Project Lament II - Hellusion (2007)

    This is my first ever computer modification where I designed and built the entire case from scratch, this follow up mod took me over a year to create.  The sequel to my HellRaiser Cenobite PC, my idea came from an 'Art Bank' that I had a long time ago with an airplane floating in it, the following picture shows the cube version of the same bank... which actually illustrates things better.  

    I obsessed over how to build it and make everything fit for months before I ever set pencil to paper, I wanted to keep it as small as possible and still hide a monitor and all the other computer bits inside.  The original pencil sketch for the mod design is shown below, the placement of some parts and final size differ but the finished work still looks almost identical to the original idea sketch.

    The pencil sketch as a design method worked fine for my last mod, but intelligently placing parts inside a mannequin torso is simple compared to a ground up build where precision is required.  Enter Google SketchUp, it took twenty minutes to learn it well enough to whip up the 3D design renders shown below, it also helped me get the size down to eight inches cubed... awesome software.

    I will skip going into any greater detail concerning the creation of this computer since there is a six page work log covering the start to finish build and there's also a three minute video for those who don't care to read about it...

    All four sides of the finished sculpture are shown below.

    Here's a five minute video which showcases some of the features and fine details of the Hellusion mod and covers the stuff that just doesn't come across as well in pictures.  It concludes with a brief explanation of the illusion and a demonstration of the "tool free" case removal and reassembly.

    Next up is a shot of the monitor side of the sculpture which houses the 6" TFT LCD with a red Matrix Orbital 2x16 character VFD display above it, the remote control for the internal lighting can also be seen in the lower right of the picture.

    A close up of the 6" LCD follows... at 640x480 resolution it does a great job as a secondary monitor that can run totally independent, meaning it can be doing its' own thing while something else is being done on the primary display monitor.

    A close up of the magic trick, it takes a keen eye to find the dividing lines within the illusion... this was my intent and if it hadn't worked the whole idea would have been scrapped.  This project was built from the inside out, the illusion was made first and everything else was just built around the innermost object, the HellRaiser box.

    If you are wondering what type of hardware resides under the hood of the Hellusion mod then this following list is for you.

    And finally the front page money shot of the finished computer mod up and running, hard to believe but it looks even better in person.