This is a curved acrylic bonestand for 'Not in My Nature', inspired by one of the spreads. I laser cut and engraved the stand using Illustrator and Rhino 8, painted the engraved lines, bent the acrylic using a heat tool, and glued the pieces together. 

Bonestand. Acrylic, acrylic paint, glue. 16"x16". 

The form was based on one of the panel structure of this spread from the comic.

I took the ink for just the bones, made a die cut outline in Procreate, and exported both to Illustrator to vectorize those outlines as a full shape.

I cut out two paper versions of the bone stand with different bottoms, intended to be finally displayed on thick cardboard. They were exactly large enough for a 6x9 book to be spread out on it’s own. There was a arc for support for this paper bone stand. I curled the outer bones like real bones. During critique for packaging design, acrylic was mentioned.

Acrylic was acquired.  At MICA, there are fabrication studios with laser cutters. I had to do this.

The thick acrylic let me keep the silhouette without sacrificing stability- I could have holes! I then went through eight levels of laser file hell. No joke, six individual techs helped me. That vector from earlier? Not a closed shape. The holes of those bones at the ends? Didn’t match up. The back of the stand? How tall did it have to be for the angle of the spine to match up? I had a lot of help from studio techs who adjusted the file in Rhino 8, the preferred laser file maker.

Here's a screenshot of what the Rhino file looked like before it went through the laser bed. 

I adjusted the back for the material, which now required two sheets of acrylic and became an acrylic bender with a tool that I had to teach myself how to use.

Each sheet took an hour to print because of those raster files, and took just as long to peel the sticker off of the acrylic from all that detail. Once it was clean, you could barely see those bone lines on a white background. 

When a 6x9 book is open, it fits on the stand, but you can’t see the display. I made this stand at the exact size to hold a 12x9 piece of paper. I also cracked one of the bones in the front.

When the book is open, the bones are covered. When the bones are covered, they cannot be curved. 

Back to the drawing board. 

This time, I mean business. 

I bought another acrylic sheet and got much assistance in scaling the stand up by 30%. The bone stand would almost be as big as the 16x18 sheet of acrylic. The back had to be scaled up and cropped to fit, which worked out because the two spines didn’t match up perfectly anyway.

I had enough room on the spine’s old sheet for the new spine, and more than enough room to do something devious. There was a tiny tester piece for the original bone stand. A tester that screamed for something more. A tester piece that would become earrings! 

mmm... good soup

Back to the stand. The heat tool broke since the last time I used it, and it‘s the only one on campus. The sheer panic in my eyes before Tim (Tech #7) fixed it… impalpable. Here’s the pieces together, curved, bent, and unglued. Originally the taller part of the spine (back) was going to be seen from the side, but for stability, I switched the two. I curved the bones that could be seen with the comic fully open.

Vision achieved. 

Toodles!