Project 1 — Illustrator and the Laser Cutter
Brainstorming and Ideation
To start the brainstorming process, I began looking through the past student examples. I have always enjoyed camping and hiking and just being in the good ol’ outdoors. Another big area of interest of mine is video games, so I began thinking about how to incorporate either, or both, of these into my project.
One thing that immediately jumped into my mind while looking through different projects was a topographical map. The question now becomes, what area would the map cover?
I found multiple maps online from different Zelda games, which have always been some of my favorites.
The next idea I had, was to make something mechanical. The first idea I found was this sort of telescoping shutter, which immediately piqued my interest.
Another common idea I found in the mechanical vein, was gears. Again I think designing something mechanical like this would be a fun challenge.
I decided to draw out an idea similar to one I found online. Its not extremely detailed, but hopefully the idea is displayed well enough.
The last idea I had was to make a 3D object of some kind. I’ve found a bunch of these sorts of models online, though I can’t say I have much faith in my ability to produce something similar.
Perhaps a box would be a more realistic project for myself.
Initial Filework
After a bit of consideration, I decided to flesh out the idea of a topographic map. I first needed to figure out what the map would be of. I bounced between a few ideas and ultimately decided to map out Middle Earth, of Lord of the Rings fame, after I found this wonderful topographic map. Credit to u/t_dolstra on Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/lotr/comments/cmlts5/oc_i_made_a_modern_topographic_map_of_middle_earth/
As is typical for myself, I picked a pretty ambitious project. I started with the outline of the ocean and quickly realized this would take to long if I maintained the level of detail I was drawing. Not to mention I don’t have a great idea of the level of fidelity the laser could cut cleanly.
After this, I started the second layer. I stopped partway after realizing how long it would take to do the whole map at the rate I was going.
I then decided that I would first focus on the big landmasses, particularly the mountain ranges. I had to keep reminding myself to not get caught up in the details, especially since I was using a fan made topographic map of a fictional place.
I added the mountain range surrounding Mordor. Looking back, I almost certainly will have to clean things up for the laser cutter.
Added the Misty Mountains as well as the Lonely Mountain. This is where I am at currently. Going forward, I plan on working backwards from the most important details to lesser details and just continue adding elevations as time allows. I am also planning on simplifying some of the work I have already done. I originally had planned to add rivers and trails as engravings, but this has already gotten a bit out of hand so we will see how things work out.
Final Filework
I continued adding details as I felt necessary. Eventually I got to the following point.
In the end, I added every other elevation line from my reference image. I also added a compass and title in the ocean to use up a bit of the empty space. I was now happy with my design. I then split up the layers into boxes according to elevation.
Every box includes two elevation levels. My plan was to cut out each piece and on top of each piece, I would vector engrave the outline of the piece on top of it. That is why there is two elevation levels in each box. I then changed the size and color of each line appropriately. Once all the lines were properly formatted, I removed the guidelines and arranged all the pieces as best I could in a rectangle proportional to the size of the material. I then scaled all the pieces up together to use as much of the material as I could.
After double checking for any overlaps, the file was ready.
Final Assembly
When I picked up the parts, I was incredibly happy with how they turned out. In retrospect, I probably went a little overkill with the small pieces, but I was really impressed with how well the small pieces were cut out.
The engraving worked great and putting the whole thing together was quite enjoyable.
Everything turned out about as well as I hoped. Except one piece…
As you can see, this piece is not the same size as all of the other pieces. When I scaled all the pieces up, I must not have had this piece selected, though for the life of me I cannot figure out how I did it. This piece is right in the center of the canvas, so I don’t know how I selected every other piece except for this one. Luckily, its on the highest level and has no other pieces on top of it. Another thing I realized after getting the parts is that the compass part in the ocean has a scale on it. When making the illustrator file, it never crossed my mind to check the scale, it was just part of the graphic I found. This is also pretty minor as it is a fictional place so any scale is arbitrary anyways.
Despite these minor flaws, I am very happy with how it turned out. I wish I would have spent a bit more time on details that could’ve been engraved, like rivers and region names, but I wasn’t sure how long it would take for the lab to get the cuts done. Seeing how quickly they got it done, I definitely could have spent more time, but I also kind of like how simple it is in that regard.
