My foot hurts

Strangeness in the print costs.

So there's some strangeness in the prices for print. This is a small run, how small I'm not sure yet so I thought I would compare prices. Bit labourious, I know; but usually worth it. With care fun print buying you can save a lot of money. The secret is matching job to company.
Above you can see a graph of prices - they are all from the same company but different binding and quantity. Obviously hardback is more costly, but in a short run the lines are pretty straight. Not so softbound. Note the two kinks in the line and that actually hardbound is cheaper than softbound at some low quantities.
Also note that both softbound unit prices fall once you get 250. Probably a switch to a faster machine that needs a longer run through.
At the end of the day there's not much difference for short run in many cases. But sometimes the saving can be spectacular  if you allow the printer to dictate sizes and quantities.

Fonts, important, but brain ache..

Have spent the last two hours trying find a suitable comic book font. I have decided that I don't want to actually do the lettering myself as it will almost certainly require changes.
In the process of looking I found this little chart at https://jasonthibault.com/comic-book-fonts/
It shows how to letter a balloon correctly, and notes the difference between the use of a capital "I" as in myself and where it appears in the middle of a word.

Actually, for my students who are interested in comic book publishing, the whole article is worth reading and full of good advice.
The links to the fonts will also be of interest as they are all useful.

My main gripe is that most of them only come in three weights, Regular, Italic and Bold italic. I'm not sure if I will need a Bold. But it would be nice to know it's there to be used.

Some fonts

In addition to the free for small press commercial use, I've also been looking at Paid fonts. Overall I looked at about 20, narrowed that down, drew up a chart to help narrow it down further and ended up the ones below. Prices are 25-30 Dollars, so that's not going to be a factor. I guess I should look at Adobe's typeset, but I don't recall having seen anything.

Now I'm going to sleep on it. Try out what I've already got (See last picture and take it from there.



Probably Sequentialist is the winner, as it has Regular, Italic, Bold and Bold Italic. The other two have lowercase letters through, so there's a choice to give the type 'colour' and to differentiate between the parts of speech and thought.

Any opinions welcome.







Demo page I set up for myself. Too many choices...

Scripting and Sketchbook

 These scans show the scripting process. This is quite early on and the page with the blur has been considerably shortened and reworked.
The blurred photo was taken out, and a number of identifiable components redacted.
I use cat and paste because for me it is faster and I put a value on speed of operation.
Often the pages in the script will have many layers of stuff stuck on them. Scribbles, quotes pages and sentences from the research that I have done. I started off with nearly 300 pages of research - 300 literally as I printed the bulk of them out.

Why print them out?

For me, once again this is quicker, also I can annotate them, draw on them, cut bits out and then re-assumble them.
All of which is slower and less intuitive than on a screen.
Also, I can lay out all the pages and shuffle them to get a good overview. On a screen you (well at least I do.) tend to just focus on one thing, which is why I try to get my students to use their sketchbooks. Incidentally, your handwriting will improve and secondly, no-one's going to be judging you on that in a sketchbook. Unless you're a Calligrapher.

This image, which was in the original show will probably go in as it is. Although I am wondering if I should massage it for a square format.
I've also noticed that several of the pictures are similar. So some new drawing/editing will be required.

Never finished first time around...

Here's the picture I'd never finished. Before and after, although 'after' isn't strictly true as it's still in progress. Need to add some lighting. Paint is still wet, so that's the reason for the reflection in the later version.

Originally drawn, but not finished in 2011

Some weeks later...

It's gone through a lot of drafts. Too many. Trouble was finding the glue to hold it all together and I don't think I'm really there yet. This week I started what I wanted to start a month ago, namely Illustration.
Dug out the old pictures - if all else fails, I have an exhibition here. Found one picture that I had forgot that I had, and another that was never finished. That last one is now on the production line for finishing.
Today Ruth is out for the day, so I'm hoping that I will start at least five pictures.
Tonight's effort takes shape. #grayanddismalgreen#greenbelt Gb17

Grey and Dismal Green - real first day.

Wrote, and I use the term lightly, the first draft of the Grey and Dismal Green script today. Cobbled together from some of Ruth's recollections and some of my copy and images; I believe there's enough to make a start.
Ruth is finding this hard as it's digging out memories. But there's a story that needs to be told in some form, and the deadline of 1st August isn't so far away.
Gulp!

