STUDIO CITY CASINO
Macau, China
Above, is a concept painting of the overall property, which features a “spoke-less” Ferris Wheel (like the London Eye, but without spokes), indoor shopping, dining, and casinos all themed out like a movie set/sound stage, etc. and is bookended by a pair of gigantic, chrome statues… (I didn’t do the paintings)
Another Concept Painting (below), showing the park side of the project. In this view, you can see the domed rooftops of The Treehouse Café:
My contributions to the project include, but are not limited to the following:
CHROME STATUES:
The sculpture is first made using Super Sculpey 3, a polymer-based clay, available at any Michael’s art supply store.
Once the sculpture is to the point that it matches conceptual drawings, it is approved, and then baked… I actually had to build an oven from scratch just to facilitate the baking process, because the sculpture is approx. 24 inches from fingertip to the base, much too tall for a conventional home oven.
I built my oven using a 4’ X 8’ sheet of insulation foam board, (the kind with aluminum surfacing on one side), cut to size and taped together with aluminum duct tape, a
variable temperature pancake griddle (for the heat source), and a meat thermometer. Put all together and it worked like a charm!
This is the unbaked, polymer clay (below):
Once baked, it had to be sanded, and sanded, and sanded, and sanded, and polished, and buffed until the whole thing was smooth as glass.
Below, is the baked, sanded and buffed sculpture master, prior to molding:
Next, a silicone mold is taken off of it, and a casting is made using polyurethane resin. The casting is sanded and buffed and then sent to the metal plater, to be chrome plated.
Once the parts came back, they had to be VERY CAREFULLY ASSEMBLED! (I had to drill numerous holes to attach the wings and the ring which Is nerve-racking, because the plating process is a whopping 1300 bucks, and one slip with the drill, and…)
Below, is the polyurethane casting, finished, assembled and with chrome plating:
Below are some photos of the actual statues, which are about 150 feet tall!
GALAXY RESTAURANT:
This is a paper/foam core study model I developed for The Galaxy Café, a HUGE food court that is supposed to be inside a Space Station in geocentric orbit around the Earth. It will be themed out to look similar in style to the interior of the Discovery space ship, from 2001: A Space Odyssey. It will also feature a gigantic viewport, where visitors will be treated to an IMAX format, breathtaking view of the planet Earth as it rotates, below.
THE TREEHOUSE CAFE
This is a paper/foam core study model of The Treehouse Café; I built the model, based upon the drawing(s) provided to me by Gary Goddard’s people:
GOOD FORTUNE ROTUNDA
Developed an 8-sided room that has mirrors on every wall, between columns, which are on rotating bases (so the surface texture and/or shape can be changed by rotating the base 1/3 turn).
The mirrors will serve to make the room look much, much larger/more spectacular than it really is.
The ceiling will be a low-relief, mostly smooth surface onto which graphics will be “3-D Projection Mapped” (check out what 3-D Projection Mapping is/can do: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IICGkOtJ9E )
