yours
the design, in writing
A cartoonist first, a studio second
Why One Artist Designs All of It
A photo moment has to work three ways: as an image that reads from across the street, as a sculpture the place is proud of, and as a structure that stands up outdoors. See installation art for the built side of the studio.
One artist drawing all of it keeps the image, the sculpture and the build one idea instead of three departments’ compromises.
Where the photo-spot budget actually goes
A Vinyl Wall, Hired Props, or a Commissioned Object?
A marketing budget usually has one line for the thing people photograph. Here is what that line buys three different ways.
| A vinyl wall | Hired props | A commissioned object | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it costs | Cheap, and replaced every refresh | Paid again every season | Staged: drawings first, then a fixed build quote |
| What people photograph | It, once, politely | The same props as the last event | The object, with themselves in it, from every angle |
| Whose idea it is | The printer’s template | The hire catalog’s | Yours — drawn for the place |
| How long it works | A month | A weekend | As long as it stands — it gets a name |
| What you own afterwards | Wallpaper | Nothing | The object and the design, in writing |
Questions about
photo moments and Big Things?
Interested in seeing more…
built work?
A 2.1-metre carved baobab, lit and projection-mapped, built for Oddtoe's children's show at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
A church renovation with a sense of humor.
Sculpture design case study of Oddtoe's limited edition, "Roman General with Pinkeye".
Tell me the place and the date.
Got a Site and a Hunch?
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