September 18, 2008

sitting elephant ice sculpture design

my sitting elephant ice sculpture was my first hands-on experience with a CNC machine.

my sitting elephant ice sculpture design

updated 4/13/23

The other day (meaning probably late summer 2008, when I originally wrote this), a friend sent over some CNC designs that needed to be converted into line art so they could be posted on a webpage. When I opened the first picture attached to the email, I was a little surprised, because it was the first design that I’d ever programmed for a cnc machine.

I’d done the design at Dave VanCamp’s Ice Visions studio in St. Louis in 2005. He had just finished setting up the machine that he’d gotten from Dean Carlson and hardly had run anything yet. I was in St. Louis because I was trying to keep working after we’d evacuated New Orleans because of Katrina. Dave had offered me some work and when I arrived, he was eager to show off his new set up. I was very interested in Dean’s I-Sculpt machine and because I’d seen the software before and had a lot of experience with similar vector artwork software, we decided that I should try to program in the elephant sculpture that Dave needed.

It didn’t go exactly as planned (somehow I accidentally programmed a deep horizontal cut near the base of the sculpture!), but eventually the design worked and we didn’t waste any ice on it. It was a valuable experience and I appreciated Dave having enough trust in me to let me near his new toy! Later, I got lots of experience with the I-Sculpt software, but I had to start somewhere.

I’ve redesigned the sculpture some, but it’s close to the original sketch (see the very rough sketch at the bottom). The redesign was based somewhat on a young Asian elephant photo that was performing a trick on command. I added the circus-style base platform along those lines, but of course, you could change it as you like.

above is the front (left) side template. You’ll notice a slight difference in that the back tusk is missing on the templates. It’s not helpful during carving and the back tusk should be directly behind the other tusk.

and here’s the back (right) side design. My sitting elephant ice sculpture is of a young Asian elephant. You can tell mostly by the ears.

finally, the back (right) side template

here’s the original rough sketch. (No idea why I have such a small picture here.)

how would I handle it on a CNC?

Today, as I update this post, I would hand carve this sculpture if I got a request. That’s because my Laguna IQ CNC machine has a smaller gantry than some other CNCs and it’s not really built to handle the full thickness ice block that you would want for the this sitting elephant ice sculpture.

In the future, if I got a larger CNC, I’d definitely consider sculpting most of it on the machine. Assuming it’s a flatbed type CNC, I’d have to flip the block during carving and make sure the ice is properly positioned after the flip, but those would be a minor considerations.

but wait, there's more!

Since you’re probably using this for a baby shower, you might be interested in the other baby shower/gender reveal designs on the site: a pacifier, a cartoonish stork and baby, and a flying stork and baby. And if you have any questions about my sitting elephant ice sculpture design, email me or comment below; comment on Instagram if it won’t let you here. If you would like to use this ice sculpture design or any other design on this site, please check the design usage guidelines. The design collection page lists designs on the site.