Updated October 2026
Before the first of December...
Christmas Windows, Courts & Lobbies
One way to use Oddtoe...
The Christmas Package
For retail, centre, hotel and brand marketing teams
Use Case: Christmas Window Displays
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 is a use case: how a brand, a shopping centre or a hotel uses Oddtoe for a Christmas window display or installation, from the first drawing to the photograph people post. The worked example is one giant centrepiece for a shopping centre court, with a matching window. The same steps apply to a flagship window, a lobby, a pop-up, a mascot or a projection on a building.
On the first night, imagine one huge, friendly object in the court, lit from the inside, with a queue of people waiting to photograph it. Oddtoe designs that, and you see it drawn in your own space before anything is made. The closest built work is a kids’ show piece: Oddtoe carved a 2.1-metre baobab for Babbling with Baobabs, a kids’ show at the Melbourne Comedy Festival, and ran live projection over it at Signal, the City of Melbourne’s arts space. A Christmas court is the same kind of project: a room with its own rules, and shoppers who came for something else.
Steal one of these
6 IDEAS FOR YOUR NEXT CHRISTMAS
Six projects a marketing team has between September and New Year. Each one mixes things Oddtoe makes: characters, inflatables, built props, mascots, installations, projection and animation. Roll over a circle and pick the one your brand could pull off.
Want one of these for your window, court or lobby? Send the date and the space. Most of them start with a drawing of the place.
Let's look at three steps in the process...
Three Drawings from the Sketchbook
Oddtoe handles the first three stages of a Christmas piece: what the object is, how it is drawn into your window or court, and how it is fixed, powered and approved by the people who run the space.
Ideation
What is the one thing in the window that makes a person stop walking and take a photo? A giant character, a lit object, a scene with one thing moving in it. The idea, and what it has to do with your product or your centre, gets worked out here, before the first tinsel is ordered.
Drawn into the Building
The piece is drawn in the space at the size it will be, with the shopfront, the court, the escalators and people for scale. That drawing is what your centre manager or landlord approves, so it shows where it stands, how high it goes and what is underneath. Once it is drawn at full size, you can see how big it really is.
Power, Fixings & Approvals
Working out what the piece plugs into and what holds it up. Where the power comes from, how it is fixed to a floor or a ceiling you do not own, and how it goes in after the doors close. Rules differ by centre, council and site, so Oddtoe works through them with your team before anything is built.
What the marketing team counts afterwards...
What It Does to Your Numbers
One big object in the court, lit from the first evening, and a crowd who came to shop for presents. Out come the phones.
Afterwards the marketing team has a report to write, and it should be an easy one. Everything a Christmas display is for can be counted: the door, the photos, and the till.
I like the tracking in place before the display goes up. Oddtoe shares a founder with the Datalabs Agency, a data visualisation studio, so a dashboard that shows whether it worked can be part of the project.
Retail, centres, hotels, and brands
Who Commissions Work Like This?
Retailers, shopping centres, hotels, offices and brands with a Christmas to get through. The person who rings is usually in marketing, brand or centre management, and the project already has a date, a space and a budget line.
Retail marketing teams want the window and the in-store moment, and a photograph people share.
Centre and property managers want the centrepiece and the lobby piece, up before the first weekend.
Hotels and hospitality want the lobby, the forecourt and the thing guests photograph before the party.
Brand and campaign teams want a Christmas character that lives across the window, the screen and the social feed.
Councils and precinct groups want one object for the street that brings people in, and a reason to stay. Agencies producing a Christmas campaign for a client are welcome too: see experiential marketing.
Drag the handle, or the drawing, to build it...
FROM FLAT DRAWING TO LIT CENTREPIECE
The bit that is not a service
Why Oddtoe Likes Christmas
Christmas is the one brief where everybody wants a bit of magic and almost nobody wants to draw anything new. I trained as a cartoonist, so the first thing I do is draw the character that will sit in the window, on the screen and on the box.
I also make my own installation work, and a crowd of people who did not come for the art is the audience I like best.
The practical upside for you is that the person drawing the object cares whether it works. I want the court to look right on the first night for the same reason your marketing team does.
It also helps that Christmas has a hard date. The first weekend of the season does not move, so we plan back from it.
Fixed, powered, and lit from the first night...
Designed to be Installed »
Down in January, out again next year...
« Built to Come Down Again
Objects, drawings, and the footage afterwards
What Does a Christmas Display Actually Get?
The piece, the drawings it was approved from, the animation if it is projected, and the photos and video from the season. All of it is yours to keep, crate included, and it comes out again next year.
• The object — in this example one large centrepiece and a matching window
• The drawings — plans and elevations your landlord can file
• The animation — if the piece is projected, the sequences are yours to run again
• Photos and video from the season, for the press and your channels
People tend to forget about the drawings. Your landlord will ask for them the next time the piece goes up, and a second centre will ask for them before it agrees to take the piece. They are part of the project, so they arrive finished.
It can be whatever the brief needs: a giant inflatable character, a lit sculpture for the lobby, built props, a mascot, a projection on the facade, or a character animated for the screens and built for the window. They are designed together, so what runs on the screen is the same thing that stands in the court.
Everything in the box
What the Package Covers
Ideation
We work out what the display needs to look like before we work out what to build. Bring the date, the space, and a plan of the floor or the window.
Visualisation
The piece drawn in your window or court at the size it will be, with people for scale. Your centre manager and landlord sign off on a picture of the thing in the space.
Feasibility
Weight, fixings, power, sightlines and who has to say yes. Install after closing, and the date, which does not move.
Fabrication
Designed in Melbourne, built by the right maker for the piece, here or near you. Finished to photograph well under shop lighting, and made to come down in January and go back up next year.
Project Management
I run the project myself: visual progress reports, a plan against your date, and a run sheet for install night worked out with your centre and security teams.
Six
ideas to steal
One
object, one photograph
Months
ahead of the season
Full
drawings and artwork
Season
long, lit nightly
Years
of reuse
A precedent, in a City of Melbourne venue
Why One Artist Designs All of It
A Christmas piece has to work three ways: as an installation in a space you do not own, as an object that photographs well after dark, and as something you can put up again. See installation art, prop design and inflatable art.
Oddtoe carved a 2.1-metre baobab for Babbling with Baobabs, a kids’ show at the Melbourne Comedy Festival, and ran live projection over it at Signal, the City of Melbourne’s arts space.
That project had what a Christmas court has: a venue with its own rules, lighting checked in daylight and run in the dark, and an audience who had come for something else.
For an inflatable, a mascot or a prop, the design is done here and a specialist maker builds from the drawings. In a court the crowd is the same: people on their way somewhere else, stopped by one big thing. You see the finished piece on paper before you commit.
Where the Christmas budget actually goes
Stock Decorations, a Hire Package, or Something Drawn?
A Christmas budget usually has one line for the thing that makes the display different. Here is what that line buys three different ways.
| Stock decorations | A hire package | A commissioned piece | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it costs | Bought or hired again each year | A hire fee each season | One build, spread over several seasons |
| What people photograph | Nothing they have not seen before | The display, if it is not the same as next door | The object, with your brand behind it |
| Who puts it up | Your own team, over a weekend | The hire crew | Installed overnight; one person on call |
| Approvals | Rarely an issue | Handled by the hire company | Drawn and agreed with your centre before the build |
| What you own afterwards | The boxes | Nothing | The piece, the drawings and the footage |
Questions about
Christmas window displays?
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 date and the space.
Got a Christmas coming up?
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