Updated October 2026
Before the chocolate goes on the shelf...
Easter in the Window, the Court and the Street
One way to use Oddtoe...
The Easter Package
For shopping center, hotel, venue and brand marketing teams
Use Case: Easter Window Displays & Activations
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 shopping center, a hotel or a brand uses Oddtoe for an Easter window display, court piece or installation, from the first drawing to the photograph families post. The worked example is one walk-in egg for a shopping center court, lit from the inside. The same steps apply to a window prop, a trail, a pop-up, a mascot or a projection on a building.
Over the Easter weekend, imagine one enormous egg in the center court, lit from the inside, with a queue of children waiting to walk through it. Oddtoe designs that, and you see it drawn on your own site before anything is made. The closest built work is a kids’ show piece: Oddtoe carved a 2.1-meter 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. An Easter court is the same kind of project: a venue with its own rules, and families who came for something else.
Steal one of these
6 IDEAS FOR YOUR NEXT EASTER
Six projects a marketing team has before Easter. Each one mixes things Oddtoe makes: 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 court, window or street? Send the date and the site. 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 an Easter piece: what the object is, how it is drawn into your court or window, and how it is fixed, lit and approved by the people who run the site.
Ideation
What is the one thing in the center that makes a family stop and take a photo? A giant egg you can walk into, a rabbit’s ears over the shopfront, a trail of eggs that leads children through the center. The idea, and what it has to do with your brand, gets worked out here, before anyone orders pastel bunting.
Drawn into the Building
The piece is drawn in the space at the size it will be, with the escalators, the queue line and people for scale. That drawing is what your center manager approves, so it shows where it stands, how big it is and what holds it in place. Once it is drawn at full size, you can see how big it really is.
Air, Power & Anchoring
Working out what the piece plugs into and what keeps it where it is. Where the fan gets its power, how it is fixed to a tiled floor or a forecourt, and what happens when the crowd arrives. Rules differ by site, center and council, 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 enormous egg in the court, lit from the first morning, and a queue of families who came for the Easter hunt. Out come the phones.
Afterwards the marketing team has a report to write, and it should be an easy one. Everything an Easter campaign is for can be counted: visitors, photos and sales.
I like the tracking in place before the egg goes up. 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.
Centers, hotels, venues, and brands
Who Commissions Work Like This?
Shopping centers, hotels, attractions, venues and brands with an Easter to get through. The person who rings is usually in marketing, events or brand, and the project already has a date, a site and a budget line.
Shopping center marketing teams want the court piece and a photograph families share.
Hotel and venue managers want the lobby or forecourt piece, up before the long weekend.
Attraction and event teams want the walk-in piece and the trail that keeps families moving.
Brand and campaign teams want an Easter character that lives across the window, the screen and the social feed.
Councils and precinct groups want one object that brings people to the street, and a reason to stay. Agencies producing an Easter campaign for a client are welcome too: see experiential marketing.
Drag the handle, or the drawing, to build it...
FROM FLAT DRAWING TO LIT EGG
The bit that is not a service
Why Oddtoe Likes Easter
Easter is the brief where a brand is allowed to be gentle and a bit daft. I trained as a cartoonist, so the first thing I do is draw the egg and the rabbit that will sit in the window, on the screen and on the box.
I also make my own installation work, and an audience of children who stop and look is an audience I like very much.
The practical upside for you is that the person drawing the piece cares whether it works. I want the court to look right on the first morning for the same reason your marketing team does.
It also helps that Easter has a hard date. The weekend does not move once it is set, so we plan back from it.
Anchored, powered, and lit from the first night...
Designed to be Installed »
Down on the Tuesday after, out again next year...
« Built to Come Down Again
Creatures, drawings, and the footage afterwards
What Does an Easter Piece Actually Get?
The piece, the drawings it was approved from, the animation if it is projected, and the photos and video from the run. All of it is yours to keep, crate included.
• The piece — in this example one walk-in egg for a court
• The drawings — panel patterns your center can file
• The animation — if projected, yours to run again
• Photos and video from the run
People tend to forget about the drawings. Your center will ask for them the next time the piece goes up. They are part of the project, so they arrive finished.
It can be whatever the brief needs: a giant inflatable, a built prop for the window, a costume, a walk-in installation, or a facade animated for the week. 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 court needs to look like before we work out what to build. Bring the date, the site, and a plan of the court or the window.
Visualization
The piece drawn on your site at the size it will be, with people for scale. Your center manager signs off on a picture of the thing in the court.
Feasibility
Size, fixing, power for the fan, crowd flow and who has to say yes. Set up in daylight, 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 all day, and made to come down after Easter Monday 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 set-up day worked out with your center and security teams.
Six
ideas to steal
One
egg, one photograph
Months
ahead of the season
Full
drawings and artwork
Daylight
to close, all weekend
Years
of reuse
A precedent, in a City of Melbourne venue
Why One Artist Designs All of It
An Easter piece has to work three ways: as an object that reads from across the court, as a structure that stands up around crowds, and as something you can put up again. See installation art, prop design and inflatable art.
Oddtoe carved a 2.1-meter 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 an Easter court has: a venue with its own rules, lighting checked in daylight, and an audience of children who had come for something else.
For an inflatable, a costume or a prop, the design is done here and a specialist maker builds from the drawings. You see the finished piece on paper before you commit.
Where the Easter budget actually goes
Stock Decorations, a Hire Package, or Something Drawn?
An Easter budget usually has one line for the thing that makes the site different. Here is what that line buys three different ways.
| Stock decorations | A hire package | A commissioned piece | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it costs | Bought again each year | A hire fee each season | One build, spread over several Easters |
| What people photograph | A design families have seen at other centers | The display, if it is not the same as next door | The piece, with your brand on it |
| Whose idea it is | A catalogue’s | The hire company’s | Drawn for your site and your brand |
| Approvals | Rarely an issue | Handled by the hire company | Drawn and agreed with your venue before the build |
| What you own afterwards | The inflatable | Nothing | The piece, the drawings and the footage |
Questions about
Easter activations?
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 site.
Got an Easter coming up?
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