Monkeystack produce animations, experiences and serious games for people, businesses and industries across manufacturing, innovation, defence and training.
We are proud for our studio to have been selected to be an approved supplier for projects supported by the South Australian Landing Pad (Department for Trade and Investment), and the Space and Defence Landing Pad (Defence SA) as well as being on the Standing Deed of Offer for Commonwealth Government Agencies wanting to produce passive and interactive experiences. We are members of the Defence Teaming Centre.
Monkeystack work with a broad range of people with lived experience, service organisations, researchers and health practitioners to produce animations, experiences and serious games for health and education purposes.
We understand that no two needs are the same. We produce appropriate solutions that drive a connection between the project and audience and deliver efficacy.
We’ve worked across mental health and wellbeing, autism and other neural diversity, physical education, cardiac health and self assessment, physical disability and patient distraction.
Monkeystack acknowledges and pays respect to the past, present and future Traditional Custodians and Elders of this nation and the continuation of cultural, spiritual and educational practices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
Over the years, the Monkeystack studio has established an excellent co-creation model to help First Nations people connect their stories with audiences. We work with First Nations cultural bearers, artists and community leaders to produce meaningful and authentic experiences.
The Australian Museum in Sydney commissioned Monkeystack to produce a touch screen interactive for their permanent Minerals gallery – an exhibition that’s been 2.7 billion years in the making!
‘Making Minerals’ is a fun and educational interactive experience that visitors to the Museum can explore on three dedicated touch screens situated in the middle of the exhibition. We produced seven story locations, including volcano, caves and magma chambers, with animations to ‘see’ key steps of the mineral formation process and interactive elements for users to choose from and determine the mineral’s outcome.
Cyber Safety Dash is an engaging browser-based game aimed at 6-11 year olds that Monkeystack developed for Mockingbird Consultancy, released for cyber security awareness month.
Young players work with their trusty friend Datablock as they dash through cyberspace, jumping across platforms and avoiding hazardous viruses including phishers, hackers and cyber bullies. Each level has a Boss that players must defeat by answering multiple choice questions themed to cyber safety.
Monkeystack was commissioned by the Australian Museum to produce a multi-user interactive table top touchscreen experience for their new permanent gallery, Wansolmoana (One Salt Ocean). The interactive reflects and reinforces the surrounding gallery themes, allowing visitors to have agency in their own experience, learn more about the sea of islands that make up the Pacific, the largest and deepest of Earth’s five oceans, and showcase a selection from the Museum’s world-leading Pasifika collection of over 60,000 objects.
Monkeystack produced a suite of engaging and educational interactive learning stations and games for the Marine Discovery Centre, the only coastal and marine educational facility for school-aged students and the broader community in South Australia.
With the support of a Green Adelaide Grassroot grant, we developed six unique experiences delivered on digital touchscreen tables, motion detecting projections and iPads that sparks imagination and encourages curiosity whilst empowering their 8,000+ student and community visitors per year to actively protect South Australia’s iconic coastal and marine environments.
‘Project Space Botany’ is an educational interactive app-based game that Monkeystack produced for the Botanic Gardens and State Herbarium of South Australia as a program supported by the Department for Education.
Student groups are challenged to design a biodome that will enable life on Mars, with the key to creating the perfect biodome discovered as they follow a multi-stop physical and in-app interactive trail throughout the iconic indoor rainforest of the Bicentennial Conservatory – with a little assistance from the in-app guide Wat-L Bot.
The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) recently conducted a huge remodelling project for the National Electoral Education Centre (NEEC) educational space in Old Government House, Canberra. Monkeystack was commissioned to produce a 3D interactive game for the space and provide a seamless experience between the physical and digital world.
We produced the 3D game ‘DemocraCity’ using Maya and Unity, achieving a compelling and educational interactive experience for deployment on large touchscreens designed for self-directed learning. The game is built as a 3D world full of buildings, unique characters, vehicles and interiors. We developed multiple minigames that feature drag and drop, tabletop and role-playing mechanics to deliver learning through fun as a user’s newfound knowledge is put to the test.
