The other day my son really wanted to make something on the Glowforge, but it was about his bedtime. His sister was in the bathtub so he only had a few minutes until he had to shower, so I asked what he wanted to make—had to be something quick. He wanted a Triforce from Legend of Zelda so I quickly threw together some triangles in Illustrator. I thought some dimension would be sweet so I added some gradients to make them look cooler and we decided to print a couple extra to give away to random people we know like the games.
I share this because when we went to upload I got a warning from Glowforge that it doesn’t work with vector gradients (yet! said they were working on it). I didn’t think to convert them to raster, so instead I turned it into a quick half-tone dot pattern. They didn’t exactly turn out as I was hoping, but they’re small enough that from a distance it has the same kind of dimensional effect.
He loved them and they were done in a matter of minutes. Made his night.
Next day I went to leave for work to find he’d laid-out some of our creations on the table. I call it the Triforce of Geekdom:
My kids are all loving the things that you have been making.
They have very similar tastes.
I can’t wait till I am Geeking out with the kids and the Glowforge.
Nice! I’m going to engrave something geeky myself tonight. A 3-hour engrave (which I’ll be happy to show when it’s done). Funny part is, I don’t even know why I’m doing it. Started out as a material test, turned into “something I want to do.” When I showed my wife the design she said “So you know you’re going to have to make quite a few of those if you want to keep one for yourself.” I said “But I don’t even have any reason I’m making it, really.” She said “Because you can. Is there a better reason?”
I’d love to know more about the pieces to the left and the right. They’re beautiful! Do you have threads on those?
3-hour geeky engrave?! I can’t WAIT to see that! I’ve been afraid to venture beyond anything that takes me more than 20min or so, just because there’s so many things I want to do and so little time to do it.
And I TOTALLY understand the “I don’t even have a reason… I just want to because I can” thing. Something about this machine makes it so easy to get an idea in your head and you suddenly have GOT to try it!
About the pieces—You’re talking the Hylian Shield (from Legend of Zelda) and the rose (from Beauty & the Beast)? They came from our family Glowforge Party the day after it arrived on my porch (which I now see others have already pointed out—thanks guys!). We were just trying to make random stuff quick so my brother found an SVG of the shield he wanted online, and my sister-in-law had a picture of that flower on her phone (which I had to tweak some of the contrast in photoshop).
@jamesdhatch My wife and I went to dinner the other night, and she looked at me and said, “You’ve warped me…” She was literally looking at random stuff around the restaurant going “Oh, we could do that on our … could you do that?.. we can make that, right?” and wanting to come home and make all kinds of things we have absolutely no need for.
that’s awesome. hopefully that will happen with me, too. my wife already tells me i’ve ruined a lot of movie title/credits for her since i complain about bad typography whenever it shows up. now she can’t help but notice bad typography in credits. and it’s far more common than it should be with the cost of movies.
haha, it’s great to meet kindred souls online. i worked solo inhouse for far too long. the last 10 years i’ve been with a group of 8-10 designers in an architecture firm. granted, i’m solo in my office, but we collaborate a ton and all went to HOW back in May in Chicago. You feel so much more empowered when you have kindred souls to gang up with.
… could you do that?.. we can make that, right?” and wanting to come home and make all kinds of things we have absolutely no need for.
