Illustrator and the Laser Cutter: Initial File Work
I decided for this post to show my journey so far more than just write about it as I have gone through many iterations of my original idea.
Idea 1:
With almost no feedback to go off of from my original post, I figured that meant I could go with pretty much any idea I wanted. I decided to go with what seemed like to me, the hardest idea, which was something using gears. As I usually do, I opened up Photoshop and googled ideas to get my sketches started. My first idea from my last post looked like this…. not great….
I decided to make if more fun by editing the appearance and giving it something cooler than a square background, as it is a laser cutter and that would be very boring. This brought me to idea #2
Idea #2:
This Idea had a more ameba shaped plate which was more fun to me… but not fun enough…
Idea #3:
As you can see there was a big jump in ideas here. In between idea #2 and #3 there was a 2.5 where I decided the gears were boring and gave them new shapes. After that there was a sort of 2.75 where the back was simply a floral shape, which I decided I didn’t like at all. As you might notice I did forget to take photos of them but that is alright because I didn’t like them. Then I decided the ugly flower backplate was still too boring and didn’t speak to me at all. That lead me to go to my favorite trusty fallback design, a bunny. But then realized the bunny is too large for simply three gears. This brought me to (hopefully) my final design.
Idea #4: Final?
Ignoring the side bolts that will hopefully help raise the gears to turn easier, this is my (hopefully) final iteration for my design. I had to google images of functional gear designs because I realized mine were a bit off, so I pray that these actually fit together and turn at this point. Obviously these are not the actual colors, just a helpful way to see the full idea. When I laid it out for print in illustrator It had a ton of layers so I did not capture them all, I also left the lines a bit thicker just for ease of viewing as of right now.
The gray dots are where the pegs will go, I’m hoping that creating an indent will help them glue down. I have yet to figure out how to make the turning handle or the pegs themselves so any insight on that would be very helpful! I think it would be fun to print it maybe in an acrylic or something colorful but I have no idea how that would go.