Monkeystack partnered with POSITURE to produce gamified interactive solutions that improve the posture, mental health and well-being of children, neurodiverse people and aging populations, combatting the problems commonly caused by looking down at a phone or screen for extended periods of time.
This is the familiar posture that we all observe daily known as ‘text neck’.
Working with Positure’s team of healthcare professionals and people with lived experience, we developed gaming apps for handheld devices controlled by gross body movement, rather than standard fine motor thumb controls. Taking the solution one step further, our collaboration with industrial designers produced an optimised ergonomic handset to offer a full digital prescription of positive posture movements.
We made the problem part of the solution to promote positive learned behaviour – without taking away any of the fun!
Monkeystack were asked to produce a spatial narrative app experience with augmented reality (AR) that brought the work of contemporary First Nations artists to life for Illuminate Adelaide: South Australia’s premier winter event that brings together the best and boldest in art, music, technology and invention from around Australia and the world.
The inaugural ‘Augmented Revolution’ AR trail featured six artworks across two Adelaide CBD locations throughout the duration of the festival, with QR codes to download the app to iOS and Android devices and unique in-app scannable codes that trigger each artwork with precise positioning based upon ground detection.
BAE Systems Australia commissioned Monkeystack to produce a launch video and a suite of mission animations to debut the ‘STRIX’, their new, one of a kind VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) uncrewed air system, at the 2023 Avalon Airshow in Geelong, Australia.
Our animated, photo-realistic visualisations of the pre-manufactured STRIX played on screens to the Avalon audience as a 1:1 scale model was unveiled for the first time.
The reveal was a showstopping highlight that created intrigue, excitement and a lasting impression for attendees from industry, government and defence at the first Avalon Airshow since 2019.
Monkeystack were engaged by the Victorian Aboriginal Health Service to produce an impactful VR experience to accompany their health and wellbeing campaign, ‘Boorais and Smoke Don’t Mix’ (Boorais meaning babies or children), dedicated to their vision of a community free from the harmful effects of smoking.
The 10-minute animated, interactive journey was designed to connect to young people with voices and visual images that are familiar to them and that they respect. As soon as they begin the experience they are taken on virtual Country, ‘removing’ them from whatever physical location and surroundings they are in.
Education Services Australia commissioned us to produce a 2D animated series of educational resources for early years students to build interoception awareness (feeling more connected with your body and your bodily signals) and practice self-regulation activities. We created five ‘Brain Break Bops’ animated music videos, each demonstrating an interoception activity, plus other fun dance moves and memorable song lyrics, for the viewer to follow along and practice as whole class groups, smaller groups or in one-to-one sessions.
Monkeystack partnered with State Opera South Australia for G&S FEST, a 10-day celebration of the founding fathers of British comedy opera, Gilbert & Sullivan, producing an animated TVC that encapsulated the flamboyant fun that G&S are so well known for.
A Monkeystack and Shackleton Epic Expedition production, Thin Ice VR is a 20-minute historical re-creation documentary VR experience presented by Tim Jarvis AM.
In 1914, polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton led one of history’s greatest stories of leadership and survival; the ill-fated Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. Over 100 years later we follow in the footsteps of Shackleton with Tim Jarvis AM, experiencing the adventure first-hand to see the effect climate change has had on the Antarctic region through immersive VR.
Major Partner: Torrens University Australia
Financed and developed with the assistance of: South Australian Film Corporation, Screen Australia and Adelaide Film Festival Investment Fund
Supported by: Kathmandu, One Ocean Expeditions and Documentary Australia
The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) program of face-to-face election training was disrupted due to the global pandemic. They needed to find a new and innovative way to bring people together for one Australia’s largest logistical exercises, the Australian federal election.
Monkeystack were commissioned to produce ‘ElectionSim’, an immersive, interactive and media-rich gamified solution as an alternative to the face-to-face simulations conducted at a dedicated facility.
