The Model Citizens of Replicate Designs

They have put roofs on skyscrapers, planted thousands of trees, hoisted giant toothbrushes and know all about the external anatomy and colourings of trout. Yet, they’re neither construction workers, foresters, dentists or fishermen.

Shelli Woodall, Felix Rooke and Paul Hern are model makers, a rare breed of craftspeople who combine artistic, engineering and fine motor skills with high-tech equipment to create three-dimensional objects. They are the founders and co-directors of Replicate Designs, a model, prop and prototype-making studio in Calgary that creates lifelike representations of everything from architectural models to advertising props, which ultimately help sell real estate, serve as educational aids, boost ad campaigns or represent products ahead of the marketplace curve.

You may have seen the trio’s work in the sales suite of the Arriva Towers. Commissioned by Torode Realty, the trio built the Phase II model of the downtown high-rise development to the exact specification of BKDI Architects. Their task was to create an exact representation — albeit 100 times smaller than the real thing — so that potential buyers and investors could visualize what they were buying into months before ground was broken for the real thing.

As with most replicas, accuracy was paramount to the project. Even as they were gluing the thousands of pieces together, massive design changes were being made. When the architects increased or decreased the number of storeys, or adjusted the floor height, Replicate Designs had to follow suit with minute adjustments, or by practically starting over from scratch.

But architectural models are just one area of Replicate Designs’ expertise. The uses for such models — far beyond the pale of hobbyists and their plane, train and automobile kits — are limited only by the imagination. Quirky requests for replicas keep the model makers on their toes.

“You never know what you’re going to get,” says Woodall. “You get a chance to build something completely unique one day; the next day, you get to do it again with something different.”

Calgary advertising agency Venture Communications called in Replicate Designs when it was developing Toyota’s “Call of the Tundra” contest campaign, commissioning them to build 35, eight-foot-long brown trout in 25 days. The designers obliged, working late into the night, carving trout shapes out of Styro-foam before spray-painting and hand-detailing the fish to look as real as if they were just plucked from the Bow. The fish were shown in the back of pickup trucks at dealerships located throughout Western Canada.

The Replicate trio’s work is also seen at the Calgary Zoo, where their steel-frame elephant stands, with fibreglass tusks and one leg designed to show the interior bone structure of the pachyderm’s foot so visitors can see how the animal walks on its toes.

For an oil trade show in Saudi Arabia, the team built an industrial prototype model of a burner stack — built to fit in a carry-on bag and made out of plastic and resin in order to bypass airport security problems. They’ve also manufactured a giant, velvet-covered Tiffany box for a display at The Core shopping centre downtown, and have referenced original blueprints of the Brooklyn Bridge to create an eight-foot long replica of the iconic structure.

The skill set required is a combination of the creativity it takes to hand-paint the rocky terrain of a mountain range with the technical capacity to understand the architectural plans of a suburban bungalow.

And there are more unconventional qualifications, such as an affinity for planting thousands of inch-tall, string-wire evergreen trees on topographical models of golf courses and resorts, the ability to upholster furniture that can be smaller than a spool of thread, and the stamina to pull an all-nighter in order to make client deadlines on projects ranging from a traditional English garden maze to a fully furnished dollhouse.

The minutiae is what the Replicate Designs team thrives on, and is part of the reason they tout the virtues of being neat, methodical and patient as top qualifications for the job. The beauty of their models is in the details, from the speckling on those trout facsimiles to landscaping outside a miniaturized condominium tower, to the thatch of bristles on a translucent orange toothbrush, an advertising prop 100 times greater than scale.

Of the three, only Woodall has extensive formal model-making training. She earned two degrees in her native London, England, where there are more than 20 college programs specifically dedicated to training model makers. There are no similar programs in Western Canada partly, says Woodall, because “people don’t realize it can be a career. It hasn’t been utilized over here as much as it has in Europe.” Woodall paid her dues engineering props for the U.K. film and TV industry, and her credits include Steven Spielberg’s Second World War epic, Saving Private Ryan, for which she helped recreate the human casualties.

Rooke, who is also from England, grew up in the family business of designing and manufacturing ceramics. “I was rolling balls of clay when I was three years old,” he says. “In my whole life, I’ve never done anything else but fabricate.” He worked for 25 years sculpting, making moulds and manufacturing items for his father’s pottery studio, Bernard Rooke Pottery, in Ipswich, England, before moving to Canada where he also got a taste of the film industry — he created the ceramic tea set that gets smashed in Kevin Costner’s western Open Range.

