Notebook
I really wanted to make something for my sister, so I decided to make a notebook for her! She loves the movie The Little Mermaid, so I did a spin on that movie. After looking at some student examples, I got the idea to include a famous quote from the movie. "Under the Sea" seemed to be rather fitting, and from there I designed the rest off of the scene from that movie containing the song the quote refers to. I really liked Ms. Proctor's example because she exposed a lot of the paper beneath the notebook cover, so to incorporate that into my design I decided to cut out lots of circles to resemble bubbles. Once I made my design in Illustrator, I went down and printed it
Related Images
The Final Product
Water bottle
This water bottle was really fun. My initial idea for it was to make something funny that people could laugh at, and also to have it reflect upon myself and my personality. So I decided to make a water bottle full of chickens because why not? It was hilarious to pick and choose which cartoon chickens were the lucky ones and got to be on my water bottle. However it was also rather difficult because for each chicken I had to format it correctly to Illustrator, meaning I had to image trace, delete all white, size it, and locate it where I wanted it. It was very time consuming. But I think the crowning glory of the water bottle is the text. I put two separate text bubbles on Illustrator, each a different size. All this had to be within a guiding rectangle I created that was 5 by 8.292 inches long. I found out later that I did not accurately measure the diameter of the circle, so my water bottle ended up with a big blank spot on it. After I finished my design and deleted the guiding rectangle, I took it down to the laser with my flash drive. I uploaded it to the UCP software from Illustrator, and also had to install the rotary jig. It was easy(I just had to take out the under layer and insert the jig in its place). And then, I printed!
Related Images
The Final Product
3D Put-Together Object
To make my 3D put-together object, I had to explore the website Thingiverse for the first time. It took a little bit to figure out what to search for, but once I go the hang of it I found a really cool blueprint. I uploaded that to Illustrator, and thankfully did not have to tweak it a lot (I would have had to manually adjust each of the holes in the in design if they did not measure to be the length of material I was using (cardboard), but thankfully the measurements matched up) with the exception of changing all the lines to 0.0001 pt and making them red. After that, I was basically done. All that was left was to do the now common procedure of the UCP software and then just merely waiting. However, all the was easy. What was hard was physically putting together my now printed cardboard cat. The cardboard was slightly too large to fit into the holes prescribed to them, but with effort and force I managed to make everything fit nice and snug. Ultimately, this project was a success.
Related Images
The Final Product
What I learned
I learned a lot in this rotation. I had previously learned all the basics of the laser machine, and this rotation really cemented my knowledge on it (especially on my knowledge on how to place my image on the UCP software so it actually prints onto the material - click to pointer!). What was cool to learn though was all the specifics of it. I learned that there are so many different settings (that sadly there was not enough time in the class to expose me to them fully) that I learned a person could change and tweak on both Illustrator and the UCP software. I also learned how to change the settings on the UCP software (and also how to adjust my Illustrator files) to accommodate for the various types of materials I was using in the laser. One of the most exciting things I have to say though was learning how to use the rotary jig. It was fascinating! And so simple too! All I had to do was take out the under layer and click in the rotary jig. So easy! Overall, this rotation, which was suppose to be the worst and hardest of them all, was very fun and not overly stressful.