Clarissa Cruz-Duran: Week 10: Laser Deck Engraving

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Concept: 

When we were first presented the project, I thought of what I would do with a skateboard. I personally don't skate or know much about skating but my boyfriend does. I was inspired to create something he + I would like, as he hangs skateboards as decoration once he wears them out and I could do the same with something a little more like me. I chose to do a contour line drawing as that's an art style we both like. I've done sketches with him before with the same art style; the blue sketch in image 2 is from a birthday card I made. E + C are our intials and it was fun trying to figure out how to include a bit of each other in the board. 

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Techniques:

I finished the sketch in Illustrator and imported it into Rhino to start my project. I cleaned up extra lines by clicking through the lines that imported in until I only had what I wanted. I then assigned the contour lines to a vector layer. I created hatches  in between some of the curves in order to give the design more visual interest. For the Skateboard, I imported the file we were shared in order to size my design currently and assigned it to its own layer. For the 3D model, I exploded a copy of the skateboard curve in order to extrude the oval but with the edges at an angle. Once I moved the pieces to my desired height, I joined them once again. I then extruded and capped the skateboard. I made copies of the vector and raster layers and extruded them 0.05 so that I could assign them a material on keyshot. 

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Materials: 

I chose pinewood in keyshot again for my wood because it was the closest in color to the skateboard, I assigned a flat brown color to the vector lines because every time I tried to assign it a material, the material would change the skateboard due to their thin size. For the raster I used a darker "burnt" wood as, well that is the look I wanted my physical project to have. I didn't mess with the lighting in keyshot and it was rather simple to assign materials as it was a simple design. Originally I wanted to paint the areas I rastered but I decided to raster them instead because it kept the design simple. I think I would have regretted a color choice in the future. There was really no post processing necessary because unlike the lamp, the laser didn't burn through the wood. There were no pieces to pick up or buff off the skateboard.