Abe's school projects

In the last post, I was talking about the items Abe has made at school this year. So I guess now I can actually tell you about the projects. They were pretty cool to see made.

First up, there is a green Georgie print. Abe made this for his history class using the historical graphic arts process.  I drew out a Georgie for him. Then at school, he made a copy or two and cut them out to have the shapes for the various strengths of color. He was printing in green using 100% and then a thinner screen that made a lighter color of the same green. After the cutting out, he used a graphic arts camera to make a film of the image. The film of the image was then used to make a metal printing plate for the press. The printing was done on a Heidelberg press using two colors, black and green. Abe pointed out that this press was designed in the same city of Germany (Heidlelberg) where the Homo Heidelbergensis was found. Then he got to run the press and made a whole bunch of prints!

Georgie print

Another project is a red Arthur. The teachers were having a hard time explaining the process of screen printing so they did a project and everyone got to print a picture. They picked something really simple and drew it on a piece of mylar using a sharpie that they used for the photo emulsion. Photo emulsion is pretty interesting. You put the mylar with the dark spots from the sharpie on the screen that is covered in photo emulsion. Then you shine UV on the screen. The emulsion on the spots covered by the sharpie on the mylar do not harden, but the rest of it does. So when the emulsion is hard, you pull off the mylar and rinse of the screen. All but the spots where the UV light hit are hard. So when you squee-gee the ink over the screen, it only goes through where you had drawn the dark spots.  Anyways, they did this project over the course of an afternoon so everyone would understand the processes. There are only a few of these prints because it wasn’t a real project and everyone needed to print something.

Arthur print

The bookmarks were a cool project I got to work on. This was a letterpress project. I drew up three images for bookmarks because that is how many would fit on the printing press plate. Abe scanned my drawings and in Adobe Illustrator used live trace to turn them into vector graphics which means they can be resized to any size. Then in InDesign he replaced the horrible text I had drawn with a brush on the Book Love bookmark. This was another photo emulsion plate but for the printing press, so it made a plastic plate that we get to keep. His instructor and classmates were worried that the fine lines I had drawn wouldn’t print well, particularly in the squid, but they turned out pretty good. Then he just had to cut them up on a paper cutter. The one we have at home is sharper and more accurate than the ones he has at school it seems.

3 letterpress bookmarks

Another screen printing project was to make a 2-color t-shirt. I again drew an image for Abe, this time of a platypus Cupid. Abe scanned and formatted and added text on the computer and made a screen for screen printing. At this point, the process is getting pretty redundant.

2 colors of tshirts

Mylar sheet to create the screen

Mylar sheet with hearts

Finally, he made a notepad. He created the images in Illustrator and laid out the pages in InDeisgn, as you would expect. But this was totally his design and is basically fan art for Gravity’s Rainbow. Then he used an offset printer in black to print two shades of black, 100% and 30%. After printing, he had to count the stacks, add the cardboard backing, and glue the binding. Then he cut and trimmed and they were done.

Gravity's Rainbow notepad

So if you make it to a convention we are at this year, we will have these items. Otherwise, if one sounds particularly interesting, you can shoot us an email atabe@flyingdodopublications.com or angela@flyingdodopublications.com and we will post the item on Etsy. I hope people enjoy these items as much as we have.

Print madness

First, a reminder. Abe and I will be at the Jet City Comic Show (Seattle, WA) in just under a couple weeks! We will have a ton of stuff and would love you to come by and say hello. We are at booth AA68. It is September 24, Saturday, from 10-6 at the Seattle Exhibition Hall. We have been working hard getting ready.

What a busy weekend. On Saturday, Abe and I went up to Bellingham to print lots of stuff at my mom’s place, Egress Studio Press. But lucky us, we got to spend a couple hours driving around Seattle first looking for paper. Office Depot and Staples only carry paper that is too light-weight. So Paper Zone was the winner, even though it was heavier paper than we really wanted (28 lb. instead of 24lb.).

During this time driving around, we had to leave early and so stopped in at Starbucks for breakfast. I got a pumpkin scone and Awake tea because that is always what I get. Abe got coffee, which is a change for him in the last few weeks, and his usual cranberry scone. Their scones are actually good now, by the way. Anyways, the tea was too hot still when we got to Staples, so I wasn’t drinking it and forgot it in the car. When we got back to the car, Nisa had pulled it out of the cup holder and poured the whole thing out on my seat so she could drink it! Fortunately, there is a great drive-thru coffee, Gourmet Latte, place right next to Staples and Office Depot (which are across the street from each other) so I got another tea and the dogs, even idiot Nisa, got dog treats.

After all our driving around and drink buying, we eventually got up to Bellingham and started working away. I was a bit of a task master, but boy was it worth it. First up, my mom took pictures of Abe and me! It was hilarious. They have been put to good use, but I think they will have other uses as well. We had fun and were all laughing our heads off.

Then we ran upstairs to the computer. The first thing we worked on, because it was the last requirement for the Jet City Comic Show: Posters! We have one for The Jerks and one for Flying Dodo Publications. I am so glad she helped us because even though The Jerks poster was complete, we replaced some of the hand-written text with a font and it looks amazing. And she helped us with our Flying Dodo Publications poster and it could not look better. It is covered in a bunch of variations on the flying dodo, like this one, my favorite, called “Big Butt, Skinny Jeans.”

Poster for The Jerks

Poster for Flying Dodo Publications

Now we finally have a saleable copy of Ooh! Shiny. Lovely goldenrod cover (the image does not do it justice). Japanese stab binding. I am still binding it, but as of this posting, 10 of the 100 books are complete. Japanese stab binding is so much fun. The first 100 copies have a hand-written dedication, but any after will have a printed dedication. After printing all theOoh! Shiny papers, Abe ran downstairs with them all and folded them in half.

Cover of "Ooh! Shiny"

Title page of "Ooh! Shiny"

Abe had to fold a lot of paper

We also finished The Fire Breather, which I did all the watercolor paintings for on the Labor Day weekend. Great fun. It is a small book, but full color.  I will post more about this on it’s own, but I am pretty dang pleased with it.

Just look at it all! Pages for "The Fire Breather" and "Ooh! Shiny"

The second to last thing we worked on was Fart Happens, the collection of the first year of The Jerks comics! It looks great! I am really excited for this. It is by far the biggest book we have done: 60 pages. We did not have time to print it, but my mom will bring it down this weekend. Abe did the layout and did a great job. I can’t believe how much he has learned about layout this summer. He is going to do great in his Publishing Arts program this coming year.

Finally, but not really, we made up a couple prints: Secrets (a Gertrude comic), and Two Birds on a Wire. So excited. We should have at least 5 different prints available at the Jet City Comic Show. Two Birds looks Great. They are huge prints on glossy paper.

Then for reals finally, we ran downstairs at 11:00 in the evening to cut up all the Ooh! Shiny and Fire Breather papers (two sets of pages printed per paper). We didn’t even leave until 11:30, so we sadly missed out on ice cream with my mom and Jim.

A couple days later, Monday, I got in the car at 6:30 in the morning to head to work. As soon as I opened the door, it smelled like something died in there. I sent Abe a panicked text, but I was running late, so I got in and drove to work. It smelled just as bad if not worse when I finished work. I forgot: I put milk in my tea and it was still apparently spilled in the back seat. Mostly on a blanket, so this evening, we put it in the wash and doused the tea spots in Febreeze. Dead animal and Febreeze go great together, let me tell you.