This double sided sign for Cliff’s Meats — a meat cutting business — features two sculpted bull's heads. We will create the backboard using high density urethane (HDU) and the bull’s heads will be sculpted in epoxy.
After the initial design is done, the next step is to figure out just how the bull will look from the side.
With the design sorted we will use Illustrator to create the vectors we need. These are then imported into EnRoute. Note that the front view of the bulls’ head is only for reference — we won’t be creating a relief from this angle. The bull's profile will be used to cut eight 1" pieces of Precision Board HDU which we will screw together to make two heads.
The main body of the sign will be routed from 2" 30 lbs. Precision Board HDU. Since the sign measures 4' x 4' it can stand to be relatively deep. The horizontal boards will be cut from 1.5" Precision Board HDU and laminated on top. We will use our cartoon woodgrain bitmap texture for the woodgrain specifying a depth of .3". We will simply flip the resulting boards for the second side of the sign.
Because we flipped the boards for the second side we need to build the text reliefs as a separate item from the sign face. Once the text is made we will create a copy and then merge one copy to each side of the sign. This ensures that the front and back of the sign will fit together perfectly.
Since the heads will be covered with sculpting epoxy we will be able to use scraps to create the bulky nose and top of the head. Then we will use tinfoil to bulk out the nose a little more. If you look at the photo closely you can see Sarah in the background mixing the sculpting epoxy — having a second person mixing epoxy speeds up the sculpting process.
We won’t worry about details at this stage — we just want to rough out the bull’s head.
