“A sculpture that celebrates Rugby in the new Radisson Red…”
We had a strong brief from DLSM but it required exploration of the RFU’s archives for images and inspiration.
Luckily, the RFU has plenty of both so we settled on a photo of a certain england full-back catching a high ball, and went to work in Blender to produce a 3d model.
Initially we looked at a fibreglass production process but as the project developed, we switched mode into a 3d printed route.
Cue new machinery, and a ton of load testing, finish testing, bonding and reinforcement investigations…
ELLIE
We were lucky to have access to a vast archive of photos from the RFU, so I set about creating a rigged Blender model that could be posed in response to the images. She’s not a sculpture meant to directly represent any one single player, but has been strongly inspired by a great photo of Ellie Kildunne catching a high ball.
Once that had been approved, the real job of reducing it to a few hundred triangular faces, subdividing it for our precious new H2D 3d printer bought for this project and then running through 40kg of filament began.
PETG was chosen for its durability and compatibility with epoxy, and the whole sculpture is reinforced internally by a skeleton of 12mm solid carbon fibre rods for strength.