We developed ElectionSim as a 3D world in the Unity engine, featuring 2D and 3D animations to create the gamified content that includes multiple environments, interactive characters, information cards and learning modules.
Hike is an animated short film focusing on the relationship between a mother and child, gently exploring the emotional turmoil of grief, memory and growth in the wake of a tragedy. It follows a young teenager honouring the memory of their mother while connecting with nature, ultimately discovering catharsis and resolution.
The story focuses on the interconnectedness of place and memory, and the bittersweetness of grief, recollection and healing through the passage of time in the wake of loss.
Hike offers a unique moment to escape daily distractions and focus on what really matters – our relationships.
Hike – A Monkeystack Production
Financed with the assistance of: South Australian Film Corporation and Epic Games
Monkeystack’s Hike was selected as one of the finalists across Australia and New Zealand for the second year of Epic Games’ South Australian Film Corporation-supported Unreal Engine Short Film Challenge.
The City of Adelaide asked us to produce a festive AR experience as a fun, engaging and highly accessible single point of digital contact between Adelaide’s Christmas Festival and visitors to the City of Adelaide.
We created a trail of 14 City of Adelaide Christmas Festival locations, from North Adelaide to the Christmas Village at Tarntanyangga (Victoria Square), and developed it into a gamified AR experience that visitors to the city could easily download to their smartphones and see and play in Adelaide through festive-tinted glasses.
Monkeystack produced the interactive health management app ‘Six Steps to Cardiac Recovery’ for Flinders University, as part of their Caring Future Institute work.
The app is to educate cardiac patients on self-care management, reinforcing information that all patients and their families should know before leaving hospital, as well for nurses to use as a guide to facilitate conversation.
BAE Systems Australia commissioned Monkeystack to produce an interactive experience ‘Cube’ to debut at the Land Forces International Land Defence Exposition 2021 in Brisbane, Queensland.
The team at Monkeystack produced the experiential space with our design, development and delivery representing BAE System’s structured brand guidelines as a modern, forward-thinking company with cutting-edge innovations. We built a VR-based pre-visualisation system in Unity to instruct the Cube’s physical and digital relationship, and interactivity – providing a way to build and test real world solutions without the boundaries of location.
How To. Help Me. Show Me. is an educational skill-building game aimed at children, young adults and adults living with autism.
Developed from first-hand experience, the game takes the user through various scenarios of everyday activities that are second nature to most, but can cause distress to those with autism; such as brushing your teeth and getting your hair cut.
Each scenario is presented to the user through an animated step-by-step process, followed by an interactive game element to repeat the steps in the correct order, enforcing learning through repetition.
Monkeystack produced two interactive projection-based installations for Light Creatures at Adelaide Zoo as a part of Illuminate Adelaide, inviting South Australia to experience nature in a new light.
We are proud to be Illuminate Adelaide program partners, with Light Creatures kicking off the festival’s inaugural year in style.
Curious Creatures and Feeding Frenzy were two of the six installations at home in Adelaide Zoo as part of a wider collaboration with giant glowing lanterns and winter warmer food and drink stalls, giving South Australians something to get out of the house and excited about over the winter.
Recent studies suggest that body image is the no.1 issue effecting children, with more than 70% admitting to not liking their body and wanting to change it.
Embrace Kids is a social impact documentary by Taryn Brumfitt of Body Image Movement and SLA Films, exploring the world of body image through the eyes of children.
Monkeystack produced 2D animations for this important project, joining the documentary’s energetic mixture of live action, interviews and music, covering topics including social media, photoshopping, ‘fitspiration’, the influence of media and advertising on body image and role models.
Emotion Coaching is based on the principle that nurturing and emotionally supportive relationships provide optimal contexts for the promotion of children’s outcomes and resilience.
Monkeystack produced a 2D animated ‘Hand Model of the Brain’ for Emotion Coaching UK, developers and providers of Emotion Coaching training and consultancy, to be used as a valuable resource within their training.
