3D Lion King Poster Light Box

After beginning another light box project, my mind started thinking through other possible movie scenes that could be presented in a similar way. A friend of mine doesn't watch a huge amount of movies, but the Lion King is one of her all-time favourites. The old movie posters depict Simba standing on Pride Rock in front of a sunset. This is not only a beautiful image, but also fairly simple to reproduce.

I drew up the design on the computer first to work out how I was going to change the aspect ratio from a poster to a square. Once I was happy it was time to get the light box working.

I used the same shadow box frame as the other light box I was working on. It's a 25x25cm Sannahed frame from Ikea. I removed all the inserts because I wanted to be able to hide the electronics behind the front edge of the frame.

I installed this 3V LED light panel and ran the wires inside the front edge to make sure they were out of view when the light box was finished.

The light panel is wired to a switch on the side of the frame and connected to a battery pack of 2 AA batteries. The battery pack and the wiring for the switch are hidden behind Pride Rock.

The different colours of the background were cut out of paper of different colours. I had to try to match the colours as close as I could with the coloured paper I could find. The different layers were then glued to packing foam to separate them with consistent space and to fill out the gap between Simba and the background.

Once all the parts had been cut out and the electronics sorted it was time to put it all together!

The design works great as frame art even when the light is off. But when it's dark, turn the light on to make it really glow like a sunset! The silhouette design from the movie poster results in a striking piece of artwork that was not too hard to make. Now to decide which movie scene to make next...