News

TCT Awards – we’ve been shortlisted!

We are super excited to share with you that we have shortlisted for the 'Creative Application' TCT award!

Here at the 3D Print Bureau, we’re delighted to announce that we have been short-listed for the TCT Creative Application award 2017! We have been nominated for our project producing the models of the puppets used in the Sainsbury’s Christmas advert, a task that kept our printer’s busy day and night for 3 and a half months straight! The TCT company; whose mission is to accelerate the adoption of 3D technologies for design, development and manufacture across all industry sectors, has chosen our company as one of the award finalists along with 4 other shortlisted companies who have shown original, creative and impactive applications of 3D technology.

The award ceremony is taking place at Birmingham Town Hall on the 27th of September; on the evening of the second day of the TCT show, and will be hosted by television personality Robert Llewellyn, who will announce the winner. The TCT awards were created in order to celebrate the innovators and technology behind the best examples of 3D technology use across the globe and recognizes the achievements of designers, engineers and technology providers alike in their collaborative projects.

So how did we earn this nomination? Well we’ve been involved in the production of the Sainsbury’s 2016 Christmas advert in collaboration with puppet makers Mackinnon and Saunders and animation studio Passion Pictures. Our team were tasked with creating over 1400 3D printed faces and 800 different models depicting different facial expressions for just the main character alone! This was quite a task for our team who eagerly arose to the challenge. We kept our Stratasys J750 Printers going from day to night, during which time our team worked tirelessly to ensure our TV superstar models were produced to the highest of standards ready for their close-ups.

The team at the 3D Print Bureau are incredibly pleased with the end result in which it was a pleasure to watch our hard work come to life on the screen. As it was a tight timeframe for the level of work required, we couldn’t have done this sort of thing without the Stratasys J750 which enabled us to print rapidly in full colour and high definition whilst ensuring the models were robust enough to be handled.

We hope you will join us in wishing the team all the best at the TCT awards in September and if you haven’t already, check out the Sainsbury’s Christmas advert now… before next Christmas comes around! We will also be on a stand at the TCT show at the NEC from the 26th to the 28th of September. We’ll be showcasing our latest 3D printing technologies as well as offering our expert knowledge so if you have any questions or would like to find out more about 3D printing, come and say hello! We hope to see you there.

Remind yourself of the fantastic advert here: