Eddie Y. Ramirez Blog: Our New DreamWorks Madagascar Characters for Royal Caribbean Cruise Are Ready To Set Sail

We are thrilled to have recently completed our second set of DreamWorks Madagascar characters for another Royal Caribbean Cruise Line cruise ship.

Alex, Gloria and the gang are happily cruising the high seas and are ready to engage and delight your children with their scale, colour and oh-so-smooth texture. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to view the photos.

The Challenges and How We Overcame Them

Like all themed space projects, this one had its own challenges. In fact, there were two: First, these children’s movie characters would be sailing the high seas and they needed to be waterproof. This is because the water that inadvertently collects inside the forms cause the paint to peel and speeds up deterioration, meaning they need to be replaced earlier than desired. However, completely sealing the sculptures is time-consuming and therefore costly.

Instead of focusing our production efforts on costly waterproofing, the CoolStuff Studio design solution was to embrace the water during the design phase rather than the production phase. We designed the characters to accommodate water flow, ensuring that water had places where it could easily exit. This eliminated the problem of stagnant standing water. These characters will last a long time!

In addition, Royal Carribean Cruise ships needed an easy cleaning solution for their ship decks, where the DreamWorks characters would be mounted. We came up with an innovative idea for easy mounting hardware that allowed the sculptures to be removed so the decks could be sprayed down with little time or fuss.

It’s this kind of creative and practical thinking that got us the contract and puts us above our competition. What are your big design challenges? Leave us a note in the comments below and we’ll be happy to respond!

Visit our gallery to see the rest of our projects.