One of the sculptures by Elliott Dodd
Two sculptures on show at this year’s Royal Academy Schools Show utilised Inca’s inkjet technology.
The pair of sculptures, Ice Cream Man (Grabber) and Ice Cream Man (Daytona) started out as hip hop video stills which student Elliot Dodd captured, printed and moulded as a skin around 3D objects. These were then photographed and printed; the resulting images onto steel sheets at Inca’s Cambridge demonstration centre using Inca’s Spyder X and Onset X wide-format flatbed UV inkjet printers. The final step was to mould these by hand into the finished pieces, which also incorporate PU foam and aluminium mesh.
‘Inca went out of their way to help,’ explained Mr Dodd. ‘I had access to two printers for the whole day as well as the help of two Inca technical specialists. This gave me the time to test print samples, discover the process and understand ink weights that achieved the best quality and colour gamut. In the end, we used the SpyderX to print a layer of opaque white onto metre-square steel sheets, then printed the images in full colour on the Onset X3.’
John Mills, CEO of Inca Digital, said, ‘Applications like this are an excellent way to show people the enormous potential of digital printing. Advances come from experimentation, not only for the artists but for our technical people too, so it’s a win-win as far as we’re concerned.’
