CMU School of Drama


Thursday, April 24, 2014

Suntory Whiskey’s New Ad Campaign Uses 3D-Sculpted Ice

Geekosystem: There’s a new ad campaign for Suntory Whiskey by Japanese agency TBWA/Hakuhodo that shows the whiskey served over intricate, precision-drilled 3D ice sculptures. It’s beautiful to watch the drill create such a complex shape, and then have that shape drowned in whiskey.

7 comments:

Olivia LoVerde said...

That is really neat, sculpting small 3D ice sculptures to put in your drinks. The precision of the machine that is cutting the ice has to be extremely exact to make it have so much detail. I wonder if these could be made out of other material and used in a similar way. Maybe out of glass of some sort? You always see small figurines and things so I am guessing that this could be possible to be transferred into other materials and could keep them around the house.

Unknown said...

Whoever did this is a genius. I guess all you have to do is 3D sculpt it in AutoCAD or Rhino or something and then tell the machine to rout it, but it still kinda amazing. I only wish that they would do it by hand and a drill. That'd be even cooler. I believe in Japan's capabilities to do this. I assure you someone will attempt it at home and then get famous for it once they have mastered the art of the drill. I'm going to assume that the drill rotated to get the sides and that we just didn't see it happening. This is really cool! Now I have to go look at their gallery.

Jess Bergson said...

I wonder how much money went into sculpting these ice sculptures, and how many they needed to sculpt in order to get the proper shots. I can imagine the frustration of the photographer who probably tried to take their photos quickly before the ice started to melt. Like Olivia, I also wonder if these could have been made out of either glass or acrylic to achieve the same effect but in a more permanent way. I am very impressed by these ice sculptures, as ice is a material that I imagine is not easy at all to work with. The technology we are using today truly is started to show up in various creative ways, not just in the entertainment industry.

Keith Kelly said...

I love the idea of taking ice and turing it into a sculpture, by using a 3D sculpting device. I wonder how realistic the actually advertising images accurately depict the real ice sculptures. These images and video commercials must be photoshoped to the max to get the desired look. i can't believe that a machine could have been that exact with the sculpting without breaking, melting, or destroying the ice. The mini ice sculptures are absolutely adorable and certainly make you want to drink more in my opinion.

Hunter said...

I would first like to point out that at the end of the article there is a video of "A popular American actor" Bob Harris, doing a commercial for Suntory whisky. That is definitely Bill Murray. Not sure how they missed that. Either way nothing says whisky like ridiculous ice. Its incredibly impractical but it just screams opulence and that's what drinking whisky is all about right?

Akiva said...

This is a very classy ad. The basic idea is really compelling and does a great job of making the whisky look cool. I'm surprised how well the ice was carved. I would have thought that the ice would melt because of friction. Maybe the tool paths were set up so that they didn't have large surface areas touching the ice. The models look great and are very complex. I see some under cuts on some of the models. I want to know if they used a 6 axis mill or some other system to get these complex shapes.

jcmertz said...

That is really cool! I love that the video included not only the pouring of the drink but also the tooling of the ice block, which is really neat! The video is very artsy but manages to capture the insane beauty and complexity that exists in modern day CNC tools. I love the ending video in the article too, with the bit from Lost in Translation, I didn't even know that Suntory was a real brand when I saw that movie or at all until today.