Laser Cut Oogie Boogie Dice (Nightmare Before Chirstmas)

Inspiration

I was looking for a new project to make while watching Nightmare Before Christmas and accidently paused on the scene where these dice appeared. I thought to myself that I could build these dice pretty quickly if I laser cut out all the pieces. I then designed and cut out all the pieces to form my final dice that I am very proud of.

I spent just over a day designing the box and creating the faces that are attached which give these dice their iconic look from the movie. I love the look of these dice with all the attention to detail that they have on the faces giving each side a unique look with a lot of visual interest. I was super happy with the final laser cut piece and I have had it sitting on my desk for the entire spooky season.

Software

Autodesk Fusion 360 - I used Fusion 360 to design the dice and make sure all the pieces would fit together the way I wanted

Autodesk AutoCAD - I used AutoCAD to turn the Fusion 360 drawings into vector files that could be laser cut

Material

Laser Cutter

1/4 in Plywood

Superglue

Paint

Process

I modeled the dice in Fusion 360 to get the shapes and the dimensions correct before sending the files to the laser cutter. I started by creating the main cube that would be used to attach all the face pieces to which would give it a strong foundation. This box design was quite simple using out jogged tabs that connect together to give a lot of extra surface area for the glue to bond to so it creates a tight seal. The faces I traced from movie stills and other Oogie Boogie dice reference images I found online. With this I was able to assemble the faces to the sides of the cube and create the final shape of the box.

I attached the laser cut files for 1/4" plywood

Dimensions of box are roughly 4" x 4"

I sent the files to the laser cutter and made sure that the pieces fit together the way that I intended them to. Once the pieces test fit together and fit well I moved onto the gluing stage.

I assembled the dice using super glue and lining up the edges with a square surface to make sure my dice was actually a cube. Most of the faces had a flat edge so they could be easily lined up with the rest of the piece before gluing.

To weather the dice I used heavy grit sand paper to knock down the edges and give the dice a more worn and used look than what it had before. After this I used a watered down paint to fill into the gaps of the wood and give a red color to he dice. I intentionally left the laser cut lines as part of the piece to show how it was made and how it was put together.

This was the final product that I built after laser cutting and assembling all the different pieces into this dice. I was very happy with the final product and it has a really nice weight and size. This makes it super fun to handle and toss around while being bored at my desk. I had a lot of fun designing and building this project and hope you will too if you choose to build this yourself.