Jenna Bastian Project 3: Nature Cuts

For the Laser Cutting project I decided to do a nature theme. I used two deer silhouettes and a tree branch silhouette from Google Images.  I wanted to show two different personalities of a deer. The standing deer shows strength, confidence, and stubbornness, while the running deer will symbolize fear, freedom, and possibly stupidity.

I followed Professor Scott's video tutorials to make this template. I created a path surrounding the silhouette on Adobe Photoshop and imported it into Rhino 3D. CurveBoolean was used to cut out path with the rectangular segments (which had a .13 thickness). I then used array to see how many deer I could fit onto the template. I had some space left over so I used tree branches to fill them up (I was going for flowers or leaves at first but thought the deer would look funny). I had to redo this process couple times since I resized the objects after using CurveBoolean and noticed that the cut out segments would be smaller than the cardboard itself. And then again since there were too many control points on the paths which would cause the laser to take a longer time. I used the pen tool to make the curve more simple, and cut off unnecessary branches from the tree.

I will arrange the deer in a symmetrical fashion and have the two deer alternate around the pattern. I will then add the tree branches to break the symmetry and add more variety to the object. I am going to leave the cardboard as it is, I probably won't paint it since brown is a nature-like color.

Images of the process (I will add the final project when it's done):

Here are the cardboard cutouts and them assembled. While assembling I learned that the cardboard can bend easily, especially at the antlers and tree branches. It took a couple tries so assembling took longer than expected. The deer are symmetrical but the antlers/tree branches make it not look so; it looks different from different points of view. Also I love the burnt cardboard smell, it's "Christmasy" which suits the theme in a way.