Tutor feeback 24.11

Todays COP tutor meeting was mainly focused on the Practical response. I'd gotten a bit carried away with character research and development, plus distracted and overexcited about laser cutting  that I've forgotten to document it. I also felt it would be better to get the point where the development and production for my first my Luchador character was complete and then make a presentation document about it all, rather than have lots of little posts with not much on there.

4-9pm is free-for-all time on the laser cutter, so after the induction yesterday, i set about making the vector version of my fir LuchaGod mini mask and dashing back down to the wood workshop to test out.

Mini Mask- On screen cutting prep. Went with mixture of halftones and
grayscale just to see how the laser dealt with it.

The test runs came out better than i could've imagined, just as it appeared on screen.crazy! The grey tones aswell, leaving me with dilemma about whether to ditch the halftones or not. I  do like how the dots come out, i have taken to using them a lot in my work - but this would purely be an aesthetic choice, practically speaking they're not required to emulate tone, as the laser can handle shades of grey.

This baby version was only a few cm in diameter, and got a bit toasted whilst being cut out around the edge. Just an example of the issues that can occur, but ti think this was largely down its small size and the fact that it had quite a lot of detail on it. I should have probably paused the machine when it started to flame as well, but that's all part of the learning process!

On showing them to Fred and explaining that i'd cut a hole out one of them so it could be used as a key ring, he said; "i kinda prefer it without the hole (i agreed).Why have you made a key ring..?"

He made a bloody good point - why had i made a key ring?! No one buys key-rings anymore do they?They're mostly lame! Kids aren't grown up enough to own keys, and grown ups aren't going to be interested in owning a novelty key-ring, as far as i can tell. If I'm honest, it was purely down tio being the first thing that came to mind when i found out we had a machine that could do wood laser cutting and engraving. 

It did cause me to step back and think about my product range a bit more - even though I'm vary of not slapping my designs onto every bit of tat going, in a way wrestling mercy (especially from my era) was exactly that. Hulk Hogan lunch boxes, duvet covers, clocks, disposable paper party tablecloth - you name it.

That said, I'm not going to make a lunch boxes and paper tablecloth - aside from the set of A3 prints and postcard packs, which were decided on i needed to have a rethink of what other items could accompany them and that would appeal to a very wide age bracket. I will also try and come up with a way of incorporating a laser etched item into it as well, even if it isn't a stand alone item (special edition apparel swing tag comes to mind). Or if it was to be a stand alone item then maybe as well as the a3 paper prints, i could make something a bit more 'limited edition', like A3 laser etched 'posters'. Having seen examples of this a good while back, they were the inspiration behind actually investigate laser cutting in the first place and seeing what i could do with the technology.