Post-Modern Illuminated Text

This morning I designed a surprise for my daughter.  It is an illuminated text version of the first page of a hypothetical storybook all about her.  The big smudge in the center is where I blocked out her name.  🙂  The drawing is roughly 20-inches wide and 28-inches tall. The drawing took more than 8-hours and was my first concerted attempt to draw something using servo powered pen lifts.

It reads:

Chapter One

ONCE upon a time … a long, long time ago in land far, far away there lived a very clever little girl named [_____] who had a very rare and special talent.

She was … a tinkerer.

The PlotterBot started drawing at about 2pm today and finished a little after 10pm.  By the time she went to bed, the robot had only completed the border.  I can’t wait to give it to her!

I designed the picture in Inkscape using a vector graphic of a cool border, a knight fighting a dragon, a combination of several fonts, and some touches of my own.  Once done I had to do a small amount of fiddling with Inkscape to make the file more “draw-able,” a process I will document in the next few days.