The winner of the Valley’s 9th annual Bus Wrap contest was unveiled on Wednesday in Tempe.

16-year-old Max Ellinger had his submission plastered across a 40 foot bus.

The unveiling took place at Tempe’s New School for the Arts & Academics, where Ellinger is a sophomore.

Ellinger’s artwork was chosen out of 64 entries submitted by public and charter schools across the Valley. Tempe Mayor Hugh Hallman was in attendance to congratulate Max on a job well done.

“Max’s entry was chosen because his artwork is creative, exciting and dramatic,” said Dolores Nolan, Valley Metro Transit Education Manager. “In addition to its visual merits, Max’s entry provided a timely environmental message.”

14-year-old Andrew Tamayo and 15 year-old Karla Rubio, freshmen from Central High School in Phoenix came in second and third.

Ellinger’s design will remain on the Valley Metro bus for one year.  On top of doing the printing and installation bluemedia has been a proud sponsor of this event for the last several years. Congratulations to all the contestants from the bluemedia crew, keep up the amazing designs!!

On April 16th – 18th, 2009 Mike Tovar, bluemedia Install Manager, along with Ingram Johnson, our senior bluemedia Installer, travelled to Las Vegas to compete in the 1st Annual Lowen Certified Wrap Off. Mike and Ingram competed against 46 other installers from all over the world in a 3-day, 5 round event judging the installers speed, technique and quality of install. Ford provided six 2009 Mustangs to be used in the event. Sweet! And so it began…

Rounds 1 through 4 consisted of wrapping the drivers side front fender and door. The 5th and final round consisted of 3 finalists wrapping the entire driver’s side and competing for all the marbles. First place took home a 2009 Ford F-250 XL, an HP Touchsmart tx2-1020us Notebook PC, a truck tool box and wrapper’s tool set from Mac Tools, Cyrious Control OOB Gold system and a free Lowen Certification for the Installer.™  Second place winner took home a cool $5,000 cash (not chump change by any stretch), with 3rd place receiving a complimentary custom wrap for their vehicle designed by the guys at West Coast Custom.

The Results:Dustin Shelley of Atlanta took 1st place and the sweet truck. Nicely done Dustin. We heard you did an amazing job. Here’s where the story gets good though!… Our very own Mike Tovar came in just behind him in 2nd place and pocketed the $5,000!!!! Way to represent Mike! bluemedia could not be more proud of your performance in this event. We also need to give a big shout-out to the 3rd place winner Rob Miller of Laid Vision, a Phoenix based install crew. Rob is a great friend of bluemedia and has wrapped many vehicles for us in the past. Congratulations Rob! Well what about Ingram, you say? While he didn’t make it to the final round, he made it all the way to the final 12 so kudos to you as well. We had a feeling our guys would go out there and make some noise. You can bet we’ll be there again next year. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

bluemedia™ was recently commissioned by US Racetronics to create, produce and install the graphics for the Stargate Worlds trailer and hauler. Stargate Worlds, the title sponsor, is an online PC video game based off of the popular film and TV series.

Team Stargate Worlds consists of two Atlantic Series drivers, Simona De Silvestro and Frankie Muniz. If that names sounds familiar, it should. Frankie Muniz is the former child star of the popular Fox sit-com, Malcolm In The Middle! This series is considered a “ladder or feeder” series for top level racing in North America.

Team Stargate Worlds cars already boasted a slick, black and yellow-gold striping/paint scheme. Our services were needed to create trailer graphics that not only matched the cars, but also conveyed the bold imagery of the video-game. High resolution graphic elements were provided to bluemedia™ from the game developer, Cheyenne Mountain Games and Firesky.

This project called for 1,832 Sq. Ft. of 3M Controltac Vinyl w/comply printed on our HP Turbojet 8300. We used our Seal laminator and gloss 8519 for the lamination process. All of the sponsor logos were done in cut vinyl as a second surface application. There was also a small amount of perforated window film. The bluemedia™ team spent a total of  over 90 man hours hours on this project with the majority of that time spent on installation. The entire rig, tractor and trailer, was red which meant that almost every surface needed to be wrapped. The tractor alone had about 50 man hours of installation.

“The team tested in Sebring, Florida a couple of weeks before the season started, and was questioned by many teams about who produced the wrap,” said Andy Salcido, the bluemedia rep for this account. “Race teams are very competive by nature, not only do they want to go faster than their opponents, they also try want to represent their sponsors in the best light by having bold and impactful graphics on the cars and the haulers. This project will generate many leads and other projects for bluemedia.”

This project will be featured in the July issue of Signs of the Times magazine and we will post the link here when it’s available. Special thanks to US Racetronics and Stargate Worlds for involving us in this awesome project! Go Malcolm,…er I mean Frankie!