We made this with CGI. 👆
No cranes. No road closures. No £200K budget.
Just a brief, a team, and a few days in 3D.
Barista Bar wanted to celebrate 10 years of Perk Ups, so we blew a hole in a Belfast building and filled it with coffee machines and balloons. Digitally, obviously.
The real version? Engineers. Scaffolding. Council permits. A crane in the middle of Wellington Place. 15 helium balloons rigged at height and a fabricated prop the size of a house.
We saved them somewhere between £88K and £236K.
That’s FOOH. And it’s what we do. 🎬
More on the link in bio.
#cgi #fooh #belfast #baristabar #ai
What if our CGI was actually a real life installation?
It’s a simple question, but it quickly shows the true scale behind these kinds of moments. From logistics and cost, to time and environmental impact. In our “What If?” series we’re breaking down what it would actually take to bring FOOH into the physical world with each piece of CGI content we’ve created.
To build the @fitzbelfast Easter CGI for real you’d be looking at:
-Closing streets and securing council approval (£4K–£15K)
-Bringing in cranes and access equipment (£3K–£10K)
-Building out the structure and rigging it safely to a live building (£13K–£45K)
-Sourcing and handling thousands of flowers (£15K–£55K)
-A full crew on-site over multiple days (£8K–£24K)
-Then clearing it all down afterwards + waste (£2K–£10K)
Estimated cost: £70K–£120K+ depending on location and scale.
FOOH removes those barriers, at fraction of the cost.
No permits. No physical constraints.
Faster turnaround. Lower environmental impact.
And built for where audiences actually are, on social.
Built digitally. Distributed globally.
#CGI #AI #FOOH
Belfast’s hidden Gem - The leprechauns opened early this year ☘️👀 @squintcreative
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📹 @squintcreative
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#belfast #northernireland #ireland #irish #stpatricksday🍀
This time last year, we were preparing for the opening of Primark Home, the first standalone Primark Home store in the UK.
Working alongside JComms, we helped turn a Belfast building into a home, digitally.
A CGI-led launch moment designed for social, built to feel familiar at a glance, and created to travel far beyond the street it sits on.
From the archives.
Bringing Ferment la Bouche to life.
In just our first month in business, we were already starting to shape how we approach craft, collaboration, and product storytelling.
The work was commissioned by Idea Dolls London, led at the time by Siena Dexter, who is now Strategist at Naked Ape Brands.
The Ferment la Bouche packaging explored fermentation through motion, transformation, and colour, inspired by the unseen micro-world rather than traditional category cues. Our role was to translate that thinking into high-quality product renders that gave the packaging depth and presence across.
Working closely with Sienna and the team, we focused on letting the packaging lead, adding dimension through light, texture, and form.
This project helped cement a belief we still hold today:
strong product visuals don’t start in 3D, they start with understanding the idea behind the design.
Looking back, Ferment la Bouche set the tone for much of the work that followed and remains a great example of how packaging and visualisation work best in partnership.
More from the archive soon
/designs/ferment-la-bouche
Raw plate → final CGI.
Live-action footage captured on location, with CGI elements added around the Metro Zero bus. The plate was camera-tracked, lighting matched, and the CGI modelled, shaded, and composited into the final shot.
Built specifically for social.
Translink Metro Zero
CGI/FOOH works best when it’s used with intent
The FOOH Trend Report analysed over 4,500 campaigns globally and found that around 19% reach High Performance or Elite engagement (meaning they outperform standard benchmarks across views, likes, shares and comments).
What’s interesting is how the format has evolved.
FOOH output is now higher than 2023, growing at an 85.7% CAGR over the last three years. At the same time, average engagement per video has more than doubled, as brands move away from volume and towards fewer, more considered moments.
The strongest work tends to have a few things in common:
– a clear message
– a moment worth amplifying
– an idea that benefits from scale
FOOH works best when there’s a clear reason for it.
Why do we use a 360 camera to capture HDRIs?
When CGI looks real, it’s usually because the lighting is doing the heavy lifting. That’s why, whenever we’re on location, we use a 360 camera to capture HDRIs, instead of guessing lighting back in the studio.
A 360 HDRI captures the entire lighting environment in one go:
the sun position, cloud cover, reflections, colour bounce, and ambient light, exactly as it exists on site.
That data becomes the lighting source for our CGI.
What does this mean in practice:
- More accurate reflections on materials
- Shadows that sit naturally in the scene
- CGI that blends in to the base plate
It removes a huge amount of guesswork and lets us focus on craft, not correction.
When you’re trying to make something unbelievable feel believable, accuracy matters. It’s a small step on set, but it makes a massive difference in the final result.
Heres two stills from our easter campaign with @fitzbelfast The first one uses our custom HDRI the second doesn’t, swipe to see the difference
Latest FOOH CGI
Recently wrapped this one for @rnncomms ⚽🍬
We flew to London to capture live-action base plates at Brentford Stadium, using a 360 camera setup to capture HDRIs on site, so the lighting would sit naturally within the environment.
From there, everything was built digitally:
- Every ball and sweet modelled individually
- Full simulations to create the burst out of the stadium
- Bazooka’s mascot moose rigged, and animated to score the goal
A proper blend of live action, CGI, simulation, and character animation, all built to feel energetic, playful, and scroll stopping in-feed.
Big thanks to RNN for bringing us in on this one.
Our very own @anthony_heaney was recently featured as a columnist in @ni_chamber Ambition magazine! 🎉
Sharing thoughts on where #CGI and #AR are heading and how they’re actually being used by brands right now, not just talked about.
We spend a lot of time building this stuff behind the scenes, so it’s nice to step back and reflect on how fast the space is moving and where the real opportunities are for businesses willing to experiment a bit.
If you’re curious about how CGI and AR are evolving beyond “nice visuals” and into proper campaign tools, give the article a read - just hit the link in our bio and head over to the insights tab
FOOH wasn’t always everywhere.
Back in 2024, when Fake Out of Home was still finding its feet, we created our first-ever FOOH project with ELEVATOR for Translink, right here in the city.
No physical build.
No disruption.
Just a single idea, designed to feel real in-feed. This project helped prove early on that CGI-led OOH could work as a social-first format.
Still proud of this one.
Not because it was first, but because it worked.
Dive into 60 Seconds with Elizabeth Heaney, the creative force behind SQUINT Creative ✨ "Surround yourself with people who inspire you, keep learning, and remember that progress is just as important as perfection."
From entrepreneurship to CGI innovation, she shares lessons on adaptability, self-belief, and shaping a studio that’s pushing digital boundaries.
Find out more about Elizabeth and SQUINT Creative via the link in the bio!
