Dazzling 3D Ice Cubes That Will Make You Down Your Whisky In One Gulp

Ezra H. Murray for Art-Sheep

There’s some of us who think that making crystal clear ice cubes using warm water is the utmost achievement of flashiness. And there are others who make elaborate ice cubes that are simply out of anyone’s league. These intricate ice cubes feature in the Suntory ads, a Japanese brand of whisky, and come in various shapes, from mermaids to deadmau5 to ancient Greek gods and musical instruments. Suntory’s campaign became instantly successful during the AdFest 2015 and won the “Best in Experimental” award.

And what an experiment, indeed! Autodesk 123D is an application that helps turn images of things into blueprints for 3D printers, CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machines, etc., and it was this app that was used for the ice cubes to be designed in the first place. Afterwards, the blueprints were sent to a CNC router, which is a device used to cut hard materials into various shapes, after it was cooled to -7 degrees Celsius (19 Fahrenheit).
TWBA/Hakuhodo is the ad company behind the project and its head of public relations and communications, Miwako Fujiwara, says that the mini sculptures are only properly finished when “a touch of chilled whiskey polishes the surface of the ice and gives a beautiful shine to the sculpture”.