Rick and Morty has always been one of my favorite shows, so I thought it would be a fun idea to make my project around that. My first step was to find a good image to use, and I decided that this iconic shot of Rick and Morty stepping out of the portal would be perfect.

First I traced my image with the pen tool. I started with the portal and text and then made my way to Rick and Morty. It was difficult to figure out how much detail should be added to the figures. I didn't want them to be blank but if I added too much detail it might not turn out.

Once I had my basic portal shape cut out I took my piece into the back room and started to choose from the different colors available. I found a couple of different greens that I thought could work, and I chose the one that I thought would be the most vibrant. I then mixed it up with a little bit of white sparkly epoxy and poured it into my piece. I then swirled it around a bit with a popsicle stick to give it the swirling motions that are typically in portals. Next, while it was drying I used a blowtorch to blow fire onto the tiny bubbles that were appearing in the epoxy. I did that for about 20 minutes, and then had to go to my next class, and hope that it dried well. In retrospect, I should have found a better time to pour it because I got a lot of little bubbles in it that I probably could have avoided.

Next, I went back into Adobe Illustrator and used the direct selection tool (the white arrow), and deleted anchor points that were holding different parts of Rick and Morty together. I colored the different pieces to the general color that I wanted them to be and went to find acrylic to match. I found most of the colors that I needed, but some of the colors like brown, and skin color weren't there, so I went to the store and bought a couple of the colors that I needed.

I then got each piece into a different file in Adobe Illustrator based on color and began the printing process. I sent the files to the Epilogue Engraver and changed it to cut the vectors for a 1/8 acrylic piece. I auto-focused the machine, lined it up, and printed it. Some of the prints took me a couple of tries because of various tiny mistakes, like forgetting to make one of the lines 0.001 in thick, or the engraver not going deep enough. In the end, I had to give up a little bit on some of the engravings because they do not show up on acrylic as much as I had envisioned, so I had to draw their faces on with a sharpie which does not help the look. Finally, once all of the pieces were cut out I used a special acrylic glue to connect all of my pieces together, and then to the portal.