A lot of us have favorite TV shows. When those shows have been around for many seasons, fans can usually spout off numerous iconic moments from each episode/season. I have no doubt that fans of the show The Office have plenty of those iconic moments that they love to talk about with other fans. And you can be sure that any fan of this show is going to know about the Dundie awards.
The definition of a dundie award is “plaque or gift that is worthless and is given in recognition of something meaningless”. If you are unfamiliar with The Office, the boss gave out different Dundies to his employees. My personal favorite was the award that Kevin received which was the “Don’t Go in There After Me” Dundie.
So, for those wondering where I am going with this, when Smash Design was asked to manufacture a life-size version of the Dundie Award that was to be presented to the city of Scranton (where the show was based out of for those who are unaware) we were honored to be chosen seeing as we are all fans here.
This particular project took several weeks from start to finish. The first step was to have our 3D artist create the model replicating the Dundie Award. Once the model was created it was scaled up to a 6’ version, file was sliced to get ready for machining and then the carving started. For this project we chose to make the statue with HDU foam. HDU foam vs eps foam carves a lot smoother and helps cut down on sanding. When all the slices were finished carving our team started assembling all of the pieces together. After those pieces were put together, our sculptor went in and hand sculpted all the tiny fine details that our machine could not quite get. It is always amazing to get to take a moment to watch our sculptor do something that not all of our minds can process doing. The final steps that followed were hard-coating and then paint. We use an industrial grade paint buy Matthews paint that is perfect for outdoor sculptures, monumental art and outdoor signs. When this 6’ award was all complete he was off to Scranton, PA.
It’s always so fun to be a part of a project that has meaning to our staff. Especially when we get to do something that is over-the-top.