myphotofractals.com

Hi all,

Today’s post will recap on the results of the Merdeka project, which we’ve mentioned in a few posts before. The whole process was pretty intense for us, involving many world’s firsts, but the results were very satisfying.

In previous posts we talked about the launch process and all the related activity. Other than the grand launch and numerous roadshows, promotions were also held at many schools throughout the country, and leaflets were distributed far and wide.

Today we’ll talk about the actual making of the flag, as well as the end results.

Now one thing that most people realise in principle but dont actually realise, is that a 40 foot by 60 foot flag is BIG. It’s really really BIG! Now think about needing to make the flag from tiny portrait photos less than a square inch in size and we’re talking about processing a huge number of photos!

So unlike our normal photofractals, we needed to formulate special processes in order to process the gigantic high resolution image to be used in the merdeka flag. It required considerable ingenuity on the part of our designers, backed up with an incredible amount of computing power and memory to do it, and even then a considerable amount of time was required, but finally it was done.

The second problem that we had was how it was intended to be used - carried and hung up one entire side of the Merdeka Stadium, with all of the front and most of the back side of the flag open to the elements. That meant that the flag would have to be light weight and weather resistant. Most importantly it would have to be secured extremely well — a 40 x 60 foot flag catches a huge amount of wind generating forces enough to pull down any normal scaffolding.

The third problem we had was actually printing the flag once the design work had been completed. Whilst large posters covering the sides of buildings are fairly common, these are generally very low resolution images — they look good from a distance but not up close. This was obviously not possible in the case of the merdeka flag, as we needed the tiny individual cell pictures to be of high enough resolution to see clearly. Therefore special printing techniques and materials were needed to produce the desired effect.

We didn’t have much time to put everything together, but after a few sleepless weeks everything finally fell into place. And voila, this is result.

So how big is a 40 foot by 60 foot flag? It was so big that the largest printers could only print a small section of it.

We partially unrolled the flag here while checking it. To get an idea of the size check out the guy standing at the far end of the flag.

Here’s a close up of one section of the flag. You can see how many individual cells there are even in this small section.

So at the appointed time we trucked it over to the stadium. This is where we were to set it up.

Installing the flag took a team of almost 10 people half a day. The moment the flag was unfurled was pretty exciting.

Seeing the huge flag up there made all the hard work worth while. Immediately we started getting crowds of people coming up to admire the flag and check out all the individual cell pictures.

Side banners were placed on either side of the flag, showing all the charities and sponsors involved in the project, and of course Photofractals!

Here’s a video of the flag before we properly secured it, flying partially free in the wind.

A video of the flag before it was secured

It took an incredible number of cast iron weights and cables to firmly secure the flag, but we wanted to be very sure that it was safe and secure.

And here’s the final product!

All in all, the project was a great learning experience for us, and a chance to contribute something to the disadvantaged children of Malaysia. We also took great pride in being part of the official 50th Merdeka day celebrations, with the Prime Minister and many other top officials as well as the general public in attendance.

We look forward to many more interesting projects like this one, but in the meantime we’re looking forward to getting back to producing normal sized photofractals for normal sized people!