London, UK, 4 April: Pink Floyd announce the winners of ‘The Dark Side Of The Moon’ animation competition, championed by YouTube.

To tie in with the 50th Anniversary of ‘The Dark Side Of The Moon’, Pink Floyd invited a new generation of animators to enter a competition to create music videos for any of the 10 songs on the iconic 1973 album. Pink Floyd has a rich history of collaborating with animators from the beginnings of the band (Ian Emes, Gerald Scarfe, etc.), and in some cases the visuals that accompany the songs have become synonymous with the music itself. The 50th Anniversary was no exception. The band gave all animators an opportunity to present a fresh take on these timeless aural works. Animators could enter up to 10 videos, one per song on the album.

The competition was conceived by Pink Floyd’s long-time Creative Consultant Aubrey ‘Po’ Powell. He was overwhelmed by the standard and quantity of entries from all over the globe: “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. 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.”

The 10 winners were announced by Nick Mason on YouTube on Friday 29th March (video here) with a video released once a day with a behind the scenes look over 10 days. The premiere of the final video will happen on YouTube this Sunday 7th April. There will be a YouTube After Party following the premiere of the 3rd place winning video, Eclipse, which will be a behind the scenes from the animator Monica Fibbi, giving insight into how the video was created.

Thank you to the judges Nick Mason, Kyle Alba, Gerald Scarfe, Sarah Smith, Daisy Jacobs, Harry Pearce, Terry Gilliam, Alan Yentob, Anton Corbijn, for lending their time and expertise for choosing the overall winners. 1st place went to Rati Dabrundashvili and Nastassja Nikitina from Caucas, Georgia for their video for ‘Brain Damage’. They won £100,000 and were thrilled to have won: “We put our souls in this work, and we hope to give a little back of what we have received for all these years.”

Two runners up were also chosen. David Horne from Worcestershire, UK came in 2nd place with his video for ‘Time’ winning him £25,000: “All I want to say is, I’m grateful to have had this opportunity to do a video for one of my favourite bands of all time, Pink Floyd. Thank you for picking me as one of your winners. It’s amazing. Thank you to everyone.“

In 3rd place, winning £10,000 with their animation for Eclipse was Monica Fibbi from Firenze, Italy: “Well, know that I am a little crazy, all my friends know it. It must be for a reason that I decided only at the very last moment to participate in this competition by animating some pieces of recycled clay in stop motion with a single light source on set. That of the moon. I simply did what the music wanted me to do to the colours of the prism. Making animated films is my job. I animated all kind of the materials, clay, paper, sand, cotton, ribbons, water, leaves, anything and it's like magic! My own life is a movie and Pink Floyd's music has always been my soundtrack. I would like to thank the members of the jury for giving my film their attention, and the great honour of being one of the special awards. I deeply appreciate it. I feel like I am over THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON!”

All of the 10 winning entries received prizes of £10,000.