Our generic showreel, spanning a wide variety of work in events, ceremonies, automotive and corporate markets.

The Spinifex Group is a creative communications company, recognized as one of the world leaders in the highly specialised field of experience media. We combine Creativity and Technology to engage audiences and communicate marketing messages for corporate and event clients.

Drawing on a world-recognized talent pool of over 60 permanent staff, we’ve become leaders in the highly specialised field of experience media, where complex technical challenges meet the very highest creative expectations.

Our ability to generate ideas and see them through production to delivery without compromising creative integrity or innovation is the key to our success as one of the few truly “concept to completion” creative groups.

Based in Sydney, we work worldwide with agencies, event companies and corporate clients in a wide range of disciplines and an even wider range of media. Whether it’s international spectaculars, interactive media, B2B messaging, branding or broadcast design, our clients have come to rely on our creative expertise and innovative approach to provide solutions suited to their unique needs.

Although we are best known for our creative design, we believe it is our complete offering that sets us apart. While we have been exposed to vast and varied challenges over time, our primary objective has remained unchanged… to create and deliver communication that has impact and relevance and, most importantly, that connects our clients with their audience.

For the Lexus stand at the Detroit auto show 2012, Spinifex designed and produced an integrated media experience, encompassing the entire space. The holistic approach allowed for some great interplay between the digital content and the physical displays, as reflections from the media pillars and ribbon played out across the reflective surface of the cars. The pavilion offered some engaging interactive experiences, such as playing with the crash test dummy.

Over 700,000 people attended the Detroit auto show, including 5,500 journalists from approximately 60 countries for the Press show.

The 16th Pan American Games were hosted by Guadalajara, Mexico.

Spinifex was commissioned to create digital content for the Opening and Closing Ceremonies. Video projection replaced large props and set the scene and atmosphere for the segments. The projection area included the stadium floor and a 30m high x 50m wide cylindrical screen, which was dropped from the roof. The vertical screen provided a 360° projection surface at 5784 x 1920 resolution, and a “field of play” projection surface of 2048 x 2048 resolution.

Spinifex also worked closely with choreography, projection and the flying system to create content for the real time video tracking of 11 aerial performers.

The Spinifex Group was commissioned by DAE to create this innovative contribution to the 20th anniversary celebrations of Moscow’s collapse of Communism in Moscow Day, featuring a spectacular 4D architectural projection-mapped video on the main building of Lomonosov Moscow State University, sponsored by Alfa Bank.

This project is a record-breaking achievement and will be captured in the Guinness Book of Records for the largest projection mapping ever undertaken. The projection surface area covered 25,500 square meters, equivalent to 5 football fields! The content itself was nine times the resolution of an HD video.

Continuing a long history of collaboration with David Atkins Enterprises that includes the opening ceremonies of the Vancouver Winter Olympics 2010, Shanghai World Expo 2010 and Doha Asian Games 2006, Spinifex transformed the University façade into a huge digital canvas, projecting a 25min show that was breathtaking and one of the memorable highlights of Moscow City Day.

The Sydney Theatre Company – “Greening the Wharf”

Over the last 12 months the Sydney Theatre Company has been making significant changes to The Wharf at Pier 4/5. As the home of STC, The Wharf  is fast becoming a living example of how all buildings – even heritage ones – can be made more sustainable. STC now draws energy from the sun, reduces the waste leaving The Wharf to landfill and will soon be collecting precious rainwater from the roof.

Spinifex was engaged to work with the Sydney Theatre Company to help demonstrate the key objectives and achievements of the programme to the public through the use of onsite interactive kiosks. The key objectives for the kiosks are to create a platform for an ongoing conversation about the environment between STC and it’s patrons, sponsors and the broader community, build awareness of what is being undertaken as part of the “Greening the Wharf” project and to create a greater understanding on issues such as climate change, energy consumption, generation and water consumption.

The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) was turned into an interactive creative canvas for Vivid Sydney, May 2011. Spinifex  created an engaging  interactive projection, mapped onto the front facade of the iconic MCA building in the Rocks, Sydney.

Participants of the VIVID festival used colours and gestures to ‘spray paint’ the building. The interaction is simple: movement creates paint. Different aspects of the motion: size, speed, acceleration, curvature all have an effect on the outcome: strokes, splashes, drips, spirals; and is left up to the users to play and discover.

Click here for the Backstage story.

“The Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber” is a new concert spectacular featuring the composer’s most timeless songs, performed by the current stars of Australian musical theatre. The show is now touring Australia and will also reach New Zealand and Asia in 2011.

Through 34 music clip-like film pieces generated by Spinifex, the climactic moments throughout the Show are brought to life with a mix of themed and timed audio and visual components throughout the enthralling two hour performance. These high definition streams of content are synchronized to play out on four large LED screens, which provide an impressive backdrop for creating mood and evoking the story and emotional force behind each of these celebrated musicals.

Spinifex water screen projection for Taiwan’s New Years Eve celebrations 2010 (100th anniversary celebrations).

360 Theatre.

There are quite a few 360-degree screens at the Expo, but none that had the screen ratio of 30,000 x 1080 pixels. To be able to get a more accurate idea of how our graphics worked in an immersive environment, we set up our own mini 360-degree screen at our offices, using 18 iMacs on a tailor-made rig.

What made the theatre truly unique was the integration of the LED ceiling poles. These played animations that enhanced the action, motion and colour of the screen video. They were also interactive, providing another level of engagement for the audience.

One section of the screen video featured footage of Shanghai that was filmed on a 360 degree HD rig that was state of the art and was used on this project for the first time in a commercial capacity. Having angled mirrors meant no depth of field issues that meant we could still have action close to camera with no stitching problems.

