Still “Frozen” this Christmas…

Once again we had the great fortune to work on the “Frozen” display at the Disney Store in Times Square. This was a lot of fun as usual and my daughter Mary got to meet Olaf in person!

The client gave us sketches of the Frozen Castle and our challenge was to make a display out of acrylic.

We came up with a few concepts and started building it half scale to work out the kinks.

365378392

Once we had the design down it was time to build it full size which was about 8′ tall. Here is the main structure made out of gator foam. We cut grooves in the gator foam to allow us to glue the acrylic in place.

528

Stop everything! Olaf has arrived. He’ll be part of the display so we need to get accurate measurements before we finalize everything.351Back to the display.  The 4″ gator gets wrapped with printed graphics. Here Rad is installing the vinyl but he may need a little help.

558

So we put Olaf to work installing the some of the vinyl.

589

Now we’re ready to connect the acrylic panels. First we cut the acrylic then apply printed translucent vinyl to the back side.  Then using UV curable glue we attach the returns to the side of each acrylic tower for depth.

 Brian works out the mechanics of the ornament spinners – these have to be lightweight and last throughout the season.  The first prototype is perfect and we’re ready to start building them.371

Meanwhile the whole crew Rad, Mark, Greg Holin and Eddie are super busy – printing, cutting and inserting the motors into the hanging signs. There are a lot of these! There are giant marquee signs and other cool accents all over the shop!

437

520

521

We had Olaf cut some of the boards to make things go a little quicker. Luckily he’s wearing sneakers – he’s doing a lot of running around today.

595

We’re almost there – time to clean up – Olaf is pretty good at this too.

577

Olaf had a long day and needs a nap before we ship everything out.

600

Here it is – after our client did there wonderful staging, accents and magic!  Great job everyone! Another fun project!

825

823

826

830

832

834

846

840

Published with permission from KDF Custom Graphics. Source.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 Sign

Another super fun job! The Amazing Spider-Man 2 sign.

This sign will hang at the Disney Store in Times Square. We cut the larger letters out of 1.5″ Precision Board HDU and the smaller letters from 3/4″ PVC.  We then cut the face of the letters from 1/4″ PVC.

photo 2

photo 3

photo 3

Brian then painted the red part of the letters with Metallic Red paint then airbrushed the gradation onto the face – WOW I love it.

Rad wrapped a piece of 2″ Gator Board with Avery Car Wrap vinyl – front and back. Mark and Greg took it from there to complete the assembly and install the threaded rod hangers. Great job everyone. Can’t wait to see this movie! – Steve

photo 2

 

photo 3

Published with permission from KDF Custom Graphics. Source.

Disney’s Frozen Project – Times Square Disney Store

Who wouldn’t love working on a Disney project?  This was a fun project with characters, castles and great Disney graphics. We just completed our work, delivered to our client they added their magic and it looks fantastic! If you are  in Times Square NYC this holiday season check it out.

We started out by vectorizing the clients sketch of a giant snow arch and castle with the “Frozen” logo carved into it. In Enroute Pro we gave the outline shape and texture and designed the accurate dimensions to fit on the store fixtures.293294Now this arch is about 16′ Wide so we cant cut it all at once.  I’ll break up the file and start cutting the pieces.

So to keep the weight down we chose to make the arch out of blue insulation foam.  We started by gluing 4′x8′ sheets of 2″ foam together.  Our arch will end up 8″ thick. Once glued we are ready to cut.

IMG_3072

IMG_3076

Once the panels are cut – we cut out a channel on the back to set the PVC piping wich will hold the pieces together. The PVC is set in place and the safety cables are installed and crimped.

IMG_3114

The adhesive is applied and the sides are assembled.

IMG_3121

IMG_3122

Now we’re ready to tackle the bases! These need to be large solid pieces of foam so we cut them in discs that will sit on top of each other then Brian will come in with a sawzall to rough sculpt it. Here you can see Eddie assembling the discs and gluing in place.

IMG_3108

IMG_3100

We’ll finish up the other base and start sculpting. Brian got out the sawzall for the rough cuts then the belt sander for the second go around.

IMG_3135

Mark and Kevin doing some finishing sanding.

IMG_3154

Here’s Brian and Greg with their homemade sanding tool – Great for taking away a lot of foam fast.

IMG_3143

Ready for Bondo and Paint!

IMG_3149

While the arch is off to the paint shop we’re busy printing away and building some other cool features for the install.

Here is an 8′ Marquee Gift Tag.

IMG_3170

A GIANT painters pallete.

IMG_3164

Lots of wrapping paper….

IMG_3161

Some cool Mickey Ears….

IMG_3162

and a bunch of other cool stuff.

IMG_3145

And here is the transformation (with the help of our clients amazing design and installation skills)

BEFORE:

IMG_3040

AFTER:

IMG_1246

IMG_1289

IMG_1288

IMG_1287

IMG_1286

IMG_1283

IMG_1280

IMG_1279

IMG_1277

IMG_1274

IMG_1269

IMG_1268

IMG_1264

IMG_1262

IMG_1257

IMG_1255

IMG_1260

IMG_1248

Published with permission from KDF Custom Graphics. Source.

The Competition is On – A Fish Tale

Our mentor from the North, Dan Sawatsky, has been posting a super cool project that he has been working on at http://imaginationcorporation.com/journal/ .  We saw that he was involved in a friendly competition with some other superstar sign makers and we wanted in. The rules of the competition – create a sign for the “The Institute for the Study of Mechanical Marine Life”.  The only requirement is that the sign has the text on it and that it includes a mechanical fish of some sort. We have until September 2nd to make this a good one – we’ll have to do the work at night as we are extremely busy – but it will be a fun! Game on! So Brian and I did a little brainstorming.

View article:
The Competition is On – A Fish Tale