Dave's name plaque was fun to create. I was stumped for a little while to come up with a witty idea. But then I thought about what Dave does for a living and why he is taking our workshop. Dave owns a MultiCam router - bigger than mine! He uses it to create fine cabinets and doors. I visualized Dave creating perfectly square doors and cabinets all day long - day in and day out. Then I thought about how he would learn that these machines are good for much more than that. They can make wiggly lines too! To prove it I would make him a door panel that was anything but straight! I didn't use a font to type his name. I instead quick drew it out in a cartoon style, then vectorized it in Illustrator.
I then imported the AI file into EnRoute and also imported a cartoon woodgrain bitmap (from my TEXTURE MAGIC collection of course). I used the drawing tool in EnRoute to trace each board to make the door.
The hinge vectors were made using these tools as well. After creating the reliefs for each board I added the textures. Each component was created separately then merged as a last step.
The MultiCam made quick work of creating an exact copy of the file I had just created in EnRoute.
There's two more name plaques to go...
-dan
