Fabrication Week 1: Holocron “Flashlight”

This inspiration is of course based of my  one of the prop ideas I’ve been kicking around in my mind for a  bit. Jedi and Sith Holocrons from Star Wars.

I worked a little backwards here– working on the box  design itself and going from there. A little weird but it spared me some grief! So first idea is to work with cardboard, and I haven’t physically built a box  since my package design class in  my undergrad over three years ago. So cardboard, Xacto knife, rulers, pencils, sharpie for more defined lines…

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So basic cube design, and straightforward…

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At least I had thought so! Cardboard isn’t particularly kind to folding, I  have learned. As they say here: Fail fast. The cardboard isn’t giving me the fold ability I desire. So I contemplated two options. I could cut out the squares and fill in their seams with hot glue to make the box, or keep it to being foldable and trade in my cardboard for some thick (but not too thick!) card stock.

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You’re probably wondering why that Mincecraft light is there– it’s a sort of reference as well as my light source. Working on a crunch, the parts needed to get what I wanted exactly would have taken too long!

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Once of my cuts go broken (yikes!) thankfully a little a tape before painting will fix that!

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First was a base coat of white acrylic to over over the pencil lines, then two coats metallic paint, two coats blue…

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…Make that three coats of the metallic!
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Getting it folded and gluing the plastic ‘windows’ onto the inside.

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One more coat to cover the tape to seal the sides, and since the box didn’t fit exactly to the light I had to do some last minute help.

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What I would have done better:

Honestly, I am lightly disappointed, perhaps it’s because I put myself to a higher standard on things, that I could have done something more nicer looking. With many constraints, I had to sacrifice some things in my vision. If I knew how to laser cut I would have jumped on that, or make time to 3D print the cube and paint it.  (It would have had more details obviously.) As well as take a stop to Canal for actually translucent blue plastic for the windows.

Perhaps I am being too hard on myself because for something that was done in less than three days, it’s pretty decent.

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