Justin Poulsen, a Toronto artist, and director, spent most of 2020 and 2021 building a miniature convenience store from scratch that serves as a shoebox for a pair of custom Nike Dunks themed after 7-Eleven. Small details like working lights and motorized doors add to the lifelike appearance of the project.
Justin Poulsen has blended his love for Slurpees and custom Nike sneakers in a truly unique way. He built everything from scratch using laser-cut wood, 3D printed accessories (designed and painted by him), and a bunch of random materials. Lighting built into the set is a high output, specifically designed for photography and video production, as a lot of light was needed to feed the probe lens used in filming. Servo motors and an Arduino controller were used to control the motorized doors.
The artist planted miniature cigarette butts on top of the garbage cans, bird poop on top of the street lamp poles, and rust/paint chips on all of the bolts in every detail. A parking lot was needed to accompany the completed building, which was large enough to fill the camera’s field of view. Initially contemplating CG or painted backdrops, Poulsen decided that everything had to be hand-built to match the spirit of the building.
It ended up being 3 meters long and 1.8 meters deep, hand-painted and weathered meticulously. The project spanned just over two years from start to finish. In mid-2020, the two brands announced they would work together, the same collaboration the artist had envisioned years ago. The shoe project was ultimately scrapped with no media rollout, but Justin’s project survived, which he refers to as “the 7-eleven dunk that could have been.”.
Project Information:
Name: The 711 Dunk that could have been
Designer: Justin Poulsen
Grip and AC: Wyatt Michalek Tyler winrow
Sound Design: Lane Dorsey
Production Support: Narine Artinian Emmy grace
Bits Footage: Tyler Winrow