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VINYL CUT STICKERS

The first thing I started to work on was to draw some designs for vinyl cut stickers. I did so on my own art program and drew them first in raster format, as that is what I am accustomed to from digital art experience. I wanted to make two stickers, because I wanted to try one where the colors were layered, and another where the background was "blank" or cut out. I have a fascination with bleak, decaying industrial and urban areas and they are often the main subject of my photography. So I decided to make one sticker based off of that.

The other sticker I made is an outline of a dog with a simplistic skeleton inside, I have a lot of experience in drawing animals and also have an interest in biology, and thought that it'd be a cool way to layer two solid colors on top of each other.

GROUP PROJECTS

For the letter vinyl cut sticker, we did the R. And for the thickness test ruler, I ended up making two, because the first set of values (ranging from 3.5mm to 4.8mm) were all too loose.

It appeared that 3.4mm was the most accurate fit.

LASER CUT PRESS-FIT KIT

As for the lasercut press fit kit, I initially wanted to make a boat, as I had the idea to set it upon a stand that had cut out wave patterns in front of it to give it the illusion of being on water. While looking up examples of similar projects online however, I saw a (rough around the edges) duck shape, and I thought that making more natural shapes would prove more interesting than the straighter edges of a boat. So I decided to make a swan of some sort, using papercraft swans as a reference for the shapes I would need.

In my experience, the most difficult part was actually figuring out what I wanted to do and how to execute it. Once I had that in mind, the process sped up dramatically, though Fusion was still not without its challenges, especially for someone like me who is used to drawing in a less restrictive, raster environment. Using lightburn and the laser cutter itself actually proved to be the most straight forward part, and I only needed to cut once, as my test cut turned out successful right off the bat.

FINISHED ASSEMBLY