Rainbow MagicLand · full-round sculpture · 2011

Winx Statues

The six fairies of Alfea sculpted in full round: from clay to the painted piece, six months of work in our workshops.

Act one

Translating a cartoon
into three dimensions.

Iginio Straffi's Winx are born as 2D animation: flat drawing, colours in clean fields, hair moving on the page. For Rainbow MagicLand they must be transformed into full-round sculpture, about two metres tall each, walkable by visitors in the square. It is a problem of translation: every volume, every proportion, every costume detail — the silhouette of the wings, the folds of the corolla skirt, the dynamic poses of the girls in flight — must pass from drawing to relief.

The six fairies are Bloom (red, Dragon's Flame), Stella (blonde, sun and moon), Flora (brunette, nature), Musa (Asian, music), Tecna (old rose, technology), Aisha (dark-haired, water). For each, chromatic respect of the season costume and the exact hairdo of the character — the Winx recognisable at first glance, as Rainbow Spa demanded.

The process we applied is the same as the great tradition of cinematic sculpture: modelling clay shaped by hand on an internal steel structure that supports weight and pose; silicone rubber mould with thick walls; layered casting in fibreglass; finish and polychrome painting one statue at a time. The raw clay piece and the finished colour piece are separated by four weeks of full work — each detail hand-finished, each colour field laid out to standard.

Statue of a Winx sculpted in raw modelling clay at the Creation Art workshop: dynamic lateral pose with raised arms, lifted legs, stylised banded hair, mounted on a metal pole, white background panel, industrial warehouse visible behind — A Winx in clay, mounted on the pole

Close-up of the head of a Winx statue in grey modelling clay: stylised symmetrical face, closed eyes, smile, long hair gathered on one side, hairband; in the background the walls of the Creation Art workshop and white polystyrene blocks — The face, still in clay

Hair sculpted in layers, profile view

Act two

From grey
to colour.

Once cast in fibreglass, the statue is milky white: the same colour of any fibreglass piece before finishing. That's when the painting department of the Creation Art workshops steps in — the direct legacy of the polychrome portraits of the Roman school, the Cinecittà tradition of the Sixties brought in by Ivano Ferrario through his five years of apprenticeship with Carlo Maggi and then twenty-five with Mario Cotone.

For the Winx, the palette is dictated by the client brand: fuchsia pink for the costumes, green for Flora's applications, purple and gold for Tecna's, water blue for Aisha. The Winx Club logo hung on the workshop walls is the visual standard to respect — Rainbow Spa checks every statue before clearance.

The six statues are transported to the park a few days before opening, installed at the entrance and in the squares around the Castle of Alfea. They stayed there until the ownership change in January 2019, when the Pillarstone fund (KKR group) acquired the park, progressively removed the Winx brand and took the statues away too. The photos from our archive are a document of that season.

Flora finished and painted, in front of the Winx Club logo

Full Winx statue in raw modelling clay, dynamic front pose with lifted legs as if in flight, long hair windswept, dressed in fairy costume with boots, mounted on metal pole supporting the weight, white workshop wall in the background — The full statue in clay, before casting

Another view of the Winx statues construction site at the Creation Art workshops: sculpting in progress, materials and tools scattered in the workshop environment — The construction site — workshop in operation

Behind the scenes

One fairy, six steps.

The production of a Winx statue goes through six standard phases in our workshop: (1) character study on the official Rainbow material — poses, proportions, costume, palette; (2) internal armature in steel supporting the weight and fixing the pose; (3) sculpting in modelling clay in full round, control of detail down to the face's expression and the skirt's fold; (4) silicone rubber mould with double wall, separated into three or four segments to open the mould; (5) fibreglass casting layered on a stainless-steel core; (6) finish and polychrome painting by hand, one statue at a time. The same process as traditional cinematic sculpture — portraits, statues of saints, period busts — applied to the 2004 animated cartoon.

Flora — the finished piece, under the Winx Club logo in our workshops.

6 statues,
six months one statue for each of the six fairies · Bloom, Stella, Flora, Musa, Tecna, Aisha · each sculpted from scratch, all with different dynamic poses

Clay to
fibreglass first modelled in clay on steel core · double-wall silicone rubber mould · layered fibreglass casting

Painted
by hand one statue at a time, colour by colour · the direct legacy of the polychrome portraits of the Roman school of Cinecittà

Tech sheet

All production data

Type: Six full-round statues · artistic sculpture · polychrome finish
Location: Rainbow MagicLand · Valmontone (Rome) · installed at the park entrance and in the squares around the Castle of Alfea
Commission: Iginio Straffi's Rainbow Spa · 2010-2011 · for the park's opening
Subjects: The six fairies of Iginio Straffi's Winx Club: Bloom, Stella, Flora, Musa, Tecna, Aisha
Techniques: Sculpting in modelling clay · silicone rubber mould · fibreglass casting on stainless-steel core · hand finishing and painting
Brand palette: Fuchsia pink (costumes) · green (Flora) · purple and gold (Tecna) · water blue (Aisha) · yellow (Stella) · red (Bloom) · anthracite grey (Musa)
Technical heritage: The polychrome portraits of the Roman school — the Cinecittà tradition of the Sixties, applied to a 2004 animated-cartoon brand
Park opening: 25 May 2011
Removal from the park: 2019 onwards · with the ownership change to Pillarstone Italy (KKR) and the Winx brand's exit from the park
Cluster: Part of Rainbow MagicLand
Our role: Complete delivery of the six full-round statues: from character study on the Rainbow graphic bibles to clay sculpting, to the mould, to the fibreglass casting on steel core, to hand polychrome painting. Six unique pieces, six months of work, one statue per Winx. The photos from our archive document the clay sculpting and the finishing in the workshop, in front of the client's Winx Club logo.
Second life: Statues removed from the park from 2019 with the ownership change to Pillarstone Italy (KKR) and the Winx brand's exit · some preserved as archive, others dismissed · what remains is the polychrome portrait technique of the Roman school

Second life

When a statue
disappears with the brand.

The six Winx fairies — Bloom, Stella, Flora, Musa, Tecna, Aisha — were on stage at the park from 25 May 2011 until 2019: eight years as the Rainbow MagicLand's visual face at the entrance and in the squares around the Castle of Alfea. When in 2019 Iginio Straffi sells Rainbow Spa and the park passes under Pillarstone Italy (KKR) management, the Winx brand exits the park and the statues are removed — together with the trademark.

It is a fate opposite to that of the PopPixie houses, which instead survive the ownership changes because they function as play infrastructure for children. The Winx statues are only iconography, and when the brand disappears, they disappear with it.

For us, however, the technique remains. The six Winx statues were a pure exercise in polychrome portrait of the Roman school of Cinecittà applied to a 2004 animated cartoon brand. The same technique returns in the portraits for Ferretti's Labirinto Fellini installation, in the Cinecittà World scenography, and in all the other projects where a believable face at the visitor's scale is needed.

Winx Statues

One fairy, six steps.

When a statuedisappears with the brand.

When a statue
disappears with the brand.