Monkeystack partnered with the Adelaide Film Festival to produce and present Tales in Light, a new project that turns Adelaide’s physical spaces into a canvas for immersive visual storytelling.
The inaugural Tales in Light story ‘NUN HIT WONDER’, the story of Adelaide’s very own Sister Janet Mead’s extraordinary rise from a Mercy Sister to Grammy nominee, launched at the 2022 Adelaide Film Festival Opening Night Gala and ran each evening throughout the duration of the festival.
Our collaboration with Michael Cusack and Princess Pictures for Koala Man was just the beginning. YOLO Crystal Fantasy is the next chapter, and with the series being commissioned by Adult Swim, part of the giant Cartoon Network in the US, what a chapter it is. It is the first time that Adult Swim has commissioned a series outside of the US!
This time around, Justin Wight (Monkeystack Director) Co-Produced the series and Monkeystack put together a team of 19 to produce the 8 x 10min episodes for the first season – which premiered to US audiences in August 2020 and Australian audiences on Stan. in May 2022.
We think that it’s one of the largest 2D animated series ever produced in South Australia.
Monkeystack produced an AR app experience for the City of Adelaide’s Green Adelaide project to showcase their work as Adelaide’s first dedicated urban environmental specialist organisation.
The ‘Turning Gray Street Green’ app uses alignment guide-based AR activations that are triggered within the app when the user scans physical decals on Gray Street, enabling experience various key elements of Green Adelaide; from an artist render of what that street will look like in future, to how water sensitive urban design is managed.
Monkeystack accepted the quest to produce a digital game for Rize Above, the multi-stream primary prevention relationship education program for young people, developed by Relationships Australia South Australia in partnership with the City of Salisbury.
Magic & Mayhem is an adventure quest game with a narrative focused on consent in relationships, demonstrated as the user chooses characters to take on their quest, with some displaying more enthusiastic responses than others, what outfit they should wear and to assign an item per character; from potions the character can use when needed to magical beans forced upon the character.
Monkeystack was commissioned by the University of South Australia Museum of Discovery (MOD.) to bring to life an interactive exhibit conceptualised and scripted by Karl ‘Winda’ Telfer, a Kaurna cultural bearer, artist and community leader.
Awarded WINNER of Permanent Exhibition or Gallery Fitout at the Australian Museums and Galleries Association’s (AMaGA) Museums Australasia Multimedia and Publication Design Awards 2022, Karru Kari is a truly stunning canvas to tell a magnificent story of the seasons from the perspective of Indigenous Australians – our first scientists and astronomers.
“Come Quick, Dots and Diamond. The mummies have come alive!”
Dots & Diamond: The Mysterious Case of the Missing Mummies is a narrative-driven adventure game available on mobile platforms via the Apple iOS and Google PLAY stores. Monkeystack developed and produced the game as our own IP within our Exo Pexo brand of ‘edutainment’ games for young people.
Monkeystack are honoured to have been a part of the South Australia Remembers Service and Sacrifice projections for Virtual War Memorial Australia.
We produced a 20-minute animated narrative that was projected onto the façade of one of SA’s most iconic buildings, the Anzac House at the Torrens Parade Grounds, from sunset – midnight across 11 evenings between 1st November – Remembrance Day for the people of Adelaide to visit, pay respects and remember.
We are proud to have helped this magnificent project come to life with support from the SA Government with Project Partners Virtual War Memorial Australia, KWP Agency, Coopers and AJS Lighting Sound Events.
Monkeystack was engaged by Austroads to produce a library of Hazard Perception Test (HPT) videos and supporting material.
This library includes 197 animated videos for motorcycle riders as well as car drivers, providing materials for the world’s first motorcycle-specific HPT.
Shown to reduce the likelihood of crashes, the computer based HPT measures a driver’s or rider’s ability to recognise potentially dangerous situations on the road and respond appropriately. The test is part of the licensing process in NSW, South Australia, Victoria, Western Australia and Queensland.