Project Overview

David Atkins Enterprises were asked by the Chinese Government to creative a half hour outdoor Opening Ceremony for the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai. The event was held on the 31st April on the Expo site along the Huangpu River and broadcast internationally. Spinifex were bought on board as the creative screen content producers for what is to date the largest outdoor LED screen in the world.

Creative

35 minutes of 3D motion graphics were created for the LED screen. The content told stories of previous World Expos, Chinese and Shanghai culture, history and symbolism. The creative was complimented by an amazing combination of music, lighting, fireworks and lasers. Content was also created for various water screens on river barges that formed part of the evening water show.

Technical / Logistics

• River-side screen dimensions : 283.5m x 26.4m (at highest point)
• Screen Resolution: 1890 x 176 (at centre)
• Screen Area: 5600 sqm

Project Overview

The Dream Cube came together through the joint efforts of a highly diverse and specialized team of experts, from the US, Germany, China and Australia, led by design agency ESI. Each excelling in their respective disciplines, from the architecture to the idea to the fabrication to the systems installation to the content production. There are 4 main areas that comprise the cube: the Exterior, the Queue, the Path and the Theatre.

Creative

As media producer, Spinifex was commissioned to design and produce every piece of media that appeared on any surface throughout the pavilion. This also included writing and developing interactive applications that provided the playful and “collaborative” elements of the pavilion.

Technical / Logistics

• wrote and built a simulator that allowed us to view the exterior LED animations as well as work out how to output them
• proposed the original system design for translating content into the 3D matrix and worked with manufacturers and systems integrators to resolve a final technical specification.
• designed and developed a simulator that allowed us to view the exterior LED animations in real-time as well as work out how to output them and control them interactively.
• designed and developed a series of rendering applications and templates to take animations from a variety of different software and output them in the format required.
• designed and developed the clap detection and computer vision based motion tracking applications for the interactive areas
• developed a custom networked messaging system to sync and control all interactive computers and tie them into the systems integration.

Spinifex was commissioned to create a Press Reveal Video for the Nissan Ellure for the 2010 Auto show season. As a concept car, Ellure represents the embodiment of the overall design philosophy for Nissan. Working with GPJ’s Joel McCall, Richard Lindsay and Matt Lock created a new video that reflects the chic style and sophication of the Ellure.

Using the car’s discreet lines and architectural shapes, Senior Motion graphics artist Matt Lock created a slow reveal of the car using light and shadow lighting in the CGI.

Duration : 45 seconds

This year’s Scion Brand video was based on the idea of a giant animated video wall. Jason French worked closely with the Scion team to create a vibrant product video that could be mixed into the Scion Brand culture using live video DJ’s at the show.

The Exterior

This was a matrix of custom made LED poles, creating the largest 3D LED screen ever built, with a screen dimension of 51 x 168 x 129 pixels. An extensive period of R & D was required to work out how to build animations for this canvas, as well as how to output them for playback in both linear and interactive systems.

The Queue

The queuing area is underneath the building itself, so the ceiling is the LED grid. We needed to work out how to isolate these layers so that an animation could play separately than on the façade. This is the first contact the audience has with the interactive nature of the cube – their combined clapping triggers pulsing animations through the LED poles.

The Path.

25 walls created the blank canvas for a walk through of 3 distinctive “feelings” of Shanghai. Spinifex designed and produced artwork for many of these walls, which had to work and sync up with monitors placed randomly on the walls. The beginning of the path featured walls of Olite with projection on top, allowing us to play with texture and focus. A grandfather and granddaughter also appeared on a variety of these surfaces as they posed questions and discussed issues relating to Shanghai.

This is a collection of various world stage ceremonies we have been involved in, including the Vancouver Winter Olympics 2010, Shanghai World Expo 2010, Beijing Olympics 2008 and Doha Asian Games 2006 opening ceremonies.

Acura has been setting new standards in automotive design and engineering for two decades through bold innovation, a refined sense of aesthetics and precision manufacturing.

Together with George P Johnson, the Spinifex Group created an International brand video to showcase Acura’s vehicle line-up for 2009. Placing the vehicles within our custom built environments focused attention on the performance, comfort and safety features across the range.

A collection of our latest and greatest auto work.

Over the past decade Spinifex has worked with some of the leading car brands to develop their media presence at the US Motor Shows.

As the “Lead Experiential Media” company for George P Johnson worldwide, one of the largest event companies involved with motor shows and motoring clientele, we have worked with Toyota, Lexus, Nissan, Infiniti, Honda, Acura, Chrysler, and Scion.

Spinifex provides a complete “cross media” service to our automotive clients, spanning Stand design, Car launch design, Branding media, Interactive media and Data capture for leads and user tracking.

EA shows at E3 annually, and has previously shown a looping video inside, and another outside. Punctuated throughout the 3 days, are presentations every hour or half hour breaking up the day. Our brief was to come up with an EA unifying brand to encapsulate all game titles together, in a TV channel style modular approach. This would help show content on the main screen, allowing for differing durations of content, and including a diverse & energetic modular promo package to highlight up & coming shows, 
with flexibility to change at the last minute 
for any reason.

We came up with a ‘playlist stack’ approach to our modules, including trailer packaging for 25 latest games, promo Next & Laters, Line Ups, Brand Stings, Brand Openers, Sizzle Reel, and seamless ways into keynote presentations. Our 3d environment housed the actual 3d game characters animating and reacting in our 3d Brand space, and essentially introducing the trailer. We also showcase the 3d characters in a self contained attractor loop, where 15 characters animate in one EA brand space.

Our overarching EA brand design is meant to illustrate that many separate game titles form the one overall brand of EA. Our brand direction for the show was based on the graphic element of the EA Rhomboid, where all the angles in the world echo the degree incline from the logotype.

See the Backstage story…