I love the idea of 3D wall art and I always feel a personal connection to ocean. Every time I go near ocean water I feel very relaxed and touched and amazed. So I wanted to make a 3D layered art of paper that resembles the top-down view of the ocean layers. And then I also wanted to add elements of discovery and surprise through revealing “sea creatures” through sliding the different layers in certain directions.
I used the pen tool in Figma and used the different layers to mock up how it would look. I was also able to make sense of it in figma as I do cut-out shapes of a mermaid, the jellyfish, and the island on different layers. They serve as very clear hints of how I should make it in the physical form. As you can see I dragged the different layers in figma to reveal the objects.
Then I imported everything into Illustrator to laser cut using bristol boards. I cut each of the layers one by one on the layer machine. After that, I painted each of them with acrylic paint. And then assembled them and added frames on four sides to make sure the art stays intact. Then I opened slits on 3 sides where the interaction will happen and created paper handles and cut out shapes that allow it to stop in the middle.
You could put it up as a simple piece of wall art, but you can also slide the different layers to uncover some surprises!
