For my X-Tool project, I did a save the manatee's design of which I had to figure out shading. It wasn't until I actually lasered the metal that I realized the shading of the manatee was a bit much and made it look a little weird and very shiny.
For my sketch idea I first used a led pencil to create my design then went over it with a sharpie and used photoshop and illustrator to create the laser design.
For this project I didn't really do anything special the most I did was revise how to do shading with a led pencil and mess around with different shading areas to make it really stand out on the laser.