New Years, New PumLantern Art

Well, we've taken a few days off to enjoy some turkey and presents, and we've come back to the office to keep chugging away... But it's time for another break! New Year's is within spitting distance, and we'll be closed for New Years Day (that, of course, would be Friday, January 1st). As always, we'll resume processing/shipping orders and replying to any correspondence the following Monday. We hope everyone has had a great year and that 2010 will be even better.

On a different note, we want to roll out some new artwork for the PumLantern. Instead of doing all the work ourselves, though, we want some input from you. What theme do you want to see on your lantern shells? Being the graphic designer dude, there are few things I need to keep in mind when designing new artwork:

• Detail: As impressive as our laser engraver is, it can only cut so small before destroying very fine segments. Additionally, we want the artwork to be somewhat sturdy, so we can't have a whole bunch of itsy-bitsy elements that might break off.
• Stencil: We're cutting shapes out of a single piece of material - there isn't any glue or wire to keep pieces in their spot. All elements need to be attached to the wall of the lantern, and you can't have any free-floating islands/shapes-within-shapes.
• Subject matter: We like to release our PumLantern designs through a creative commons license, and we don't like being sued. All our designs have to be original (or build on other public domain designs), and cannot infringe on any copyrighted materials.

So what would you like to see on your lantern? Cute critters? Aliens? Electronic circuitry equations? Flaming tacos? If you want to share your ideas, feel free to give me a shout: chris [at] solarbotics [dot] com . Over the next few weels we'll be sure to follow up the designs that are being frequently requested. But only if they can meet the above design requirements. Feel free to even draw up some rough concepts and send them over - just remember that the simple designs are generally better. Take a look at the existing PumLantern designs or the shell source files if you need something to reference to.