Monkeystack was commissioned to produce the animated pilot for Koala Man, a collaboration between Princess Pictures and Michael Cusack, with support from Screen Australia and the South Australian Film Corporation.
Monkeystack put together a team of exceptional animators to work on the project over several months to bring to life Koala Man – whose world is just like Batman, but much less rich and not as cool.
The show is classified MA…so is our case study!
Flinders University College of Education, Psychology & Social Work commissioned Monkeystack to develop their anti-bullying P.E.A.C.E Pack intervention into a modern and engaging program as a part of the charity-first collaboration between Breakthrough Foundation and Little Heroes Foundation.
We produced a series of animations and a range of online content for the Little Breakthrough Heroes: Big Talks For Little People children’s mental health initiative highlighting the message that “Mental illness affects everyone… including children”.
In Australia, approximately 8 children per week are admitted to hospitals with farm-related injuries, with 1/3 of those being visitors to farms.
To combat this, George the Farmer formed a unique partnership with FarmSafe Australia, commissioning Monkeystack to produce an animated music video for ‘The Farm Safety Song’ as part of their curriculum-aligned educational guide teaching kids about being safe on farm.
Racking up over 8.5K views on George the Farmer’s YouTube channel in the first two weeks of being live, ‘The Farm Safety Song’ is a public service announcement formed of a catchy melody, engaging animated characters and a significant message of the “plenty of ways to stuff up on a farm”.
Monkeystack was commissioned to develop a large scale touch screen climate change interactive for the Changing Climate permanent gallery display at the Australian Museum, Sydney.
We ‘twinned’ the development, with two identical screens and servers located in both Adelaide and Sydney meaning the Museum exhibition team could play as we built.
Monkeystack were commissioned by 57 Films to produce a 360 Virtual Reality tour of Riverland Wine as part of a South Australian centric collaboration brought to life thanks to the Australian Government’s $50 million Export and Regional Wine Support Package, alongside key stakeholders including Wine Australia, Riverland Wine, University of Adelaide, Martins Brand House and 57 Films.
Monkeystack partnered with Killerfish Games another excellent South Australian indie developer to produce War on the Sea. The game puts you in command of warship task forces, supply convoys and submarines as well as tactical use of aircraft to secure the South Pacific during World War II and is inspired by the classic computer games “Great Naval Battles” and “Task Force 1942”
The Monkeystack studio produced all of the 3D models and textures for a full fleet of destroyers, aircraft carriers, cruisers and battleships as well as planes, submarines, torpedoes and depth charges. All of the models are authentically recreated from hundreds of drawing, plans and reference images.
War on the Sea is available on the Steam Store to download and play on PC and Mac.
The signature installation of the 2020 Adelaide Fringe Festival, Yabarra – Dreaming in Light, ran at Tandanya National Aboriginal Cultural Institute from 12 Feb to 15 March. For the 31 days of the Fringe, from 10am until 10pm, over 40,000 people experienced the creation story of Tjilbruke, as interpreted by Karl Winda Telfer and the Williams clan in one of the most complex indoor projected experiences created in Australia.
“Dreaming in Light tells the story of Tjirbruki, but there are so many other elements – the stories of the stars and the ancestors are so important … It’s about looking after and caring for our environment and protecting these few open space places we have left.”—Karl ‘Winda’ Telfer.
First Nations viewers are advised that this may contain images and voices of people who have passed away.
Exo Pexo make digital toys for young people that help them learn and explore the world around them through play.
We believe that the best learning journeys are the ones that are fun, shared and promote positive educational outcomes.
It’s our goal to encourage kids to love to learn, for life.
After almost seven months of forced closure due to the pandemic, Tandanya National Aboriginal Cultural Institute celebrated reopening its doors and 30th birthday celebrations with the exhibition ‘Atnwengerrp – Our Apmere, Our Place’.
