Jim DeLaere from Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, IL brings us this design from the 2018 Global Leadership Summit.
The 3d design:
To create the organic, flowing landscape, Jim used the Mesh Warp tool in Sketchup to create a solid shape of mountains. Next, he inserted vertical planes spaced 12 inches apart. There were many adjustments to the mesh to get the desired look.
Using the Intersect Faces tool, he drew a line around the parts of the model where the mesh intersected with the veetical planes. With some cleanup, all that was left was the individual layers of the set.
The construction:
Once the layers were finalized, each one was laid out with 1″ 4×8 sheets of foam, glued together with hot glue. By using a common technique in painting, a grid was transferred from the drawing to the foam, allowing the gentle curves to be drawn and then cut out.
After each layer was cut, they were raised into place and secured with a 2×4 supported by a piece of 1/2″ conduit.
The front Gala was lowered 8 inches to allow four levels of 2-inch steps to be installed. These were cut out in a similar method to the foam, with a grid transferred to the sheet of MDF and then cut with a jigsaw.
To get the 2-inch height, a 2×4 was laid flat and the 1/2″ MDF placed on top. The rise was finished with a 1/32″ thick sheet of plastic ripped into 2″ strips and tacked to the face.
The set was painted the color Silver Bullet with a matte finish Behr paint. The stage was painted with colors from the same color family, from Asphalt gray furthest upstage to Flannel Gray on the Gala in a satin finish to add a slight reflection from the lights.
The majority of the set was lit with strips of pixel-mapped LED tape attached to the backside of each layer. The strips were attached with 3/4″ wire nails. Eighty 16-foot lengths were used to light the entire set.
I want to make this design, how can I do it?