Erika Skaar: "BLAST" Laser Box Lamp

EDIT: Per the critique, I fixed the blur on the last picture to make it glow more and added a view of the top of the box lamp.

I also adjusted the ghosted view by tilting it back, bringing it forward, getting rid of the grid, and adding a material cut-box.

 Concept: 

I wanted to make something that I would have in my house, either on my desk or in my media room. I thought about material and esthetics first, and what shape would look good in my house. I had two designs, one was the Polygonal box with an Astrological theme, there other was a rectangular box with Godzilla. If I went the Astrology route I wanted to paint the box dark black, Godzilla would be more of an espresso stain. From this, I chose Godzilla's box theme and feel into a rabbit hole of a million options to choose for my design.

I love simple designs that "do" something and wanted to design the box as if it has an effect from the cut-out or patterns I put on it.

I was inspired by this little guy on where I should make cut-outs, and what effect I wanted the lamp to have. I decided that since my favorite part is Godzilla's blast, I would cut out his backplates, eyes, and a jagged blast beam on the front side of the box. I would also make the top have an open port so the light would shine out really only from the top and continue to feed into the "Blast" effect.

Thus the name for the box was born as well.

Process:

I started in MakerCase and built a wide, tall, skinny box at 8"w x 12"h x 4"d and I made the material thickness 1/4". I have the perfect spot on a shallow shelf in my office area that this box will fit nicely. I wanted it tall so the design and effect wouldn't be small and lost to the eye during the day. I also made it so that his glowing backplates and blast-beam would be more understood at night. 

I then started the design process in Illustrator since we have a good relationship. I found a clip from the newest Godzilla movie and used the pen tool to create a deep engraving line for the Godzilla figure on the front of the box. I continued to play with the depth of the lines and did my best to imagine what it would all look like finished. I wanted to make sure the design had support but didn't detract too much away so I added some rectangular engraving lines around the edges of all panels except the bottom. I made an inner cut for a center rectangle for the top so that light would shine out for the beam.

This is where I decided to add the vents on the side panels, to give the box more interest since those would be visible. I also decided that I would add blue paper to the inside to cover all the inner cuts so that the light spilling out would have a cool blue hue.

Even though the back would really never be seen, I decided to put a raster engraving underneath my initials to just be extra.

I also think I may have a total of three of these printed to give two away to family members who also love Godzilla. I thought that making sure that all visible sides add some form of detail would be nice for them.

I moved from Illustrator to Rhino and followed Professor Scott's instructions from class; Turned all the panels into CurveBooleans and clipped&rotated, rotated&clipped. I dropped a cube into my model and exported it into KeyShot to finish up the beautification process!

Materials: 

I plan on cutting this out of 1/4" pine underlayment, and to join everything together I will use Loctite super glue or titebond III wood glue (because I have it and love it). I will finish off and seal the lamp with a dark stain for both Godzilla's: front and back, and use a satin clear coat. I plan to line the interior with blue paper and fit a candelabra lamp socket at the bottom.