Giant Sugar Cube Polystyrene / Styrofoam Carving by Sculpture Studios

Welcome to Sculpture Studios. The item in question in this video is one that's really blown up in scale. What's normally only half an inch in size is now going to become almost three meters square. I say square, sugar cubes are rarely perfect cubes anyway, but we're going to be blowing one up for an Atkins campaign. Contacted by Adam O'Neill, a production manager at Link Communications, we've been commissioned to make this for a moveable UK tour promoting healthy eating and a low sugar intake diet. This is going to be a wooden box provided by Link Communications and we're going to be cladding the exterior with polystyrene. Now the initial idea was to add flakes or chunks of a crystal type material in order to give it that bulky blown up appearance, but will work out to be very heavy we think and also much more expensive. Instead we're opting for a much more elaborate polystyrene carving to give it that punch factor. After sending off the sample and receiving some more images from the client, we're going down a different route cutting loads of random cubes and cuboids of various sizes and what we're going to be doing is utilizing all of this poly cutting loads and loads of blocks and it's going to be almost a semi-relief in the sense that the majority of these aren't going to be full blocks that are just going to be stuck onto the flat. They're going to be partially cut and for the most part they're just going to be sticking out about halfway. Everything's adhered together using our trusty PU expanding foam as per the norm and over here you can see one of the other methods that we were going to use and this is how we made the sample earlier. We've drawn everything out and they were going to be cut into the poly itself but we think this new method, though it's going to be a lot more work and where it's going to be a lot more surface area to cover particularly with materials later on, it's just going to be a better finish. It's certainly going to be far more dynamic finish for the client and hopefully something more of what they had in mind so once everything's all adhered together and we've finished all the flats and the roof we're going to go over with a flexible concrete render for a bit of strength and an exterior shell and later we're going to go over with a white paint and a PVA glue that's not going to corrode anything underneath and this is in order to add the glitter. Doing a bit of hunting around for glitter and a bit of research to find the right kind and we need a clear or an iridescent glitter that doesn't have any colour. A lot of glitter we found on the net has a green or a pink or a blue tinge sort of like the pearlescent colours you can see on the china face up there but this needs to retain its whiteness so a clear glitter is probably the best way to go. So that's the process. Kevin's doing a cracking job of cutting the poly so far so we'll leave it in his capable hands. As the polystyrene surface is now much bulkier than the initial sample we're keeping the sheets very thin so to save on the overall wall depth from becoming too thick. This looks very flimsy at this stage but the main bulk of the strength comes from the cubes being bonded together on the the render that's going to be going on top and remember that these are only the wall cladding that's going on the wooden box walls and they aren't the actual walls themselves. We've invited the client down to the studio to see the work so far and Adam's going through the logistics with Aidan for when the box needs to move and break down for transportation. It's a crucial stage in the process for a client to come and visit as any potential changes are much more feasible now during the polystyrene stage than if we were further along through the project with more expensive materials already added. The only change at the moment is a design change and the overall height of the sugar cube is going to be reduced. Yes it seems like a bit of waste of polystyrene and the time that we've taken to carve and put all the material together then it's now being cut off but remember that this also means that less material will be needed later on for the more expensive render. As there's now less surface area to cover this works out as a compromise. Now we've had a couple of complaints recently that there hasn't been anywhere near the expected level of dancing or silliness in the last couple of videos so we're going to have to resolve this professionalism problem right now. Here we have a sugar cube so far looking sweet Aidan. Yeah very good. Strengthening up small areas and foaming up to make sure that everything is strong and as crisp as it can and then we'll cut them back and make sure everything's looking really really nice and then we're going to spray the hole up with dry bit which is like a flexible concrete render. This here is a foam gun and you can tome it right down. I'll just show you here and you can create a little line like that or open it right up put it on quite heavy. This is our PU expanding foam and when it dries which takes about an hour and you can get in pop it right into the corners and secure all these blocks that's a bit loose really nice and tight and then just cut them off with a knife to trim everything up smart. It's similar to the kind of foam that you put inside walls to fill cracks and crevices and kind of fill up there any remaining space all that kind of foam we've got under the concrete nowadays I think it helps expand and lift the concrete but for us it's the perfect kind of glue to adhere the polystyrene together but it's a nightmare to get off your hands and your clothes if you do get it on you so you've got to be careful don't get it in your hair Kev. We've got the glitter arriving in a minute which is going to be going on after we've covered the whole thing in dry bits concrete and this whole thing breaks down into sections for transportation which is why we've got all these pieces on the floor we've got to make sure everything goes together correctly which is why Kev's now going around trimming up all the join lines so that everything fits together nice and snug we've ordered five kilos of clear or iridescent glitter and every single speck of this might be used so we can't afford to waste a single once the polystyrene form has had all the excess squirty foam trimmed off we're going over with a sprayable concrete render and this flexible concrete called dry bit will strengthen the surface and it will get rid of the poly bead texture even though this is a white base we're going over this with a more brilliant white emulsion paint before we're adding the glitter on top oh you missed a little lump there jess what just just down there down here what just one lump or two all right let's take a look at the cube this is going to break down into eight sections total the woodwork is hinged on two of the seam lines on the corners so the woodwork stays in two pieces and we've got two roof sections that's four pieces total and then each of these corners has a section of poly that comes off as well and they're stuck on afterwards once everything's put together so they're the eight pieces we've taken them off now and we're painting some of the woodwork so even if you can see through the seam lines it's going to have a white background and so these corner pieces stay nice and strong Aidan and Kev are just making some woodwork to go on the inside just to give everything a little bit more strength especially for transport everything's going to need to be handled with care but when it's put together as well we want to make sure that everything stays in one piece butts up the way it should and nothing's too easy to I think we ordered a bit too much glitter to evenly distribute the glitter onto the job we've created our own more industrial size shakers and a little bit of salt bae for a finishing touch so for the assembly of the corner pieces here in the studio we created a simple system of pulling the pieces snug to the job from inside using attached cords that could be tied off at this point as we didn't know what the interior decor of the cube was going to be this seemed like the best method so that we could avoid any external fixings or using any form of that might prove difficult to remove later on when the cube needs to be moved to a new location with a lot of our jobs sometimes a little r&d is needed to achieve the best finish possible every job is different and a lot of the time we look into experimenting with new materials and new processes so the client has exactly what they're looking for at the most cost-effective price with this job now being complete it's time to pack everything up and get it out on the road the advantage of having adam here for the initial transport is that he can see just how everything needs to be packed into the truck so that everything fits and nothing gets broken he can also see how it all needs to assemble and disassemble each time so that everything could be treated with care and there are no surprises on the day once the interior has been created it's all going to be set up in shopping areas and outside supermarkets for the atkins diet we'd like to thank adam o'neill from link communications for approaching us for a first job with the company and we look forward to many more projects to come please feel free to leave any comments below as they're always appreciated and hit the subscribe button for our latest videos you can like sculpture studios on facebook and follow and for more of our work visit sculpturestudios.co.uk thank you very much for watching