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In the winnter and spring of 2016, I was
commissioned by Blizzard Entertainment in Irvine California to make this
Blizzard
artwork in stained glass. The result is the image
you see above. This artwork depicts the characters of Blizzard's
Hearthstone, an app game that was being unveiled just as this artwork
was being installed in the Irvine offices of team-Hearthstone. The
photo I took came out
poorly (as most photos of stained glass are wont to do), so the image
above is a color-corrected version of the image below.
 The people at
Blizzard were originally thinking of a window-mounted artwork but I
suggested a lightbox. That worked even better for them as the
meeting room where this artwork now hangs has no outside windows. They
wanted an 8-foot stained glass, but the actual size had to be a few
inches less since my work table is only 8 feet long. The lightbox, made
by Denver
Woodworking,
was almost 9 feet long, and was lit by super-bright LED strip lights
from Flexfire LEDs,
one 8-foot strip of LEDs along the top and one strip along the bottom.
<<< The image to the left shows the artwork
mounted to
the wall. I probably state the obvious, but this was a difficult
artwork to make.
I used five sizes of lead came; 5/32 3/16 1/4
5/16 and 3/8 inch cames. Some were rounded came, some were
flat came. Some were high-heart cames and some not so. By the time I
was 20% into the leading process, my hands hurt so bad at the end of
each workday that I could hardly touch things with my fingertips. I
started sleeping with neosporin-coated-fingers-inside-flimsy-gloves
every night so that my hands would be pain-free enough by morning to go
back to work. Later on, when even that was not helping enough, I began
using super-glue on the gouges in my fingertips. Although that helped
significantly, I was greatly relieved when I finally finished
the 6-week long construction phase.
The photos that follow are taken from update
photos I sent
to Blizzard all throughout the making of this Hearthstone stained glass
artwork. This first one >>> was the day I took
possession of the lightbox I
commissioned from Denver Woodworking. The back of the box is 3/4" wood
topped with white Melamine, a plastic that gives a satin, reflective,
formica-like surface. The strips of LEDs were mounted on aluminum rails
just inside the front frame of the lightbox all along the top and
bottom, thereby hidden but shining brightly on the melamine. A dimmer
unit was mounted along with the LED transformer inside the lightbox,
and ventilation holes were drilled and grilled-over at the time of
installation (thanks to the competent facilities people at Blizzard).
Although
the photo above shows how many of the lighter glasses appear white to a
camera, everything looks perfect to the human
eye, particularly
when such even lighting is achieved.
These next photos were taken during the construction phase of this
Blizzard artwork. They
also show how poorly the glasses
show up in the final photos of the window.
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