Monkeystack were commissioned to produce an interactive 360 experience of the Atnwengerrp (pronounced A-NOONG-a-pa) exhibition for Tandanya, allowing those who couldn’t physically attend to immerse themselves in the collection and browse the digitally captured and rehung artwork at their own pace, accompanied by a music experience created by Jimblah.
CH4 Global commissioned Monkeystack to produce an animated series that tell the story of their fascinating work in combatting climate change through a particular seaweed – Asparagopsis, a red seaweed that grows natively on Australian and New Zealand coasts.
Did you know that together with other grazing animals, cows contribute about 40% of the annual methane gas level towards global warming? Australian researchers found that supplementing up to 1% of a cow’s daily food intake with an Asparagopsis product reduced methane production by up to 90%.
CH4 Global’s methane-busting project is supported by South Australian Landing Pad, which Monkeystack are proud to be approved suppliers on.
As part of the Hedonism exhibit at MOD. (Museum of Discovery at the University of South Australia), Monkeystack produced F.A.B.L.E, an AR led experiential game about consent that visitors navigate via a phone app.
When it comes to representing people living with disability, personifying life and characteristics in a genuine manner is a step forward for all, rather than disassociating and detracting from reality. We believe animation can be the ultimate tool to demonstrate this, delivering a message understood and appreciated by a diverse audience.
Monkeystack have been working with Community Living Australia to produce a series of animated explainer videos on the topic ‘Abuse is Not OK’ to be presented in lived experience workshops and used as valuable user resources across their website and YouTube page.
Monkeystack was commissioned by the Global Business & Talent Attraction Taskforce, the Australian Government initiative partnering the Department of Home Affairs with Australian Trade and Investment, to produce a showcase of the digital games industry in Australia.
Our capability and understanding of games design, our Player 2 – the amazing team at IGEA (Interactive Games & Entertainment Association), and being active members of the games industry was just the XP needed. Achievement Unlocked: Australia.
Monkeystack was commissioned by Cohda Wireless to produce an explainer video for the release of their new technology, V2X-Locate.
Cohda Wireless is a world leader in the emerging field of innovative connected vehicle solutions and software, setting the benchmark for tomorrow’s transportation with proven applications.
Monkeystack’s realistic and effective animations demonstrate issues faced without the V2X-Locate and how Cohda’s technology will revolutionise safe city driving. This relationship continues to build our capabilities in world-class visualisations and simulations.
Adelaide locals Nation asked us to produce an animated video for their client, the Australian Space Discovery Centre. The video was created to welcome visitors to the newly opened centre in Lot Fourteen.
The Discovery Centre aims to inspire the next generation of the space workforce with stories of innovation, curiosity and technology.
Primal Surfacing, part of the VSA Roads Group of Companies, commissioned Monkeystack to produce this realistic animation of their new OBV Production Unit. It’s the world’s first high production synchronised spraying and aggregate spreader and it’s in Australia. This unit is a game changer, setting new standards in road surfacing safety, innovation and environmental sustainability and we hope that our animation sets a new standard in photo-realistic industrial visualisations.
Initially conceived as a tool to support St Hallett representatives, Monkeystack created a ‘handcrafted’ illustrated history of the vineyard.
It celebrates the 70 year milestone of an iconic South Australian brand through raw earthy tones and flowing movement; an artistic direction developed alongside agency Fuller Brand Communications that represents the essence of the brand presented in a beautifully engaging timeline.
Learn first aid, because you don’t need a cape or superpowers to be a real hero!
Building on previous award winning World First Aid Day campaigns, Monkeystack created this series of quirky animated shorts to spread a message from Red Cross about first aid training; a reminder to everyone that simply knowing first aid could save a life – no cape or superpowers required.
Combining thousands of still images set within digitally created environments, The Moment tells the story of an old man torn from his slumber by a horrible and unshakable vision.
The Moment was selected to be part of animation history at The Australian Cinémathèque at Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art’s 2021 exhibition APT10 Cinema: The Magic Arts – Australian Animation from the 1970s to Now.
