Spinifex Group detailed its innovative support of Electronic Arts (EA) at this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) trade show. Working in close collaboration with EA marketing executive Mike Marsh, EA producer Sarah Sprinkles, and experience marketing agency George P. Johnson (GPJ), Spinifex developed EA's "Rhomboid" promotional theme for this year's show, as well as the original design concepts seen throughout EA's booth and its promotional materials. Spinifex also produced a high energy sizzle video that ran in a continuous loop on the exterior of EA's booth, as well as a complete, television channel-style graphics package and modular system to dynamically introduce and present trailers and demonstration promos, while also supporting keynote presentations throughout the show.
"Our overarching EA brand design illustrates the idea that many separate game titles form the one overall brand of EA," explained Jason French, who served as Spinifex Group's creative director on the project. "Our brand direction for the show was based on the graphic element of the EA Rhomboid, where all the angles match the degree incline from the logotype. We deconstructed this to derive the 'rhomboid world,' a complex 3D matrix of rhomboid shapes that are easily identified as extensions of the EA brand. When animated, the shapes resolve back into the logo to complete the connection with the brand. This graphic language was extrapolated throughout EA's show presence, right through to motion and printed art, even water bottles, snowboards and T-shirts."
In challenging Spinifex to develop a unifying brand piece encapsulating some 40 independent EA game titles, then design and produce the animated video assets for the interior and exterior screens, EA's executives left the brief as open-ended as possible, while stipulating that the solution had to honor and support the concerns of scores of independent developers. In the solution from Spinifex, all the content lives inside the rhomboid world of the EA logo; as the camera zooms into fragments of the 'nano structure,' it reveals the individual characters and game titles.
"For our attractor video, we worked closely with EA's partner developers to showcase more than 20 different 3D characters according to their individual guidelines, while also staying true to the unifying themes of the EA brand," said Pepin Portingale, 3D lead for Spinifex. "For some characters, we had to spend time simplifying some models while being very careful not to compromise the look."
To fulfill EA's goals for their main stage video presentation, Spinifex devised a 'playlist stack' approach to the modules, which included trailer packaging for game, promo Line Ups, Brand Stings, Brand Openers, a Sizzle Reel, and seamless transitions into keynote presentations. "Our design housed the actual game characters animating and reacting in our brand space to introduce their trailer," French added. "Supporting 27 different intermissions, our system allowed the playlist to be adjusted to fit any length. We also incorporated a TV channel switcher to allow the operator to switch elements when interviews or presentations ran over."
Among their primary tools for this project, artists at Spinifex used Adobe Illustrator to draw up initial concepts, forms and layouts, before taking everything into 3D. 3DS Max was their principle production tool, while Autodesk Maya was used to translate models from the various game developers. A design of the rhomboid world was provided to GPJ for T-shirts, promotional products and booth graphics.
"Given this opportunity to work with so many top-tier talents and accommodate everyone's needs in a way that reflected so well on EA at E3, we had a lot of fun on this project, and we're already looking forward to our future collaborations," French concluded.
The 2010 Electronic Arts exhibit at E3 also featured music composed by Junkie XL. Additional credits for Spinifex Group include Executive Producer Sandy McEvoy, Account Director Ben Casey, Producer Brad Smith, Lead Compositor Chris Huggett.
As one measure of their overall success at this year's event, EA was honored with four "Best of E3" honors from the prestigious Game Critics Awards.