Tartuffe - UVA Drama 2018
JD Stallings - Technical Director
 Tartuffe - by MoliéreRuth Caplin Theater - UVA Drama |  Tartuffe - Cross ConstructionThe 15' high cross was primarily made of pine and ended up weighing around 175lbs. |  Tartuffe - Cross ConstructionCross decorative details were either purchased and applied or CNC milled |
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 Tartuffe - Cross ConstructionCenterpiece and INRI sign were made from modified stock scenery pieces. |  Tartuffe - Cross ConstructionAfter construction, paints gilded the cross with gold foil. |  Tartuffe - Christ CorpusThe original 3D file was in .stl format and was bought online after approval from the designer. |
 Tartuffe - Christ CorpusI used Fusion 360 to resize and resample the 3D file to meet design specs. The mesh body originally contained over 200,000 facets. |  Tartuffe - Christ CorpusOne of the most challenging portions of this project was "slicing" the file into 2" thick, closed sections for transfer to the ShopBot software. |  Tartuffe - Christ CorpusWe used a 2.5" long, 1/4"diameter ball nose bit to do the finish pass for the relief carving of each layer in 2" XPS foam |
 Tartuffe - Christ CorpusMost of the sheets took between 4-6 hours of carving time on the CNC router. |  Tartuffe - Christ CorpusPieces were carefully freed from the sheet with a razor, by hand. |  Tartuffe - Christ CorpusPuzzling together and applying the contact adhesive (3M "Green Glue") |
 Tartuffe - Christ CorpusDetail of hand/arm assembly |  Tartuffe - Christ CorpusStarting to come together... |  Tartuffe - Christ CorpusAll seven layers of the main body assembled. Seams were worked by hand to finish what the ShopBot couldn't. |
 Tartuffe - Christ CorpusFully assembled on paint frame |  Tartuffe - Christ CorpusInitial coat of Jaxsan/paint mixture to smooth out imperfections in the foam |  Tartuffe - CrucifixFlying the unit after the corpus was bolted to the cross. |
 Tartuffe - CrucifixCrucifix in place under show lighting |  Tartuffe - Production PhotoClimactic Scene with Crucifix Hovering Above |
Though this set contained a number of additional elements, the centerpiece was a gilded, larger-than-life crucifix with a realistic corpus, which the director and designer wished to loom over the stage in disapproval of the hypocritical action happening below. With a very short amount of time to decide how to accomplish this, we quickly exhausted all other options (buy, rent, borrow) due to availability, budget, and time. In the end, we decided to carve the corpus in layers using our ShopBot CNC router. This involved a lot of 3D software manipulation of the original file, followed by CNC carving, assembly, and final hand carving before handing the figure off to paint. This was my first experience using the CNC router for this sort of 3D relief carving, so I was very pleased when the final result turned out as well as it did.