Digi Fab - Laser cut sculpture

Laser cut sculpture - Paper fish

I wanted to created a sculpture of a animal that was bisected into several parts, and each slice had a different scene inside depicting something about that animal's home or environment. I settled on a fish and decided to suspend it from the ceiling as if it were swimming. If this model were translated to a full sized gallery space I would either create one giant fish that guests could walk between the slices or I would create many smaller fish and guests could walk through the gallery as if they were in the ocean. 

   

 Beginning:

I started with original drawings and planning for the shapes

original drawings that I later scanned and converted to vector

Planning for the head and back tail designs.
 I was inspired by origami and kirigami.

More rough planning before I settled on a design for scanning.

vectored slices

I made sure everything I scanned was cleaned up in Photoshop before I transferred it to Illustrator and vectored it. There were a lot of anchor points but I deleted a lot of unnecessary ones. Once it was sent to the laser cutter each piece only took between 4 and 10 minutes to cut.

in the laser cut bed

Flat pieces before folding

flat pieces stacked up before folding

 I picked a gradation of blue/green 80 lb card stock to cut. I had to tape down each piece so the paper didn't flop around as the laser was cutting.

FINAL PRODUCT:

 

I folded each piece and used cotton thread and a sewing needle to attach the pieces to bamboo cooking skewers I got at the market. The box is made out of foam core from the dollar store.

Areas for improvement:

I wish I had made a bigger box so I could hang the pieces further apart. They are a bit cramped to me. After I hung the pieces, they turned around and got twisted up very easily because the paper was so light. In the future I might add small weights or additional strings.