Sarah Roberson: Laser Engrave

(Full Catan Board)

(Tiles in the middle)

Concept:

For my concept for the laser engrave, I decided to recreate the Settlers of Catan tiles with my own designs. This sticks with my theme of doing board games but allowed me the chance to be able to re-create the board using my own designs. 

I really had fun with this project because I got to create my own designs rather than use the originals. It also gave me the chance to explore using other softwares besides Rhino to come up with my designs.

Modeling Techniques:

The modeling for my designs were pretty straight forward. Because I wanted to draw my own designs, I created everything mostly in Adobe Illustrator. The only thing that I didn't create in Illustrator was the hexagons for the main shape of the pieces. I used this as a way to make them as precisely as I could because I eventually hope to make this into a full sized board.

I then imported the hexagons into Illustrator to draw on top. I used the brush tool to create the strokes and the overall design. I was really happy with the way everything turned out because everything was done by my own hand. Even the textual elements to each piece was my own handwriting.

Material Choices:

For the materials I ended up using for the actual engrave was a 12x12 sheet of plywood provided by a friend who had extra wood lying around his house. I used the 12x12 dimensions to center it on my canvas and then used an 8x10 square to scale the engraving to the appropriate size for the project requirements. I finished the piece by spraying a clear sealant over the whole thing. Before I sealed it, I painted on black, watered down acrylic paint to bring out some of my design which would be lost if it wasn't for the black coloration the paint gave it.

As stated before, I plan on making an actual working board so that we can play the board game on a custom board. This will be made by duplicating the designs onto more pieces and then using the same wood engrave and cut the pieces out.