Leonardo da Vinci

500 Years of Genius

Bringing Leonardo da Vinci's imagination to life through immersive storytelling.

Some projects feel like a natural continuation of a lifelong curiosity.

As a child, I spent hours exploring the pages of our family art encyclopaedia, and Leonardo da Vinci's work always stood out. His inventions, anatomical studies and creative thinking sparked a fascination that stayed with me.

So when Grande Experiences approached me to create a sequence imagining Leonardo as a theatre set designer, I was thrilled by the opportunity.

The result was Impressario, an animated sequence created for the immersive exhibition Leonardo da Vinci: 500 Years of Genius at The Lume in Melbourne. Inspired by Leonardo's mechanical designs and inventive spirit, the piece explored how his ideas could have transformed the theatre stage.

The main sequence was accompanied by additional animations exploring the mechanics behind Leonardo's imagined theatre.

Inspired by his fascination with engineering and invention, I designed a mechanical system of cogs, pulleys and moving parts to recreate how the stage effects could have been powered. To highlight the human effort behind these creations, illustrations of workers pulling ropes were incorporated to reflect how such systems may have operated during Leonardo's time.

This added another layer to the experience, revealing not only the spectacle of the final performance, but also the ingenuity and craftsmanship behind it.

Behind The Curtain

Step into the wings and see how the magic happens.

Every animation begins with a story. For this project, the storyboard became my script, mapping out the sequence before moving into an animatic, a rough version of the final performance that helped shape timing, movement and pacing.

That animatic became the blueprint for the thousands of individual elements needed to bring the animation to life. In total, more than 54,000 files came together through concept development, asset creation and animation preparation.

From the first sketches to the final render, every detail played a part in building the world of Leonardo's imagined stage.

Enjoy the show.