Expand Vol. 2 No. 12

Winning Walls

Rocket Grafix and Vista Color Imaging win dreamScape's Show Us Your Dream Contest for Best Mural and Most Unique applications using dreamScape wallcoverings from LexJet. A look at the award-winning projects, plus a sampling of the best of the rest.

On This Page

• Best Mural
• Most Unique
• Honorable Mentions

Ironclad Graphics

This year’s winner for Best Mural is Vista Color Imaging for its 17-ft. high, 65-ft. long reproduction of an original riverscape painting by Connecticut-based artist Rob Evans. The mural was part of an extensive facility expansion of the USS Monitor Center at The Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Va.

 The original painting, which was scaled in proportion to the wall on which the painting would be reproduced, was photographed on three 8x10 transparencies. The transparencies were then scanned by Vista Color Imaging and digitally seamed together, creating a final file that was over 4 Gigabytes.

The mural was printed in 15 vertical sections on dreamScape Suede with the company’s Durst Rho 205 hybrid UV-curable printer, utilizing over 1,100 square feet of dreamScape material. The installation required a 12-ft. high scaffold and four installers.

“To make sure we had perfect alignment over the entire length of the graphic, we plumbed every line,” explains Vista Color Imaging’s Herb Byers. “We snapped a level chalk line across the top of the wall, and made sure the upper right corner of each panel matched the right vertical edge and followed the plumb line all the way down for each panel.”

Vista Color Imaging also produced a number of other dreamScape murals for the project, bringing the grand total of dreamScape graphics to 6,000 square feet over the entire facility.

Mean Streets

Rocket Grafix won first place for the Most Unique project in this year's dreamScape contest for a mural that sets the scene for self-defense. Krav-Maga is a self-defense school whose techniques were first developed by the Israeli Defense Forces.

Rocket Grafix first tackled the theme with a vehicle wrap for the school. After seeing wall mural samples at Rocket Grafix headquarters in Phoenix, the school decided to include an environmental wall graphic at its primary location, which was being renovated.

Rocket Grafix designed the wall mural in Photoshop as a grungy alley scene. Since the reception area/lobby was not a simple flat wall, but a combination of curved returns into a flat wall, it was decided to build a scale model out of Foam Core.

"The model was probably a foot or so high and a couple of feet wide. We printed the model graphics on LexJet 55, used our templates, and cut out all the returns and reception desk, got it to scale, and put all the graphics down," explains creative director Robert Hamilton. "It was almost impossible to show the client an exploded view of the room on-screen. It also helped us plan the installation."

Rocket Grafix printed the final wall mural on dreamScape's Plaster wallcovering material with its Mimaki JV-3. Rocket Grafix also added some detailed touches on the bathroom door and a refrigerator (which was made to look like a phone booth). The door and refrigerator were wrapped with 3M Controltac.

"The customer was blown away, and absolutely loved it. They have a total of four schools in the valley, and would like to expand and continue that theme at that location and at their other facilities," says Hamilton. "We would like to move to the dreamScape wallcoverings for more permanent applications since our forte is creating custom corporate and retail environments."

Honorable Mentions