Make thisreal.

A blue-chip money-management firm sent us one AI-generated image — a neon beer-pong table that didn't exist — and asked the very modern question: can you build it? Weeks later, two of them were glowing under the vaults at Tobacco Dock.

Client: A blue-chip money-management firm
Venue: Tobacco Dock, London
The brief: One AI-generated image
Our role: Design, fabrication, electronics & software

On site at Tobacco Dock — pixel-tape edges, cups lit from below, ready to play.

The brief

This is what briefs look like now. No drawings, no spec, no reference project — the client typed what they wanted into an image generator and sent us the picture: a black table edged in neon, glowing cups, pure vibe. Our job was to turn that picture into joinery, electronics, power and code — in time for their event at Tobacco Dock.

1AI image as the brief

2Tables, built for real

16LEDs under every cup

2×Points on the green cup

From a prompt to a product

An AI image doesn't have to work. It doesn't care about cup spacing, cable routing, power supplies or how a tabletop survives a party — so between the picture and the plywood sits the actual work.

We rebuilt the image in CAD first: real dimensions, a rack of ten cup wells at each end, room inside for the electronics, and the neon lines of the original picture translated into runs of addressable pixel tape around the edges and across the playfield. The render kept the AI image's promise; the drawings underneath made it buildable.

The client's AI-generated concept image — a black table edged in rainbow neon lines with glowing cups clustered on top. — The entire brief — one AI-generated image

HALF GREY BEAR's CAD model of the table — the same black form and neon edge lines, now with a rack of ten cup wells at the corner and buildable geometry. — Our CAD answer — the same promise, now with physics

Pong, reinvented

One catch: the venue's licensing meant no drinking games. So we invented a better one — keep the throw, lose the beer, add a jackpot.

Best of ten throws. A point for landing the ball in any cup — double points for the one cup glowing green. Two buttons sit at each end of every table: press the green button and the rack runs a three-second random light chase before settling on the new double-points cup; the red button resets the rack for the next round. Randomise, throw, argue about the score — the game kept its edge without a drop of beer, and the chase turned every round into a spectator moment.

Both tables in the workshop with their cup racks lit — one end glowing red, the other blue — and rainbow pixel tape running around the table edges. — Red end, blue end — every cup lit from below by its own PCB.

Under the cups

01
A PCB per cup

Forty circular HGB boards across the pair — one under every cup, each carrying sixteen addressable LEDs (a ring of twelve plus four in the centre), so any cup can be any colour at any moment.
02
Two-button control

Green to randomise, red to reset — one pair of buttons at each end of each table. No app, no pairing, no menu: party-proof controls anyone understands mid-game.
03
Pixel tape everywhere

Addressable tape around every edge and across the playfield centre — the neon lines from the AI image, made real and animated, effects flowing seam-matched around the corners.
04
Custom firmware

Our own boards running our own code: the random chase, the green-cup lottery, the resets and the idle shows — instant, self-contained and offline. Plug in, play.