Artwork Digital Brazil produced a 3D board model of a giant toy train for an exhibition celebrating the life of Fernando Sabino, a Brazilian author and journalist.
The display was printed on a six colour Inca Onset S20, onto a 16 mm Re-board. Bernardo Sabino, the late author’s son, approached Rômulo de Abreu Guimarães to construct an accurate replica of the train from one of his father’s works. ‘It was not easy to create; there were lots of curves,’ said Mr de Abreu Guimarães, an issue that was tackled with help from Stora Enso Re-board experts.
Equally challenging was the printing itself, for a toy train that was supposed to look hand-painted, colour was a key detail that could make or break the project. ‘It is very difficult for any digital printer to print smooth, solid colours. Sometimes, there’s banding, or insufficient solid coverage,’ Mr de Abreu Guimarães remarked. ‘With the Inca Onset S20, we achieved it perfectly. In fact, people thought it was vinyl rather than print, because it was so perfect.’ To add even further realism to the finished product, the company applied a layer of gloss varnish to the train.
The result was a 7 metre long model that looked as though it had rolled out of Fernando Sabino’s writing. Previously the exhibit had featured a 2D paper train ‘His son was very happy, it looked just like a big toy train’ said Mr de Abreu Guimarães, who was as equally proud of the results. ‘I liked this job very much because it was not easy to print and assemble. I really wanted to win a prize with this one. I sent it out locally for a lot of awards, but nobody understood the complexity and difficulty of the job. Then, with Inca’s expert IDEAs judges, it was recognized and won an IDEAs Award for Interactive Display.’
Barney Cox, an Inca IDEAs judge, said, ‘It looks great. It is nice to see the scaling up of characters in a book to a bigger scale, and from 2D to 3D.’
