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Making a Complex Printing Process
When famous tattoo artist Mario Barth wanted to make a statement as bold as the Las Vegas location for his newest tattoo parlor he looked to an interactive 3-D lenticular project that would break records.
To pull off the world’s biggest 3-D/flip mural, as certified October 2007, he turned to an SGIA member company that specializes in this complex printing process.
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| The enormous 3-D mural — measuring nearly 30-m (98-feet) wide and almost 4-m (13-feet) tall — featured iconic tattoo imagery surrounded by larger-than-life images of Mario and Carol Barth, the tattoo company’s head of operations. The panels’ “lurid colors” were meant to highlight some of the vivid tattoo work Starlight Tattoo had done for famous celebrity clients. |
The lenticular project would cover a temporary construction barrier in Mandalay Bay Casino where Starlight Tattoo, Barth’s tattoo parlor chain, would open its latest location next to the House of Blues nightclub and restaurant. (See how SGIA covered temporary construction areas in New Orleans at SGIA.org, Keyword: NOLA.)
 Barth and his design team dictated the size of the lenticular piece to the SGIA member and lenticular imaging company. From that point forward, the project became a true collaboration between Barth, his graphic designer and the crack lenticular pre-press team.
While the lenticular printing company had done large projects in the past, the Starlight Tattoo job “blew those out of the water,” the company says. The company started by acquiring all of the imagery from Barth’s design team.
Then the real challenges began. Lenticular art files, particularly ones with complex 3-D effects, can have hundreds of Photoshop layers. While this is unwieldy enough with a more common project, the company says the pixel wrangling became more involved for the Starlight Tattoo project.
Once the effects are in place in the original art file, a generation of the actual print file is done through a process called interlacing. The interlaced art file contains all of the lenticular views arranged in alternating strips of information that — once printed — must then be exactly registered to the lenticular lens for the multi-dimensional and flip effects to be seen.
The graphics were printed and then mounted on a lenticular lens, taking up a total 1,500 square feet of photo paper and lens. The company notes projects such as the Starlight Tattoo mural get even more complex when you consider these lenticular effects must phase perfectly across the seams of 1.21-m (48-inch) wide lens panels, and do so for the entire length of the mural.
Once the mural panels were mounted with the images, they went under UV lamps to cure the adhesive. Each panel was then trimmed by the company’s CNC router table and matched up to make sure the total image was accurate to proofs.
The panels were drilled with mounting and installation holes for a Las Vegas-based company that would install the panels in the Mandalay Bay in less than one day. All together, the SGIA member company spent about 10 days on the Starlight Tattoo job, the average amount of time most of its bigger projects take.
The Starlight Tattoo project is the latest in a growing retail market interest the lenticular printing company has seen. Since the “wow factor” of lenticular can be so impressive, the company says it has seen more demand for lenticular display projects in several industries, with concentrated interest in:
- Entertainment, particularly the film industry
- Beverages, which includes the beer, carbonated beverages and performance/energy product markets
- Retail
- Museums
- Technology
SGIA member company Big3D.com (Fresno, California) printed the lenticular mural for Starlight Tattoo Parlor in Las Vegas. Find more information about the company at www.big3D.com or call 559.233.3380.
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