My proposed project is to recreate a scene which follows natural cycles around a fixed object: day and night or the four seasons. This would be a rotating plane bisected once (for day-night) or twice (for seasons) to display two or four versions of the same image under the different phases of the cycle using silhouettes and colored translucent materials against a single light source on different phases.
The main idea is to have a central object that anchors the scene as a silhouette in front of a light source, then have the rotating plane set behind the object to animate what is happening around it in the rest of the scene. This may take multiple planes and light sources depending on how it needs to be masked off.
The alternative execution is to set up an LED screen set to change the color of the lights around the central, fixed object as the phases pass over a constant time.