Obama Hope Lithophane by shannonbutts

Last crawled date: 3 years, 1 month ago

Using the Obama Hope image, I created a basic Lithophane. Lithophanes use thinner and thicker areas to create an image. When you hold the lithophane up to a light, you reveal the image and can see how varying thickness creates shadows and specific designs.
I used Photoshop to put the original poster image in gray scale, then a Lithophane generator to extrude the image (played around with z variables until it looked correct when lit from behind).
One print was done at 20% infill, which (as you can see) resulted in a plaid jacket effect when held up to the light. If you increase the infill to 40-50% the lithophane is more solid. You can see from the pictures that I experimented with the Obama Hope image, the original photo, and with various levels of extrusion and infill. Personally, I kinda like the plaid. :)
I think 3D printing is a great way to update the Lithophane making process and continue to transform popular images. Here, I wanted to emphasize the tactile elements of visual data - the lights and darks represented by the peaks and valleys. Similar to how sound waves allow us to "see" sound, I wanted to create a work where we could touch light and dark.