Oddtoe's Studios in Australia
I live in Australia. I swapped the icy streets of Capitol Hill in Washington, DC in December of 2006. (Winter becomes summer if you sit on an aeroplane long enough.)
Being an artist in the Southern Hemisphere — in Melbourne, Australia to be exact — has professional advantages.
One of those advantages is designing and animating in office locations I would never have thought I’d work in. Fixed sites like an abandoned gunpowder factory from the 1880s gold rush era in the Australian state of Victoria. And I take my work on the road with me now — kangaroos and the occasional koala are who I choose to surround myself with.
Here are my top 5 locations where I, as Oddtoe, have worked from.
Whiskey Hill on the Maribyrnong
Two rivers run through Melbourne: the Yarra and the Maribyrnong. On the banks of the mighty Maribyrnong, I had my home office — a quiet, ground-level basement space with a green-grass lawn and palm trees, was on the other side of a glass door..
A favourite space of mine on this list, because my kids would come down into my home studio and learn the art of goofing off from an expert. I learned a lot, too. During this period, I took on some notable clients, ones from Saudi Arabia (NEOM), the US (BlackRock, Lockheed Martin, Intel), Asia (Marriott) and Europe (Mercedes-Benz) in this space.
Best feature of this studio? My then twelve-year-old daughter sorted a wall of book according to colour— the best Zoom background. She received numerous compliments from clients. And I, in turn, looked grossly more educated than I really am…
Vanlife in Oz
Is it a bucket item to work alongside the ocean surrounded by kangaroo droppings? Maybe half of that work experience is. When a strong wifi signal isn’t a priority, I take Oddtoe on the road. My mobile office — one that I work in at least once a month — consists of a van hauling a small camper trailer.
Betty White Van has a computer monitor, bed, and solar panels. The tiny camper trailer I have hauling is an Avan, an a-frame pop-up trailer that sports a fridge, a sink, electrical chargers, a table, and a bed.
Best trips in this ‘office’?: Robe, South Australia, Lorne & Wye River (the Great Ocean Road in Victoria), and a few trips to the Grampians.
Next trip in 2025?: To the nation’s capitol, Canberra, for a government data and analytics conference. Think: staying in a campground in the forest; and ‘Clark Kent-ing’ into a suit to schmooze policy wonks at a convention centre. I love that night and day difference.
Welcome to Hipster-ville
Fitzroy, a neighbourhood just north of Melbourne, is a centre of excellence in hipster-dom. Handlebar moustaches, beetle-excrement fair-trade coffee, and every-fucking-thing is artisanal.
I put my company right in the centre of it all, in a four-story, old fruit-and-veg warehouse just off the main shopping district: Brunswick Street. Many of my past employees will remember this as their office.
Best feature of the Fitzroy studio?: For one-on-one catch-ups with staff members, I’d sometimes take them to a cafe or restaurant for a coffee. The rooftop at a place called Naked for Satan was a favourite. But was often a confusing subject lines in my emails for employees who’d never heard of it — “Meeting: Naked for Satan”.
Jack's Magazine
Wow. I loved working here. Are you allowed to have fond memories of the Pandemic?! Of course, you are (if you were lucky to have them.)
Jack’s Magazine is a funny name for what was an abandoned gunpowder factory from the 1880s. Located up the Maribyrnong River from Melbourne, Australia, Jack’s Magazine was the place to be if you wanted to blow shit up and get rich doing it. Remember: this was peak gold rush time in a city that was, for a brief time, the wealthiest place on Earth.
I, however, moved in some one hundred and forty years after that. Again, I put my company right in the centre of a 5-acre “campus” of blue stone buildings, the only person and business within its walls. The place had ghosts at night and the cheekiest fox roaming the blast mounds of park during the day.
Best memory at Jack’s Magazine?: March 2020 was just after the big bushfires in Australia and at the start of the world-wide Covid-19 pandemic. I home-schooled my kids inside the three-metre-high walls of this fort. Cinematically, I was imagining the zombie apocalypse was unfolding and simultaneously I was receiving ‘Father of the Year’ honors. What other dad was able to secure a site like this one for raising children as society unraveled? In reality, it was a beautiful time — my two kids and I doing arts & crafts & homework & game design & rockclimbing…
Is that all? No. I missed two of other notable places in my life:
- The Art Deco office I purchased in the Manchester Unity Building is across from Melbourne’s City Hall.
- A Mongolian yurt that formed part of a Washington, DC puppetry centre in Glen Echo Park, across the river from the C.I.A.
Another blog post, perhaps. Thanks for reading.
Projection Art
Projection Artist
Events are always better with nighttime entertainment. Projection and animation are the perfect way to get your audience on their feet.
What does Oddtoe do? For one thing: he’s a projection artist.
