The Sweet Spark Behind iCarly’s Gummy Bear Chandelier: Meet the Creative Genius Behind the Icon!

The creative mastermind behind the incredible set design of Nickelodeon's iCarly - The memorable and iconic gummy bare chandelier, is Kevin Champeny - not Spencer Shay who we know and loved on the show as Carlys big brother, who was played by 'Terry Trainor'

We were lucky enough, to get some inside scoop from the artist him self, of an interview that was took place with Its Olivias World, and admittedly Olivia mentioned that she really wanted a gummy bare chandelier.

The True artist behind the iconic light. Kevin Champeny.

Read below and see what was said by Kevin himself of what inspired him, how it all took place and the finished result.

"Gummy Bears are such a universal object

that transcend cultures, generations, language, etc. 

I wanted to challenge myself to create a completely new original shape that still embodied the joy and wonder of such an iconic candy.

I want people to feel joy and amazement that a simple little candy can be transformed to create anything from a single light to a full portrait, the visual ideas thinking of iCarly’s style or energy? High energy, bright, fun, and innovative. It is a delicate process.  It is easy to go too far in one direction or the other when dealing with certain objects and images.  With candy, I try to stay in the meta realm, to make the object from itself and celebrate the beauty and joy of it.

Start with a clay sculpture of a gummy bear, and then I start making my own silicone molds.  Once the molds are created, I begin the process of color matching and casting, sometimes tens of thousands of resin gummy bears.  Once the bears are cast and cleaned and finished, they are attached to the hundreds of lines that make up the globe shape.  The other aspect of this build is the hardware that everything from the gummy bears to the light are attached too, is meticulously designed and hand built, though Sadly they are not real, they are all hand cast resin that fortunately will last forever!

The biggest challenge is determining and designing how the light will translate though the pieces.  The larger the globe, The stronger the light source needs to be. Once you get very bright, you have to factor in heat dissipation from the light source itself and adjust the inner structure accordingly, though It was a design I had years ago and I just decided to sit down and design it and figure it out. The idea of light being telegraphed through thousands of pieces of candy just seemed magical to me, and I always wanted it to be a light fixture, the interaction of the light and candy was always forefront in this piece.

It was actually the last closing scene in the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off. The principal is forced to take the bus after his terrible day of failure and the girl sitting next to him offers him a gummy bear that has been in her pocket all day. I just loved the inter play and have been obsessed with the idea of working with gummy bears ever since, the Chandelier you see on the show is the prototype. I dove straight in and figured out the project as I built it.

It wasn't until I first posted the timelapse video of me building it that I realized how much it resonated with people. It went viral almost immediately and I still get to talk to people who see it as a huge part of their childhood memories- including Olivias from itsoliviasworld.

Its strange that people recognise me all the time for the art piece I created, though the fun part is to see the reactions of people when I tell them that I am the one who designed and created it.

And Olivia's last question was - Who came to you with the idea in iCarly Studio to design this. They came to me actually.  I had built the Chandelier and a friend asked to hang it in a store in lower Manhattan, and the producer of the show just happened to walk in and fell in love with it and asked me to use it on the show, and of course I said yes and the rest is history."