Testify and a Noob process

[eyepeace]

So I did another poster... (I've got some questions for you fine folks at the end)

The original concept pencils and digital files:




This is how it ended up:

and the variant:


some more shots...


Yep that's duct tape. I ran out of clear packing tape.
I actually like the duct tape better even though there is a risk with the gumminess.
It seems to be alot easier to take off - as long as you don't let it sit too long.


So overall this one kind of turned into a nightmare.
I wasn't able to start printing until Thursday and they needed to be to the promoter by Monday. Not much wiggle room seeing as how I had to ship them out as well.

Somehow I managed to throw down all kinds of stupid stunts to make it even more difficult. I wish now I had more pictures to show for the stupidity but I was in such a rush I didn't think of it.

Here are a few of the stupids...

Stupid#1:
I was planning on doing a split fountain/ flood - whatever you call it - in my original concepts and doing it 2-up. I was going to pull the ink sideways on the screen. But duh - never thought to measure my longest squeegee... it isn't big enough to do that in one pull, and it's too late to order one.

Stupid#2:
I hadn't printed this size before and I was thinking they fit fine in my 24x31 screens because I live in LaLaLand most of the time. They only leave about an inch and a half of run-off space at the ends of the print.

As you can see that creates a mighty fine mess and left me with alot of messy prints at the bottom.

Stupid #3 (my favorite):
I placed my film on the screen flipped the wrong way. I burned it, washed it out, dried it, and even placed it in the clamps all ready to go without noticing it was backwards. DOH! At least I didn't print it. This sucked big time. I lost major time because of this one.

Oh and come to find out, duct tape is not so good of a UV blocker.

Here are a couple of questions I have though:

#1. I print my films on accumark 13x19 film with accu ink with my epson 1400.
With my ManMan poster I printed my seps from illustrator. Worked great.
This time I printed out my channels from photoshop and they kept printing too big.
It was wierd - they kept seeming to blow up slightly even though I kept it at 100%. Nothing seemed to help. I wasted alot of film on this and that's not cheap.
Anyone have any idea what might have gone wrong?
Next time I'll probably just save out tiffs and line it all up in illustrator. I always feel like I have more control in Illustrator anyway.

#2. Though this was not going well I still wanted to experiment. I wanted to add a metallic ink to the blue. I'm not really sure how this is done.
I ordered some Jacquard Pearl-Ex Pigments and threw the contents of one of those little jars of pearl white into the blue with a couple of tablespoons of extender base.
Here's the photo so you can see how much ink I had mixed up...

I figured it would look cool. It didn't seem to do a damn thing. I did the same thing to the black but with some gold... nothing. Is this just the wrong way to do it or do I have to use way more than this?

[squeegeethree]

Sounds like you had scale to fit media or some such thing clicked.

[Andymac]

and you need piles of pearl to do anything/show.

get some powder.

Looks like you learned a lot. Keep going. Poster # 15 is going to be fucking awsome!

[eyepeace]

Thanks!

Any idea where to buy that powder in bigger quantities than those tiny jars I bought?

And I don't think it was the fit to paper option. It was actually printing it beyond the paper so stuff was getting cut off. It probably is some stupid option buried in all those dialogs. I'll just stick to Illustrator for this stuff from now on. I've never know Photoshop to be the best for sep printing anyway.

[Andymac]

from a screenprinting supply place.

or the local auto paint supply

[squeegeethree]

I don't have that problem with photoshop and 80% of my seps are done with it.

[.devolve.]

I used to get that problem in Illustrator w/ an Epson 1400, where my first film would be slightly off scale from the rest. Now I go to print and set up all my print preferences how I want em but hit the Done button instead of the Print button. Then Cmd-P again and don't adjust anything and they all come out the same.

I don't know why it works, or why the print dialog even HAS a button called Done, but it's working for me...

[eyepeace]

I don't have that problem with photoshop and 80% of my seps are done with it.

Hmmm. I've been actually suspicious it's an issue with the printer settings for the epson. Maybe I'll figure it out one day when I have more patience.

[eyepeace]

Round 3.
Another poster.
This time I wanted to do a larger print, 19x23.
Got some larger screens, 25x36 (230mesh).

I needed a larger table to do this since the last one I made wouldn't be big enough.
I figured it was a good excuse to make that vac table in the back of Andy's book.
Bought parts, except for formica. Home Depot discontinued selling it.
So I put that on hold until I can find a suitable substitute or a place that will sell some Formica to me.

In the mean time I bought some tempered hardboard at $6.75 for a 4x8 sheet.
I didn't have any luck finding that mdf with a melamine coating Luna mentioned earlier. Then again I'm pretty bad at finding things that are right under my nose. Drives my wife insane.

Anyway, I used my old mdf and stuck that to my hardboard along with some 2x4's to keep it nice and straight. So far so good.

I originally was trying to get a gig to do a Dinosaur Jr poster for a last minute show so I whored out a few sketches, but Mr. Santora beat me to it. His turned out super nice, though so whatevah. Figured I'd share those nasty sketches anyway - what the hell right?...

Is there a thread for concepts that never made it? I've got a buttload of those for all kinds of stuff.

Got the Vetiver gig, though. Very happy with that. So here are some early nasty roughs...


Settled on a direction and started drawing.
I set up my channels and got ready for output to films...


...just a little tip for anyone as stupid as me to leave my nice 13x19 clear film out without being covered up for about a month. The entire stack curled so badly the sheets wouldn't go through the printer without sounding like the epson was going to shit bolts.

Enter Hairdryer. 30 seconds of that on high and they were good as new.


burning the third color to the screen.
I'm now using Ulano Proclaim emulsion instead of the Speedball. I'm very surprised at the difference. The Ulano washout is much much easier to work with.

It's now winter so I gotta use the shower in the basement. Bought a fitting to hook the hose up to the shower head. Plumber tape only works so well, and who needs plumbers putty when you have a milk jug water deflector doohickey.




I knew that borders card would come in handy.


My ghetto counter-weight system. Notice the CD. It stops the friction from the wood and the rope. Otherwise the rope won't slide up and down when I lift the screen.


First color down.


I misjudged and ran out of white ink so I scrounged some latex white house paint out of the garage and mixed it with the speedball ink. That worked out really nice. I like the texture of it. It made it less thick and a bit easier to work with.
Maybe next time I'll go Sherwin Williams all the way and see how that goes.


I don't know who put them there, they've always just sort of been there... watching.


Second color all set up.
I tape out the edges with clear packing tape and use that blue screen printers tape for areas I'm gonna go over with the squeegee (my reg marks and where the glass edges blocked out the exposure). I don't like how the squeegee feels going over the packing tape. It's like fingernails on a chalkboard. I should probably just go back over it with the emulsion and re-expose next time.




The third screen all registered and ready to start pulling.


All done. My back hurts.

I think before I build that vac table I'm gonna try and build some sort of drying rack for the prints (or find one on craigslist or something). Laying the prints all around the basement and hanging them is 10x more aggravating than having to spray adhesive every now and then. I probably could have finished printing in half the time if I could have just thrown the prints into a drying rack.


There's something oddly satisfying about a gunked up multi-colored squeegee handle.

[eyepeace]

As I mentioned, I use tape to block out areas within the print area. Is this bad to do?
I mainly tape it out of laziness. It's easier than putting more emulsion on and exposing.
After so many pulls is this bad for the squeegee or screen? Does it matter if I put tape on the squeegee side or the print side?