Of Course It's Acrylic! Over-Engraving with high DPI +Defocus Results

I’ve seen a couple of these Minecraft piggy banks around online and decided to make one from scratch in Illustrator inspired by a combination of all the things I liked from all the different ones. The art really was simple to do with circles, rectangles and rounded rectangles, all overlaid. Once happy then combining them using pathfinder to form the various shapes. If you’re afraid of making your own art, don’t be, it’s totally worth learning a vector program. Font is freely available online.

If you don’t want to take the time to make yours, there’s some really cool designs already available for sale. For me, I found it a fun project to tackle since it’s relatively easy to create and visualize the layers on this. Some of the designs you all share are way above what I can see in my head so I go 3D for those.

I won’t share any of the specific settings here since I can’t, but the look ended up being very nice for this piece. Normally I try to get engraving as clear and even as possible for painting. This one I think I’ll leave as is.

Materials are not PG but ones I’ve used many times. About 1/8" front piece with the back engraved, 1/4" middle section in two pieces and 1/8 back. Fastened with about 1/2" Chicago Screws.

Edit to say: the texture you see is not in the artwork, it’s all from the engraving.

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We are a Minecraft house. Cool design.

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Thank you! I may stabilize it more by adding a base but that would ruin the look. I’ll probably just add another middle section layer and use longer screws! MORE COINS

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Can you talk a little about why you’ve used high DPI and defocus? What’s the result that you were looking and how is it achieved. It’s hard to tell from the photos

The higher the line/dot count the less space between each layer so the laser overlaps. I just combined two commonly used techniques that some super users here shared. Acrylic doesn’t generally look this way when engraved. Anymore details and they’ll move my post! :shushing_face:

Perhaps this time it isn’t all about the base. :slight_smile:
Gotta have more cowbell! And ancient debris.

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Still confused, if you are running defocussed, then why do you need the high DPI (or vice-versa) What is the effect you are getting from your combo? What is the look in the acrylic that is special? Maybe it’s obvious and I’m not looking for the right thing :slight_smile:

Another using standard engraving and then painted, much more traditional! But this was basic acrylic paint and brush that I can never get a good opaque coat on when held up to light. So I took advice from @kittski and I’m waiting on some quality spray paints to arrive.

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It looks aged. Roasted. That’s not at all how a defocused alone would look. This is clear cast acrylic, and after being thoroughly cleaned to remove anything loose.

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OK, the “wrinkly” effect - that’s not an image engraved then, it is an artefact of the DPI/defocus?

Ah I see your confusion now. Yes that “texture” you see is not in the original artwork. Take a look at my post with the colored version. Those two use exactly the same artwork and exactly the same materials, just cut down the amount of screws I used on the charred one since literally two held the colored one together during assembly.

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What’s the ripple effect look like edge-lit? Hmmmm…?

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I don’t know! When I was considering a base, I thought it would be very cool to make it an edge lit piggy bank. But the bases I see on Amazon are relatively small, and I honestly don’t want to invest the time in recreating the wheel just for this special project.

I will test though, once I pickup a 4 pack of those bases! I’d imagine it would look pretty great with a dark orange light.

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This is very cool. Love the effect you made!

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What spray paint was suggested?

Here’s the topic

I went with Montana Black, by the way. $85 sounded like a lot to me, but it’s 12 colors and delivered by Amazon. At $7 a can that’s really not bad for quality paint. It arrives tomorrow!

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