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Suntory Whisky’s Amazing Ice Cubes

April 10, 2015 – Kudos to Japanese whisky maker Suntory and their ad agency TBWA\Hakuhodo for creating an award-winning ad featuring amazingly carved ice cubes.  Forget the current fascination with spherical ice cubes.  These are teeny tiny sculptures of famous landmarks, characters or just interesting items such as the Statue of Liberty, the shark from Jaws, a rearing horse, Kinkaku-ji Zen Buddhist Temple in Kyoto and many more.

 

A CNC router was kept chilled at -7 degrees Celsius or 19.4F.  A thick bit was used first with detailing added using a finer bit.  The data came from Autodesk 123D, an app that allows you to use your iPhone or iPad to capture a 3D image then print it out using a 3D printer, CNC router, laser cutter or even a holographic printing process, all of which is totally beyond simple folk like us.

So, you’ve got all the right equipment lying around and you want to surprise your guests this summer.  Think again.  Each carved ice cube took one to six hours to complete.  But surely the day will come when we all can have these sculptures since the impossible becomes possible almost over night.  Maybe the Apple watch will be the solution.  One more tip, the complete sculptures were carefully doused with chilled whisky to create a glowing sheen.

The link to the ad is below.  It received almost no attention in this country but we found the whole idea so charming we wanted to share it.