Thuan Ha - Laser Cut Lamp Project

 

Concept: Since there were a lot of creative freedom for this project, I wanted to centered the theme of the lamp around something I personally enjoy, and so after some time I begin planning a design based on a game I play very often, Deep Rock Galactic. My overall idea was to have cutout of the rocks or minerals presented in the game, since this game is heavily based on mining. I had sixteen original cutout, four on each panel, but eventually I decided to go with only four designs, one on each panel. On the top, I would have a logo cutout of the game developers. Since the game art style is very geometric, my design should reflect the art style of the game.

Technique: I did the majority of my design using Adobe Illustrator this time around. I first created a lamp box of 5x5x7 inches and importing the dimension into Ai. Afterward, first thing I did was creating a cutout for the base and raise it up from the floor since the bottom cannot be flat. After that, I have all the images I needed and use Pen Tool to trace around the shape to create the silhouette. Certain shapes have to be altered in order to work as a cutout. After the overall shape is completed, I have a carving of the shape around the cutout to separate it more from the panel and give it a bit of depth. On the side, I have sort of a banner designer with just curves zigzagging. The logo cutout up top prove to be the most challenging since some parts are essentially floating if it was a cutout, which would be impossible to cut.

Material: For materials, I wanted it be simple wood textures. The specific type of wood I use in the render is Wood Quartered Chiffon. I originally wanted to simply use Rhino to render my image, but I also wanted to have different colors around the cutout which I cannot achieve inside Rhino, so I export my model to Blender and light and texture in there instead. I wanted the different rocks cutout to have a color that is identical to in game, and so I have those painted colors in the carving area which retaining the roughness and bump of the wood texture. Afterward, I did quick lighting setup and render inside Blender using Evee. Since I cannot render out curves that is supposed to be the engraving, I had to go into Photoshop and painted those on since there's no simple way to show the engraving.