The Moment is an adaptation of a short story originally written by award-winning comedian Shaun Micallef and co-produced by Monkeystack and Smoking Gun Productions.
Directed by Grant Sputore and starring Hilary Swank, Clara Rugaard, Rose Byne and Luke Hawker, I Am Mother is a Netflix sci-fi thriller about a teenage girl, who is the first of a new generation of humans to be raised by Mother, a robot designed to repopulate the earth after the extinction of humankind.
Monkeystack produced the on set practical screen content. On over 15 various screens we crafted animated sequences for the interactive door panels and touchscreens, various computer boot up sequences and all of the screens on the robot ‘Mother’ by Weta Workshop.
The film had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on 25 January 2019 with distribution across Netflix in several countries on 7 June 2019. It was nominated as one of the thirty-four feature films in competition to be nominated for the 2019 AACTA Awards.
“A warm and furry series about being a ‘Nuff’ in a world where enough is never enough.” Zuzu & the SuperNuffs is a 8 x 5 minute 2D animated children’s comedy series for ages 4-8 animated by Monkeystack.
It follows the adventures of 5 furry aliens called Nuffs after their intergalactic bathtub almost crash-lands on top of 13 year old ZuZu Becky-Jones.
Produced by KidsCo and Matchbox Pictures, the first episode aired online on August 12, 2013 and international cable channel KidsCo on August 19, 2013.
“There are some things you shouldn’t do stoned – Make driving one of them” – a message from South Australia’s Motor Accident Commission to be communicated via viral video that Monkeystack were commissioned to produce by Clemenger Advertising Adelaide.
With over 370k views on YouTube, ‘Pull a Mainy’ is the first in a series of animations aimed at motorists in South Australia, reminding them of the consequences of driving while under the influence of drugs.
Double Happy Vs. the Infinite Sadness is an energetic story driven experience interactively covering PC, iOS and Android, as well as animated short films and a web/social media presence.
The property stars a pair of neo pop edgy cute rabbits called Pink and Blue, as they set out on a quest to vanquish an all consuming entropic force called the Infinite Sadness from their homeland.
The Constant app is an iOS application which uses augmented reality to deliver The Constant, 52 musical compositions from several genres, in a unified manner.
Monkeystack was commissioned to produce an interactive method of presenting the compositions to a new audience in a festival environment.
With educational outcomes in mind, Monkeystack and SA Water developed 2 games for SA Water’s Kauwi Interpretive Centre.
The games were designed to teach the visiting public about desalination and water management, explaining processes and the reasons behind them in an entertaining and easy to understand manner.
As a core component in the launch of Adelaide’s Rundle Mall rebrand developed by Cummins and Partners Advertising, Monkeystack created the Unfold 30 second TVC taking viewers on a tour of some of the mall’s iconic spaces and events.
In a project produced and designed by ABC – Behind the News, Torrens Valley University and Novus Res, our animation team contributed to this world-first VR project to bring the Kokoda story to life like never before.
Midnight Revolution was created as a passion project in our studio. We wanted to make use of the knowledge in photo realistic 3D assets and game design to create an experience that you might see in a gaming cut scene.
We took a cinematic approach to the visual styling and edited fast and furiously to engage an audience with heart-stopping racing scenes set in a fictional, yet familiar cityscape.
With a gear grinding sound design and composition from local composer, Justin Pounsett from The Audio Embassy, Midnight Revolution would be one awesome game to play.
A game designed around a darkly humorous sci-fi story, The Vault was developed through a partnership with the University of Adelaide’s ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions, the Queen Mary University of London and Monkeystack.
The Vault won the Best Console / PC Hardcore Console and Best Indie Game categories for the Game Connection Development Awards at Game Connection Europe 2018.
The VR visualisation of the Kawasaki Ninja H2R and the fictional apartment of a young engineer is an internal project that we undertook as a studio to push the graphic rendering and interactive capabilities of VR headsets.
