On a A3 piece of paper, draw a series of 7cm x 7cm square boxes. Sketch many ideas as you can for possible pendant / key-chain ideas. Use the thumbnail sketching technique - Quick, dirty sketches that generate lots of ideas fast. This technique is used by designers, architects and engineers in the 'real world'.
The need not be of good quality drawing...just good ideas! Experiment, think, be creative... Think of interesting design ideas, or visual layouts, not just copies of 400 different pokemon, please.
You may use the internet here to research and find images, but the sketches should not be traced directly.
When you are drawing final copies, you may use the internet to find visual examples to work from, but avoid tracing designs unless they are very complex. Very complex designs may not laser-cut well in small scales, so be selective about your design choices!
Finally, Trace the designs you have drawn (just the lines, do not shade in areas for Raster Fill) with a fine-liner, and thoroughly erase the greylead lines.
Task: Design Conversion - Illustrator
Create a CAD drawing of your Pendant/Keychain in illustrator. Follow steps in the class demonstrations and Instructions below (not yet made). Search at home for additional Adobe Illustrator for Laser Cutting tutorials if you get stuck, or ask a friend. There are lots of web resources to help.
Steps:
Scan your final designs
Load into illustrator
Live Trace (remember to tick "Ignore White" and play with "threshold" to get a nice image
Clean up your lines
Set all Stroke lines to 0.01mm
Set all "Cut" lines to RGB blue colour 0, 0, 255
Set all "Engrave" lines to RGB red colour 0, 255, 0
Set all "Fill" areas to RBG black colour 0, 0 ,0
Save as Illustrator EPS.
Follow the general instructions HERE if you get stuck.