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 spatial narrative design takes ‘Futurenauts’ (aka the students) on a free-roam adventure as they explore the Conservatory’s living collection across nine Project Space Botany stations, logging their learnings onto the app that is deployed on iPads. Suited for a Year 4 to Year 10 Science Curriculum, Project Space Botany is the most fun you could have while learning.

The learning platform has bold animations and interactive quizzes, accompanied by ‘Canny’ the inquisitive can character, delivering information on the importance of recycling and the correct processes to take in a fun and engaging style.

We delivered the 10-minute animated, interactive VR journey as an app available to be downloaded from the store and experienced on a smart phone contained in a fold-out cardboard viewing headset, allowing for easy accessibility and distribution. A brief questionnaire presented before and after the experience asks the user their opinions and knowledge of smoking, providing insight on any knowledge shift and prompting the young person to reflect and bring their new knowledge home.

Working with the Victorian Aboriginal Health Service team, we formed a narrative designed to connect to young people with familiar voices and visual images that they respect. Knowledge is shared through progressive stages of the experience on virtual Country by ‘Auntie Julie’, an elder who guides the user throughout the journey, and the people from the community the user engages with, listening as they share their lived experience stories.

Adelaide Christmas Cracker Trail pillars were installed at each location, complete with QR codes to download the app to iOS and Android devices, unique in-app scannable codes, and ground detection and decal alignment technology to take the user through an augmented reality experience based upon the festive event planned at each location.

The user (big or small) can play with pulling digital crackers, popping baubles and enjoying the jokes, facts and games within, utilising face-tracking technology to create fun, bespoke selfies to save and share, and interacting with their surroundings via the phone screen – from decorating Adelaide’s Giant Christmas Tree, posting a Christmas letter at the Town Hall, seeing Santa back on Grote Street, or taking part in a rubber duck race that appears in the Rymill Park pond.

This film offers an unrivalled immersive experience that will leave viewers in no doubt about the devastating effect of climate change. This project fits right in the middle of our lens to produce positive social consciousness projects that entertain, engage and educate audiences. It also ties together our skills in storytelling, interactive, experiential, animation, live-action production and simulation.

Visit the Thin Ice VR website

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

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.

Designed for approximately 200 of AEC’s operational leaders, ElectionSim allows users to experience a simulation of the busy, stressful, time-pressured environment of a federal election in a self-directed learning style. Learners are taken on an authentic narrative arc as they free roam and explore the space in real-time 3D, practicing various election activities and scenarios. Learning modules are completed within the 3D world, with the learners interacting with multiple characters across all development levels, responding to queries and demands, and taking on tabletop challenges. The system was successfully deployed and used by staff throughout Australia in preparation for the 2022 federal election, establishing a new-age system with unlimited potential.

Users can download the app to their personal handheld device and navigate through the Six Steps to Cardiac Recovery at their own pace, guided by the app’s constant companion ‘Cora’; an avatar of a nurse that we produced using facial and body motion capture with speech animated in English and Mandarin Chinese language. Aspects throughout the app were designed to increase the level of comprehension and information processed by patients and accompany traditional methods of information. The use of visual and verbal prompts from Cora the digital avatar, animated and illustrated visuals, text accompanied by speech elements, interactive quizzes, and video clips commands users to actively engage in the content and routinely acknowledge their health progress.

Six Steps to Cardiac Recovery is available to download:

When the pandemic forced the closure of interstate borders, we were presented with the challenge of how to design the exterior; a set of perspective based animations that required very specific placement to deliver the audience experience, the interior; a user-triggered storytelling space to be used by BAE executives, how to test everything and make sure that the exhibition company could install the Cube on location in Queensland… all without any of our staff being able to leave South Australia.

With no way for our team to be on the ground for bump-in adjustments typical of a project like this, 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.

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.

The app is easily accessible for handheld devices, meaning the lessons can be practiced in any location at any time. Users can take the How To. Help Me. Show Me. journey together for as long as they wish, until the user is ready to continue independently as they learn through repetition, put new skills into practice at home, and accomplish personal goals to become more and more involved in everyday life.

How To. Help Me. Show Me. is available to download:

Our ‘Curious Creatures’ birds, co-created by Jimy McGilchrist, that fed out of your hand or took a snap if you came on too strong and ‘Feeding Frenzy’, developed as part of the ‘It’s Complicated’ exhibition at MOD. (who generously allowed it to be used at Light Creatures), the school of fish that are always one step ahead of the kids who attempted tirelessly to catch one, saw children and adults alike discovering the joys of interacting to the point where you forget this isn’t a real-life creature in front of you.

We are lovers of anything that combines innovation, technology and entertainment to create an unforgettable experience. Light Creatures was no exception. The project demonstrates what we refer to as ‘technical artistry’, in this case, the combination of intricate animation and gaming elements with high-spec projectors and innovative sensor technology developed from games consoles.