TOUR SHIRT WALKTHROUGH - Part 2 - Separations

[upperhandprinting]

The artwork was done by an artist from the Philippines. He did the artwork in layers by color, so it was mostly separated when I got it. When I received the artwork, it was 4 colors: red, orange, yellow, and gray. He also had a 5th layer than was a black outline to trap the colors. We were printing on black shirts, so I also made a white underbase layer as well. I'm staring at an image that will use all 6 of my color stations and glad I got the upgrade right away.

I first looked at the image carefully and turned each layer on individually, then looked at it with everything on but that layer. I came to notice the black layer didn't add much to the image. It would be printed on black and nothing in the image needed black to lay over a color, so I decided right away to scrap the black layer. Now I was down to 4 colors and my white underbase.

With this particular image, there were a bunch of halftones, but the colors weren't really suppose to blend together to make other colors besides the 4. The halftones were there merely for gradients. Because of that I went through each layer and erased information that overlapped too much. There is no reason to print a big spot of red if its going to be completely covered by the orange later on. You have to be careful because of the gradients, you don't want to erase too much and end up with black shirt where there should be a color.

By looking at how much information was on each layer, I decided my print order and erased information that way. The bottom color would be more forgiving and the top color I barely erased anything.

Once I had the erasing done, I looked at the image as a whole one more time and liked what I saw, so it was time to go to film.


The Walkthrough continues under "Making Film Positives".

[Catspit Productions]

Excellent Greg. Man you got it going on. Having an artist you can use to do artwork is very important to any screen printer. I have been spoiled with my brother so I get my complex jobs done very well and free It looks like you found a decent artist too who knows how to create pretty good screenprinting artwork. Many graphic artists say they can do this but don’t really understand how screen printing works and replicates the artwork. Your shirts looked really nice so it seems you found a good artist.

I like to work in layers as well. It really helps out a lot. Nice description of your separation process. This is a great thread running throughout the parts of the process categories on the forum here. Very cool. I’m on to the next part.

Thank you again for posting

[BoydRiver]

Brilliant

[ApeShirt]

With this particular image, there were a bunch of halftones, but the colors weren't really suppose to blend together to make other colors besides the 4. The halftones were there merely for gradients. Because of that I went through each layer and erased information that overlapped too much. There is no reason to print a big spot of red if its going to be completely covered by the orange later on. You have to be careful because of the gradients, you don't want to erase too much and end up with black shirt where there should be a color.

By looking at how much information was on each layer, I decided my print order and erased information that way. The bottom color would be more forgiving and the top color I barely erased anything.

Could you explain this a little more? What do you mean you erased information that overlapped too much and how did you do that?

[upperhandprinting]

I can sure try, Greg.

Basically, because I'm not wanting the inks to actually mix on the shirt, they don't need to overlap each other. If I had left the image like it was, I would've put down a lot more ink than was truly necessary. In some spots, say the logo at the top, the yellow was underneath the entire logo, but since its suppose to fade to orange at the top, there isn't really a reason to print yellow at the top. So I found where I felt the colors would gradient the best and erased the yellow from that spot and up. That way, I'm putting down just the color I want to see, and not putting down multiple colors in one spot for no reason.

If you go to the section on printing and look at the first picture, you can see how the word Harlot is erased from the skull of the demon. That's what I'm talking about. Instead of printing his whole head with the gray ink, and then covering that section with the word Harlot, I erased his skull there.

It really just has to do with keeping ink use to a minimum and not wanting the shirt to get too heavy. Hopefully that helped a bit.

Thanks for reading.

[ApeShirt]

Thank you Craig! I get it now. I haven't gotten to that point of printing yet and that helps a lot for when I do. Anything to save costs while maintaining
quality is always a plus.

[ppdlao]

Great art work Craig! i always remember jon once said, the more you get use to screen printing, the easier would be to get better art works! and it all comes down to a logical action when making the positives . You´ve got it Craig !