In a stroke of pure genius, Jack Chalkley decided the intricate pattern he’d chosen for his pumpkin was too complicated for his limited carving skills. So he converted his design into vector art in Illustrator, fed the results into his laser-cutting machine, and plunked his pumpkin down on the cutting bed.
The results are most certainly impressive, and Jack even went so far as to specify multiple depths in his design to produce varying levels of glow on his jack-o’-lantern. The process also only took about 20 minutes, but the sound of the fume extractor and the smell of burning pumpkin flesh apparently didn’t have the same charm as carving one by hand. So next year Jack’s decided to keep it traditional, even though I’m sure we’ll see plenty of laser cutting pumpkin services offered next season as a result of his trail-blazing experiment. [Jack Chalkley via Make]