From the outside, the northeast Calgary buildings occupied by Studio Y Creations look like a bunch of boring industrial bays.

Ah, but cross the threshold and you enter a magical world inhabited by giant elephants, sculpted elk and gargantuan cowboys, not to mention the walls of a vampire’s castle.

The staff at Studio Y blend state-of-the-art technologies with skilled carvers and painters to back up their corporate promise: “If you can dream it, we can build it.”

The annual Stampede Parade has become a kind of rolling showroom for the firm’s work, and, last year, floats built by Studio Y won more first-place awards in that parade than anybody else’s. There are certainly other companies in town that are making floats, but Studio Y seems to be achieving some degree of dominance in this competitive business.

Photo courtesy of Studio Y Creations
The Stampede parade is a rolling showroom for Studio Y’s award-winning floats and displays.

“We started this company 11 years ago to build props for museums, shopping centres and parades,” says president David Nolan. He himself was painting windows for the Stampede board, which now buys floats from him.

The magic material that makes all this possible is expanded polystyrene – the stuff you probably throw away when you get a new computer or TV set. If you’ve ever tried to whittle something out of it, you know it’s not easy. Fortunately, there are Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machines to ease the carving burden at Studio Y.

“We have CNC routers and CNC hotwire machines,” says Nolan. “We also have different types of scanning equipment.”

Just for fun, he puts a plastic doll of the cartoon character Shrek down on a scanner. Once the object’s shape is acquired by lasers, computer-driven machines automatically carve the foam. Then it’s finished by hand, and a hard coat is applied. Nolan says that “secret sauce” coating is a vital part of the process, and it makes the object hard enough for kids to climb on.

They’re expecting a lot of kids will want to climb on the lifelike elk created for Elkford, B.C. After the Stampede, the Elkford elk and its float-mate grizzly bear will see extra duty in the town’s interpretive centre.

Perhaps the epitome of “I want to climb up on that” can be seen at the Calgary Science Centre’s wildly successful WOWtown exhibit for kids aged three to seven. Studio Y made the Humongous Honey Bees and the other 3D sculptures there.

Even if you don’t make it to the Science Centre much, you’ve undoubtedly seen Studio Y’s work somewhere. They did the fanciful Who’s Who in the Zoo store at the Calgary International Airport, putting together an eight-metre-long animated crocodile. They also worked on models for the airport’s Spaceport display, and cast lifelike versions of skiing greats Ken Read, Thomas Grandi, Karen Percy and Nancy Greene Raine for Banff’s Cascade Plaza Mall.

Of course, at this time of year, most of the hands at Studio Y are busy putting finishing touches on floats for the Calgary Stampede parade, which Nolan says is the second largest in the world, second only to the Rose Bowl.

He says floats can cost “anywhere from $10,000 to $50,000” and points out that a company such as Alberta Treasury Branches may use its float 50 times a year in various parades around the province.

He’s particularly proud of a new kind of float being pioneered by Studio Y. While it’s self-propelled, it can also be legally towed anywhere in North America because everything folds up into a tarp. Look for this technology on this year’s Calgary Muslim Council float, as well as an upcoming float for Scouts Canada.

Studio Y’s work won best overall entry in the 2003 Stampede Parade for its work on the Maytag appliances entry. “It’s what we call a component float,” says Nolan. “They had Maytag repairmen walking alongside and even had Maytag repairmen on bikes. Their float just made a great statement.”

This year he has high hopes for the Canadian Blood Services float, which features an oversized cowpoke rolling up his sleeve. Other favourites, such as Alberta Treasury Branches, will be back. The Stampede board lets you re-use your floats, but recommends that after two years you make major changes to keep it interesting.

Nolan says the most challenging float he’s done was last year’s very complex First Nations float, commissioned by the Stampede board. He also notes that he turns away quite a few orders each year, usually because people procrastinate. “If you want a Stampede float,” he says, “you’d better come to us in February.”

Despite being associated with Stampede work, Nolan says the bulk of his firm’s orders come from museums, theme parks and retail stores. “We have a U.S. sales rep in Boston, and he generates about 85 per cent of our current sales,” he says.

The company is privately held, with about 20 employees. Studio Y currently occupies 13,000 sq. ft. but it is looking to acquire its own building and expand to 30,000 sq. ft.

Studio Y will probably need that space as it tackles even more ambitious projects for customers such as the large U.S. theme parks.

In the meantime, and just for fun, they’ve used their scanners to digitize the faces of some key customers and presented them with glass paperweights with their own faces eerily suspended.

Sounds like an idea for a vampire’s castle to me.

Web watch:
www.studioycreations.com

(Tom Keenan is a professor at the University of Calgary and an expert on technology and its social implications. He can be reached at keenan@businessedge.ca)