(un)HOLY HOODIE
I printed possibly the hardest job I have done to date.
This hoodie has the "all-over-print" style that is so popular with the kids today. I did it for a local metal band, CWN ANNWN (koon-uh-noon: means "hounds of hell" in gaelic), who were MORE than patient with the insane amount of trial and error it took.
THE JOB:
This job consisted of taking an illustration they commissioned from a comic artist/illustrator and chopping it up into several parts. After doing a lot of planning, I took the parts and arranged them multiple screens and went to print. First, I took a snake section and printed over the neck seam, I then connected the skull-snake, did several overlapping snake segments down the arms, and finished it off by jamming some cardboard in the hood to stiffen it out so I could print from the neck seam to the snake head.
Each (final) shirt took me over 1 hour to print because there was a lot of flash-curing, drying, manual aligning, test printing, etc. --this job was not by any means standard or easy!! Normally, I can align an image, go to print and knock out hundreds of shirts/posters/stickers, etc. with relative ease. Not so with this one.
THE LESSON:
1) I learned a lot about the aligning all-over print jobs manually and think i can be drastically more efficient in the future
2) I learned that if I don't do the design, I need to be involved in the design process. There were several hurdles to overcome because the illustrator didn't know how to design for this kind of job (not that many people on this earth do, really), he didn't have shirt measurements to use as guides so the proportions were a bit messed up, and the detail -though cool and intricate- didn't lend itself well to printing and manually aligning each print.
3) I learned that my skills as a printer are greatly improving
4) I learned that I really really like this kind of job/challenge and hope to do many more like it. I would not mind the reputation of being the wacky guy who does crazy shirts/hoodies.
5) I learned the time constraints for orders like this
6) I learned my limits order volume for orders like this.
NOTE TO ALL: Orders like this do not get much cheaper with volume, so I will not be taking orders of 500 for stuff like this unless you have a 4-6 year turnaround time ;-)
LEMME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK!
www.getcultstatus.com
This hoodie has the "all-over-print" style that is so popular with the kids today. I did it for a local metal band, CWN ANNWN (koon-uh-noon: means "hounds of hell" in gaelic), who were MORE than patient with the insane amount of trial and error it took.
THE JOB:
This job consisted of taking an illustration they commissioned from a comic artist/illustrator and chopping it up into several parts. After doing a lot of planning, I took the parts and arranged them multiple screens and went to print. First, I took a snake section and printed over the neck seam, I then connected the skull-snake, did several overlapping snake segments down the arms, and finished it off by jamming some cardboard in the hood to stiffen it out so I could print from the neck seam to the snake head.
Each (final) shirt took me over 1 hour to print because there was a lot of flash-curing, drying, manual aligning, test printing, etc. --this job was not by any means standard or easy!! Normally, I can align an image, go to print and knock out hundreds of shirts/posters/stickers, etc. with relative ease. Not so with this one.
THE LESSON:
1) I learned a lot about the aligning all-over print jobs manually and think i can be drastically more efficient in the future
2) I learned that if I don't do the design, I need to be involved in the design process. There were several hurdles to overcome because the illustrator didn't know how to design for this kind of job (not that many people on this earth do, really), he didn't have shirt measurements to use as guides so the proportions were a bit messed up, and the detail -though cool and intricate- didn't lend itself well to printing and manually aligning each print.
3) I learned that my skills as a printer are greatly improving
4) I learned that I really really like this kind of job/challenge and hope to do many more like it. I would not mind the reputation of being the wacky guy who does crazy shirts/hoodies.
5) I learned the time constraints for orders like this
6) I learned my limits order volume for orders like this.
NOTE TO ALL: Orders like this do not get much cheaper with volume, so I will not be taking orders of 500 for stuff like this unless you have a 4-6 year turnaround time ;-)
LEMME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK!
www.getcultstatus.com