I wanted to continue my use of these fabrication tools to make fun, organically or not-so-rigidly shaped things. I've also been listening to a lot of music lately and ultimately decided that would influence this project. I made a song cover/ album cover for one of my favorite artists, King Krule. The cover is specifically for the song Half Man Half Shark off of his album "The Ooz"
The music video if you want to listen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XzXLzA2Hrc
Going into this, I knew that I hadn't used the laser cutter before and I'm not well versed in Adobe Illustrator so I wanted to keep my scope pretty mild. I decided that I would sketch my design in Procreate on my iPad then I would trace it in Adobe Illustrator for the laser cutter. This was extremely hard.
My design had a log of charm from how hand-drawn it was and not all of that translated into the vector version of that. So if I could do this project again, I'd definitely use a different technique to get my design down exactly. I'd also figure out how to combine shapes. I originally wanted the border outlines to connect to the inner shapes, but another facet of the design was that the placement of each element looked better when it seemed like it was just tossed together.
Overall, I definitely think I should've put more time into this project, but when I make it again and as I practice more with the laser cutter I'll make the improvements I mentioned above but I'll also try to spray paint each layer.
I found some Adobe Illustrator tutorials:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkItU4dgjBw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxywVI_PuQo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzilL2zvldo
And I also got the idea to make a layered laser cut piece from these youtube videos and some searches on Etsy for "layered laser cut files":