Volt — UV Neon Cartoon Cat, Night Street, Osaka

Most painted sculpture is designed for daylight and dies under artificial light. This one was designed the other way round: it is made to be at its best at nine at night, on a street of bars and small venues.

The brief

A cat for the pavement outside a venue, about 2 m, that would work as a landmark after dark on a street that already has a great deal of light on it. The owner had one stipulation: no sign, no name, no logo. The cat had to be the sign.

Designing for darkness

We built it on a black ground, which does two jobs. It is the natural colour of the animal, and in daylight it reads as an unassuming black cat — deliberately low-key. Then the fluorescent markings sit on top of that black: pink along the flanks, acid green on the chest and inner legs, cyan around the eyes and the ear interiors.

Fluorescent pigment does not glow on its own; it converts UV and throws it back as visible colour. So the placement matters more than the amount. We put pigment where the nearby street lighting and the venue’s own lighting strikes the piece most directly, which is the upper flanks and the head. Under-lit edges were left black on purpose.

Where the shape and the paint disagree

The pose was set to give the markings somewhere to live. A crouching cat would have compressed all the fluorescence into a low band. Standing tall, with the tail up, spreads the coloured areas vertically so the eye reads a whole animal rather than a bright lump.

Build

Fibreglass over a steel spine, gloss clear coat with a strong UV package — necessary anyway, since fluorescent pigment fades faster than ordinary pigment when exposed. The venue washes it by hand and reports that the paint has held its intensity for two seasons of outdoor life.

On the street

In the morning it is a black cat that most people walk past. By nine in the evening it is the brightest object on that stretch of pavement, and it is now the meeting point everyone names when they are giving directions.