Pink Floyd continued its ongoing 50th anniversary celebration of The Dark Side of the Moon by inviting animators from around the world to create new videos for the iconic album’s ten songs. The winning videos are all available now on the band’s YouTube, and none of them are The Wizard of Oz.
The competition was the brainchild of Pink Floyd’s longtime creative consultant Aubrey “Po” Powell. In addition to celebrating 50 years of Dark Side of the Moon, the band also wanted to highlight its rich history of visual collaboration with animators like Ian Emes and Gerald Scarfe, the latter of whom was one of the contest’s judges.
“Given that it was the 50th anniversary of the album, and with the band’s history of working with animation both in videos and on stage, we felt this needed to be acknowledged,” Powell said in a statement. “It was a huge success with over 900 films being entered and the process of elimination for the judges was very complex. They eventually came up with the final 10 and I can only say they were brilliant choices and representative of the diverse styles of entries that all gave deep respect to the legacy of the band.”
Judges for the competition included Scarfe, Floyd drummer Nick Mason, Monty Python alum/director Terry Gilliam, former BBC creative director Alan Yentob, director of Netflix‘s Squaring The Circle documentary on the Hipgnosis creative firm Anton Corbijn, and more. Animators were allowed to submit up to ten videos, one for each track on the album.
The judges awarded prizes to the top three videos, with Rati Dabrundashvili and Nastassja Nikitina from Caucasus, Georgia coming in first and winning £100,000 for their “Brain Damage” video. The video’s animation style replicating a moving painting put it in a league of its own and was filled with Pink Floyd easter eggs and references, personifying going mad and the lunatics in all our heads.
“We put our souls in this work, and we hope to give a little back of what we have received for all these years,” the winning team said.
David Horne‘s video for “Time” came in second, with the Tool-esque animated realism personifying the interlocking nature of existence, connected in this case by the gears of a clock and the passage of time. Monica Fibbi‘s brilliant claymation for the album-closing “Eclipse” came in third, the transformative lumps of material shapeshifting to form everything under the sun. Other highlights included the classic trippy cartoonishness of “Breathe”, the Animals-like nightmare of “On The Run”, and the innocent clay work for “Money”. All ten winners received prizes of £10,000.
Related: The Message Of Pink Floyd’s ‘Animals’ Still Resonates 47 Years Later [Listen]
Watch all the winners of the Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon animation contest via the playlist below, which also includes behind-the-scenes videos with each director. Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon 50th anniversary release is available here.
Pink Floyd — The Dark Side Of The Moon Animation Competition Winners (Playlist)