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Cape Town, September 2009: Todwil, a South African based company that specialises in retail-marketing solutions continues to demonstrate its diverse expertise after being commissioned by Cape Town design agency, Am I Collective, to produce fully dimensionalised bears for the agency's Bare Project. The project sees the bears being used by artists, in-house designers, freelancers, students and illustrators as a canvas to create art pieces. "We received an unusual brief from Am I Collective which required that we find an innovative way of building the bears to a quality fit for the purpose", says Grant Wood, Creative Director at Todwil. The conventional approach would be to use the blow moulding process but because of the limited-edition nature of the project, the numbers didn't justify tooling-up. The company opted for a two part thermoforming process after discarding moulded urethane as an option. "This was the most practical way as we had to supply a surface that was as good as an artist's canvas," says Wood. Complex moulds were machined on a highly specialised 5-axis router before thermoforming high impact polystyrene in two halves. These half-formings were accurately trimmed and then fused together after which a filler and top coat was spray-painted on them. "The surfaces were carefully sanded to a finish suitable for an artist working in any medium to start creating a work of art on the curvy structure," comments Wood. "We had huge amounts of fun working on this project with ‘bare' bears posing all around the factory" he enthuses.
The little bears will be sold for charity through various Am I Collective initiatives. See http://bare.amicollective.com/
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