As some of you may know or seen, the market place is awash with a number of “penguins”, “kissing couples” and the notorious “jumping dolphins” in 3D laser crystal.  We only say notorious because so many of these manufacturers produce their products from a “generic” CD distributed used as a startup kit for a number of these overseas government subsidized companies.

“In absence of creativity comes the mundane” is what I personally term this problem, for when I had started doing these designs only a handful of companies existed in the world and the designers (actually modelers) were hidden away forced to create butterflies, and dolphins.  The equipment isn’t inexpensive either, with new systems at the low-end selling for around $160,000 and a few for less but skimp on tolerances – you realize that a business needs to “produce” product to make its investment back – the nature of the beast.

When we had first started noticing this “trend” and warned clients of it, the status quo stated that “WE” have to compete with the lowest price, generic designed and fastest produced product.  Visions of cloned designs being stamped out this vast machine clouded my mind and I made a decision to not compromise the aesthetics of design simply for “profitability” or “market share” and left behind the promotional industry to start Sharpe Awards.

Each design we are asked to create provides an opportunity of reclaiming this art form as an art form and not simply a term used in mass production.  As a result, the designs that I create do take a considerable amount of time to “burn” when compared to the “jumping dolphins”.  Additionally, to punctuate this attention to detail we will make the crystal bigger, heavier, higher quality, and as a result more valuable.

Previsuals v.s. Reality

“Hey, this is a computer image” and you would be right.  Below is an example of one of one of our commercial “previsual” and the resultant creation.  It is my personal belief, that it is important to “see” the design before they were created, not only in the minds eye but to be able to share it with others.  Computers have helped achieve this and is now an extension of creativity and imagination.

The techniques and design of these products coupled with knowledge of sub-surface laser technology and over 300 “promotional” designs under my belt allows for the creation of these previsuals in a manner that consistently captures the refractive, reflective, and dimensional aspects in every design we do.

One interesting aspect of these previsuals, although we continue to fine-tune equipment and software as well as to do  designs completely representative of the laser capability, the laser produces an even better model – which is usually the opposite of what previsuals do.

Let me put it this way, if we weren’t completely confident that our designs would be faithfully reproduced in this medium we wouldn’t risk the problems of doing so.

Back to the ART

Now I know of only a few people that we consider artists; those that pay attention to the level of detail that we have chosen to work at – their background and work is mostly in the sciences.  Others work for companies that will produce “dolphins” as long as people continue to buy them.

So as said before, whenever possible we will want to create a design that is designed with an eye towards art, artistic with a message.

Feel free to contact me for more information, orders and answers to any question (regarding my work).

Thank you again for taking the time.

The image they wanted was of the White House and it had to be of a quality and size worthy of our President to bestow on visitors from foreign countries.

Since this was extra extra important (but really aren’t they all) – we took our time and spent over 20 hours reviewing every possible photograph and image we could find on the White House.  In the process learned a lot about the history and changes made to the architecture over the different administrations (like the front stairs, the car port, even the roof).  In the end, we settled on focusing the the primary and most distinguishable elements of the White House with the hopes that these features wouldn’t change anytime soon.

and so we built the White House

In a matter of speaking we did and when it was done we realized that we had a lot more detail than was needed.  Now don’t get us wrong, detail is a good thing and one of the principal aspects of every design we do.  However, the laser doesn’t like too much detail and the results can produce an unusually ugly piece which can take a long time to produce (not a good thing).  We say ugly because all laser designs in crystal deal with a certain level of transparency and because of that, too much detail creates clusters of dots that turn into visual blobs for the viewer blocking other details.  Regardless, the issue can become quite frustrating at times and we needed to be revisit the approach.  In the end, we decided to remove a number of elements that “clouded” the image while preserving some of the smaller details that round out the piece.

Detail View of White House

Above is a collection of close ups showing the final design in crystal.  The detail is allowed to show itself without overwhelming the total image, while subtle elements such as the hanging lantern in the car port or the sconces on the lower part of the front steps help add to its character. [ED: Time Capsule Note - the above was done using a red laser technique which produces larger point sizes than the more advanced green lasers mostly employed today.]

After the White House staff approved the final design, it was presented to the President.  As for the final approval from the Commander in Chief himself, we were told that “the President didn’t stand a chance after the First Lady saw it first” – of course, that’s the story we got and we’re pretty sure the actual comments were probably filtered for National Security sake.

Needless to say, you can not buy this design anywhere – this size, design and even some of the subtle elements have been reserved by us for the United States Government.  After all, how special would a diplomat feel if they were to walk out of the White House and bump into a vendor selling the SAME crystal regardless of the signature on it – I mean wars have been started for less!

The Obvious Plug

We hope you enjoyed the little story behind our design of the White House; and remember if the President can trust us to get the job done – you can too!