Original Artwork for the Maitreya Statue

Maitreya Project sculptors, Denise and Peter Griffin, began work on the life-size prototype for the Maitreya statue, in Taiwan during May 1997. At slightly more than one-metre high, this sculpture forms the basis upon which the one hundred and fifty-metre statue is modelled.

The original artwork utilised the traditional proportions of the Buddha's form (known as Sor, in Tibetan) which have been handed down by successive generations of master Buddhist artists over the centuries.

Once the basic form of the statue was complete, it was refined over a period of four years under the guidance of Buddhist masters such as Tibetan master sculptor, Chemo-la, and Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Spiritual Director of Maitreya Project.

Project artists, Denise and Peter Griffin, are working closely with industry specialists to develop methods for protecting the subtlety and beauty of the original Maitreya Buddha sculpture. The finished statue must retain its traditional proportions when it has been scaled up to 500-feet. This poses a variety of challenges and requires advances in state-of-the-art 3D computer software, laser scanners, digital video technology and computer controlled manufacturing techniques.

Scaling up the Original Artwork

A mechanical device called a digitising arm facilitated the first measurements. A grid was placed across the original artwork and the intersecting grid points were then touched with the digitising arm. The exact location of each grid point was electronically entered into the computer, and thus the shape of the image was accurately mapped point by point.

The optical or laser scan is an even more accurate method of mapping shape, and was eventually used for the final scan of the sculpture (pictured left). After scanning, the resulting computer file contained millions of measurement points creating a 'point-cloud'. These points were connected to form a 'polygon model' which looked like a net with a triangular pattern.

The polygon file's triangular shapes provided a relatively rough surfaces which had to be refined and smoothed out to form curved surfaces. Based on this work, the computer model could then be corrected for symmetry and the slight imperfections in the original artwork, such as unintended scratches, could be smoothed out.

Casting the Statue

The statue's skin will be cast in thousands of bronze plates, each of which must be shaped precisely. To achieve this, the computer model of the statue must be split into more than 5,000 smaller sections. These smaller computer files will guide milling machines, which will cut casting moulds directly from resin-bonded sand. In this way, the construction engineers will reproduce, perfectly, the form of Maitreya Buddha, 500ft / 152m high.