My friend Elliott and I were tasked by Calum Lintott to build him a cool sign for his gigs as a backdrop. We both decided to make a lightbox style sign and thought it would be a good idea to put pixel tape behind it so we could control which letters lit up via DMX, This worked really well. We first started by tracing onto the wood the outline that we needed to cut out we did this by using a projector with the graphic he wanted. We then used a jigsaw to cut out the letters that came out really well! After this, we needed to build a frame for the top bit of ply we did this out of batten. After this, it was the task of finding an opaque sheet of something that we could put over the sign that only when the sign was plugged in and the tape was lit up would ‘Calum Lintott’ show through. I contacted a number of local company’s and found a place that was willing to let us try what would work best in their unit with some offcuts and they ended up giving us some that were the perfect size! We then attached this to the box and frame and moved onto the pixel tape. At this point, the decoder had just arrived and I needed to figure out how to wire it all up and find a profile that would work with Chamsys, I ended up having to create one. We then went to Blue Arron for another reason and found a speaker top hat that we mounted at the bottom so it could be put on a speaker stand and using some m10 thread created some rigging points with some nuts and G clamps, just to clarify this was in no way rated and would never be hung above anyone’s head the only time it would be hung was at the back of a stage about 1m of the ground with no one underneath it. I also found some 3 Pin XLR sockets that I drilled into the back for the DMX in and out. Here are a few pictures of the process.
And here is the final result!