Hern, the trio’s resident techie, is the lone Calgarian and one of only two Canadians on Replicate’s staff roster of eight. The SAIT and University of Calgary graduate studied industrial design and specialized in computer modelling and prototype design.

Before starting their own enterprise in 2004, the three worked for Studio Y Creations, a Calgary prop-making company that specializes in large-format, three-dimensional designs, including store facades, parade floats and theme-park buildings. Over lunch breaks they got to know each other better and soon realized they had a mutual interest in smaller-scale, more detailed model making. They also saw a niche — the industry hadn’t really caught on yet in Calgary.

The threesome formed a model-making dream team that would transcend technologies. “People think of model building as old world, but we’re combining the old-world handicraft with modern-day technology,” says Hern, standing in Replicate Designs’ 3,200-square-foot studio in an industrial area off Blackfoot Trail.

The tricked-out workspace has all the necessary technology to emulate almost anything. Most models begin in the form of computer-aided design (CAD) files, a virtual 3-D model of the end product. The CAD file is scaled down and deconstructed into hundreds, sometimes even thousands, of individual pieces before the information is sent to the appropriate cutting machine.

An architectural model, for example, is sent to a laser cutter that slices each piece out of virtually any material, from acrylics to metal. Woodall even fed gingerbread through the machine to create a gingerbread replica of the Moxie’s Classic Grill restaurant on Macleod Trail, which was commissioned for a holiday advertising campaign. The laser cutter also etched the stone facade of the restaurant onto the gingerbread before Woodall set to work on the candy and frosting.

The computer files for topographical models, such as resort properties like Canmore’s Three Sisters Mountain Village, are sent to the computer numerical control (CNC) milling machine for the first major cuts. The six-by-10-foot behemoth can cut foam, acrylic and medium-density fibreboard into three-dimensional shapes that mimic the exact curves and crevices of the landscape. The company also employs a printer for rapid prototyping of product designs commissioned for engineers and industrial designers: a CAD file is sent to the machine that then binds gypsum-based powder, layer by layer, into a 3-D object ranging from human forms less than an inch tall to hand tools being considered for consumer use.

The high-tech gear gives the staff a foundation to build on, but Hern says it’s the human touch that makes the model: “As much computer and technology that we can throw at it, there’s still a lot of handwork to do.”

The laser cutter only gives the Replicate team the pieces of a much bigger puzzle. It’s up to them to glue each piece together to form a building (sometimes 100 times smaller than the real deal), before going on to hand-paint the finishes.

Likewise, with the CNC milling machine, once the basic shape is cut, the staff hand-carves the ridges and valleys and uses faux-finish painting techniques to create mountains and lakes. The company once hand-planted 16,500 pinhead trees on their topographical model of Elk Park Ranch, a residential ranch community in interior B.C.

The greatest details are often found in model interiors. When the trio created interior models for the Beltline’s upscale condo complex, The Montana, each of the 11 units, including two penthouses, required different furniture, all representing the modern pieces stocked by the furniture companies B&B Italia and Ligne Roset. Replicate Designs studied product catalogues before recreating miniature versions in wood, leather and fabric.

Recreating the linens, carpentry and furnishings all have the potential to captivate the intensely focussed artisans. “You could spend eight hours on a single bed,” Hern says. “You shouldn’t, but you could.” The team even went so far as to line The Montana’s miniature bookshelves with colourful tomes and hang one-of-a-kind paintings on the walls. Kitchens were outfitted with appliances identical to those available in the real-life sales packages; and to represent flooring choices, wood veneer was laser-etched into two different board widths. The mini Montana took three months to complete, but when Replicate Designs was through, it was entirely plausible that the real, life-sized unit could be replicated to the specifications of the scale model.

Still, the model dream team’s challenge is getting more people to see models as tangible options for their advertising and educational campaigns, constructed in Calgary by nimble craftspeople with the skills to execute even the wildest ideas. Despite all the available computer wizardry that enables virtual walkthroughs and photorealistic displays, there remains the allure of models you can walk around, peer inside and run your fingers over.

“People don’t know this is available to them,” says Woodall. “People don’t think in two dimensions. There will always be a need for 3-D.”