The animated piece for Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness Australia and Neptune Bio Innovations aims to spread awareness of this problem and promotes the use of their alternative, Heartsalt – a healthier alternative to regular table salt, containing 56 per cent less sodium but maintaining the same taste.
We drew on the golden era of animation from the 1940s and produced Heart A-Salt, a tongue-and-cheek film about the overuse of salt in Australian’s diet. To get the animation style to match the creative vision, the Monkeystack team used a hand drawn, frame by frame process with over 2300 individual drawings produced and hand coloured!
In a bid to move away from the perception that they only work with police officers, Police Credit Union engaged Monkeystack to develop a new mascot for their brand. In the six years since, POCU has surprised his TVC, web and in-branch audience with his unique universe and all that live in it – all the while telling the story of PCU and their excellent financial and insurance services and products.
Marshman Foundation, the research and development arm of Youth Opportunities, is an organisation who works with young people with the goal of empowering them with the tools and skills they need to overcome challenges now and in the future. This animated short film was developed to introduce young people to the Stars and Black Holes narrative. This concept looks at the effects of positive and negative energy and how it affects interactions and attitudes between people.
Bad Everything asked us to produce a live-action and 2D animated TV campaign for their client, Spendless Shoes – and told us to use our imagination!
The brief from the agency was pretty simple.
We’re going to ask a bunch of kids what they want to be when they grow up. We’d like you to capture them telling us this story in front of a green screen then bring their imagination to life using 2D animation for a TV campaign. They also wanted us to produce a range of images that could be used in Print, Digital and Out Of Home to compliment the campaign over the active period of the back to school sales.
Quirky and edgy-cute, this animated short was aimed at the public to encourage them to learn first aid, linking in with World First Aid Day. It was part of a series – Band-Aids Can’t Fix Everything.
The clip has over 122 000 views on YouTube making it the most viewed video on the Australian Red Cross YouTube Channel. It won many awards for our studio and it also became AdWeek’s ‘Ad of the Day’, was featured by Australian Creative, B&T, Campaign Brief amongst others in Australia and raved about by international publications Huffington Post, Little Black Book and Ads of the World.
Monkeystack worked with Defence SA and the Australian Space Agency to create an animated chronicle of Australia’s long association with space and space activities.
The History of Space in Australia takes audiences from the early days of Woomera in 1947 through to our current contributions to space exploration and the global Deep Space Network. Working with archives, libraries, museums, historians, agencies, personal collections and cultural leaders in Australia and internationally to produce the animation which is what we believe the most accurate, animation and video depiction of the topic from an Australian perspective in existence. We commissioned South Australian composer Chris Larkin to create the moving score.
This 9 minute video had its first official premier at the International Astronautical Congress in Washington in October 2019.
Produced for Nickelodeon, Bridget Goddess is about a teenage dung beetle, Bridget, who believes she’s a descendent of Egyptian royalty.
Bridget is infatuated with Emo, a good looking praying mantis, and like many teenage girls, finds her little brother annoying and is embarrassed by her dung beetle father. Bridget’s angst-ridden life is played out on reality television with her and her friends happily talking to the cameras, hoping they will become reality TV stars. Produced with assistance from the South Australian Film Corporation.
Are You Tougher than Your Ancestors? is a fun and immersive living history series that pits the skills of today’s kids against the exploits of children from Australia’s past, to find out how they measure up! Monkeystack was commissioned with Flying Kite Pictures and Sticky Pictures to produce the animations for the entire 10 part series.
The first episode aired on ABC ME in June 2020 and has gone on to win an AEAF Special Merit Award and was awarded the Professional Jury’s 2nd Prize – Best Live Action TV at the 37th Chicago International Children’s Film Festival for the episode “Cameleers- The Original ‘Ghan’ Trains”. This award makes the show eligible for the Oscars!
You can watch the series on ABC iView or purchase episodes from the Australian Children’s Television Foundation.