Producing Artwork for the Lasercutter

This is a guide to producing artwork (the type of artwork we are doing) for the Lasercutter. It's not a definitive guide, it's what I found that works and is simple for people to understand and use. I realise that as I write this it may be too simple for some applications. If that's you, please move on.

IMPORTANT: If you find an error, please let me know!!

How it works

You are setting up a file where you want the Lasercutter to carve or cut out shapes.

You are using the Lasercutter because it's:

• Repeatable
• Quick
• Accurate
• Cuts finer than you can with a Knife.

The Illustration.

Draw the picture. Use any tool you like - Photoshop, Illustrator, black ink on white paper.

In your drawing the white areas are areas that will cut out, the black areas will stay.

When you are drawing, remember that areas of black surrounded by white will fall out, so if they are to stay you will need to provide some support.

Open in Photoshop

Open your image in Photoshop. If it's ink on paper you will need to scan it. If it's Illustrator you can open it directly.

Make sure that it's the size you want and the resolution is at least 300ppi. 1200 will be too much.

In Photoshop, max the contrast so it's just black and white.

Notice I've checked the "Use Legacy" box. This means it will be just black and white.

Convert to greyscale. This last step may not be necessary - you are aiming for pure black and white and it may help.

In photoshop examine the image carefully. Iron out any bumps and clean up any stray pixels. 

Photoshop is the easiest place to do this.

Save your file as PSD.

Open Illustrator

Create a new file the correct finished size. 

Place the Photoshop file

Select Window > Image Trace

The Image trace window appears.

Click on "Advanced"

Click "Ignore white"

Make sure Preview is selected

View the image on the screen while you adjust the sliders. You are aiming for the smallest number of corners and paths that will still give you the image you require.

When you are happy, close the trace image window.

Select the traced image (if it's not already selected).

Select Expand.

Check the image by going to View > Outlines.

You should have clear paths. That is where the cutter will cut.

Choose export to DXF. Use the older settings (Our Lasercutter software doesn't understand the newer DXF settings from Illustrator.)




















That's it!

...And they're off!

Last night was the first proper meeting about the 2017 Fringe Guide. Client wants three columns this year and some more sign posting. We have a very groovy cover, that I can't tell you about at the moment and we have some interesting stuff on.
All of this needs to be completed by 13th of April to get it to print on time. Nice short deadline :-)

Trying to get the class to communicate with Emoji.

 Getting my class to start to thing about drawing emoji made my, the first one most of them did was and I probably looked a bit  But then when they had tried again it was  and I gave them an encouraging . I suspect after teaching today I will end up

Teaching basic animation at Bath College.

New cohort of students. Bless 'em. Showed them some basic animation. Issue is, they all think "That's easy", when in practice it's quite hard to get timing, emotion and storytelling in there.

This is just a silly piece I did while they were working. I have offered it to the Oscars people for their consideration...

Makin' Chickens, part one.

The Farmyard is about farming, in particular caged chickens who have a tough time. This sculpture/sideshow is made to highlight it and contrast their plight with the sanitised version we present to children.

My main resource for factual information on caged birds comes from the RSPCA*.

For this project I'm going to need a large quantity of chickens. I have a few, but buying a lot is going to be expensive. You can buy them as spare parts at about £1 each, but buying a quantity (say 100) is probably difficult.

I might however buy some packets of chicks they are cheap...

What you can see here is the mould being taken from an existing chicken. When I've done both sides I will press mould a whole load of them in Fimo. The red is paint which will hopefully act as a release compound. If they don't work I'll be calling up Playmobil!

I also have to work out how, and if I can articulate them. At the moment fishing line or wire is the favourite, but we'll see. A prototype needs to be made!
https://www.rspca.org.uk/adviceandwelfare/farm/layinghens/keyissues

The Farmyard: go or no go?

This week I have to decide if the Farmyard is go or no go. Will need the next six weeks to get it up and running. If I decide to go ahead, that's will be quite a lot of work. If I decide to drop it, then I might regret it.

This is the base playmobil farm I have been given. (Image from playmobil UK)

Bounce

Demo file for today