Punch it!: wooden Star Wars art with animated lights and sound.
“Punch it!”, Daniel D. Brown, 2019, handmade wooden multimedia intarsia artwork based on Star Wars.
See more video of lights & sound here
Design & Construction
This piece depicting Chewbacca and Han Solo in the Millennium Falcon was intitially designed using Adobe Illustrator, based on a still frame from the movie. It was built over the course of 7 weeks from ~190 hand-cut (scroll sawed) pieces of wood from over 20 different species, most of it reclaimed. The star trails were also scrollsawed and filled with resin.
The wood
Most of the wood was reclaimed by me from various sources and includes: padauk, purpleheart, bloodwood, elm, spalted maple, sycamore, ebony, wenge, cherry, white oak, sapele, mahogany, pine, luaun ply, bamboo, unknown pallet & scrap wood. Chewie is made from a 1970s S. African stinkwood chair from my mother-in-law, a native South African. Han’s sleeve was curly maple given by the master woodworker Paul Jasper (@copper_pig_fine_woodworking). Some of the walnut was from local woodworker Matthew Plazek (@mpi_woodworking). Some of the exotics were a gift from guitar builder Russel Pfohl (@rapfohl). The rest came from Ocooch Harwoods and Rockler.
Electronics
Although the original plan was much simpler, over the course of the project I ended up adding an Adafruit soundboard with 6 scores that play through 1 button (the small white one), and 10 movie dialogue clips that play through another (the left thruster stick). A rebel insignia button on the right of the frame powers the sound. Toward the end of the project, I decided to add radiating Adafruit DotStar LED strips controlled by three different programs I coded on an Arduino Uno, which can be switched by moving Han’s dice (made in a previous project), which contain an embedded magnet. The top of the frame has 2 hidden magnetic switches embedded within it. The light power is currently controlled by telling my phone “Hey Siri, punch it!” Or “Exit hyperspace”.
Note: this piece, like all of my derivative art, is not for sale. I don’t think I could part with it anyway. The entire process was documented in well over 200 Instagram stories, now highlighted on my profile in 3 parts. (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)
I have to give HUGE heartfelt thanks to the many many people constantly offering encouragement and advice on Instagram. You’re seriously the only reason I posted all the build details. Of course, I’d like to thank George Lucas and the countless artists of all types who’ve made Star Wars such a fun Universe.
