Lean in

Created by Jeff McCann & Alice Peacock. 

Jeff McCann is an artist, illustrator, and maker living on Gadigal Land in Sydney. He strives to create inclusive work that celebrates the making process while encouraging his audience to step into his world and get involved. Exploring themes of play, childhood nostalgia, world building, games and the natural environment. His work ranges from murals, public art and artwork licensing; through to wearable art, collaborations and small batch products. 

Alice Peacock is an artist from Wagga Wagga, Wiradjuri Country, specialising in animation and motion design. While her primary work is in animation for marketing and communications, Alice embraces opportunities to create animated artworks for festival displays and public art commissions. Her work makes use of bold colours, rich compositions, playful ideas, and dynamic movement. She is passionate about helping tell community stories.

What happens when you lean into your playful curiosities?

Lean In gives you permission to explore your child-like curiosities and those imaginary worlds just beyond our own. The unexpected comes to life through a series of short animations where characters seek moments of wonder, act on their playful curiosities, and play for the sake of play. With locations and visual motifs inspired by PHIVE’s architecture and the biodiversity of Parramatta River, Lean In draws a connection between reality and imagination and encourages viewers to reconsider their surroundings with curiosity and wonder.

Lean in is a hybrid 2d/3d animation, utilising rich colours, tactile textures, and abstracted forms, to build up a vibrant and immersive world. While the artwork has no linear narrative, the 24 scenes that make up the artwork convey similar themes, visual motifs, and characters, with each scene contributing ideas to the overarching themes of curiosity, wonder and play. 

Jeff McCann and Alice Peacock brought their skills together in the creation of this work, with Jeff’s playful and colourful concept illustrations and character design, and Alice’s animation skills and ability to interpret the concepts into 3d scenes, which brought a further richness and depth to the work. 

Embracing ‘play’ was central to the early stages of the development of this work, and as part of the process, a puppet character was built out of cardboard and split pins to better understand the movements of the characters. This method of puppet rigging was then translated into digital characters for the work and informed their movements. Inspired by this process, the textures for the animation were chosen to resemble craft materials such as clay, cardboard and paper to reinforce concepts of play and exploration. 

Finding inspiration in the PHIVE building 

Embracing their own curiosity and wonder, Jeff and Alice drew significant inspiration from the PHIVE building and surroundings, looking for ways to ‘reimagine’ the architecture and details in the work. PHIVE’s influence is seen throughout the animation, from character and background design to visual motifs. By taking this approach to the artwork’s design, the artists hope to soften the border between reality and imagination by encouraging the audience to reimagine their own physical environment when visiting PHIVE.

What is the difference between the human and flower characters?

There are two versions of each character: a regular human form and a flower form, with the latter used as a visual device to show when they are being more playful and curious. In the artwork, you will see moments when characters act on curiosity or become more playful and as a result, they transform into their flower form

Jeff McCann is an artist, illustrator & maker living on Gadigal Land in Sydney. He strives to create inclusive work that celebrates the making process while encouraging his audience to step into his world and get involved. His previous clients include the Museum of Contemporary Art, Merivale, QTOPIA, Reverse Garbage, and Westfield. He was also the recipient of the ACON Cayte Latta Memorial Award for Visual Arts in 2023. 

Alice Peacock is an artist from Wagga Wagga, Wiradjuri Country, specialising in animation and motion design, with a passion for helping tell community stories. Her understanding of the power of visuals to shape how we think, feel, and act has led to a diverse career. Alice’s work spans everything from TV shows and corporate explainer videos to on-stage graphics for TEDx talks, thought-provoking conferences, and large-scale projection art. She works with forward-thinking councils and businesses to cut through the noise and connect with their communities through eye-catching, emotive stories that inspire change