fredrin.tumblr

I’ve been getting more and more irritated at myself for how long it takes to *draw* MT comics - part of it is that i have this bad habit of treating each frame like it’s a stand alone illustration… if you’ve ever watched me draw, you probably have noticed that i tend to zoom in and do a lot of detail that most people never see (even in print form).  Sure, that’s great, but the impact on the schedule has been horrible over the past few years.

One thing i’ve noticed while doing all these sketches for people is that a) i still like drawing with pencil on paper and b) it seems to go a heck of a lot faster than drawing on the computer.  Hrm….

So, that said, i’m doing a little experiment with the next comic - i’m drawing it in pencil, by hand.  I’m using the same cardstock i’m using for the sketches (a Hammermill cardstock that seems to take pencil (and erasing) really well).  The trick is to see if this ends up going faster - we’ll see. 

Anyways, i havent had too much time to work on it, but last night i got the next comic started, here’s a scan of the first few frames so far.  My goal is 2 comics per week.  Mad detail is great, but i need to start looking for a better balance between story frequency and art.

July 19, 2011, 10:07am  Comments

Answering @SpaceCobraJoe in twitter: Was the “not in the plan” A) Scheduled preventive maintenance, B) Emergency maintenance, C) It done falled off.

It was what i call ‘eventual maintenance’ - the capping station is technically a wear part, one that you can expect to replace every 3 years.  The ink used in Direct to Garment printers is a lot thicker and muckier than what the printer was originally designed for, so the capping station takes a lot of abuse and harbors a lot of buildup. The assembly itself costs about $400 bucks and isn’t too hard to replace (four screws and the whole assembly comes out). 

I’ve said before that owning a DTG printer is a little like owning a temperamental old muscle care - works great and can be impressive, but you are constantly working on it to keep it working smoothly.  I opted to try to clean out the unit rather than just replacing it.  It was a major pain, but i didn’t find any real wear or busted components while i mucked it out (and i was able to actually put it back together again and it worked) so i think i won’t actually have to replace it.

There were massive blobs of rubbery solidified ink filling gaps and coating most everything, but the thing that gunked up the works was a clog in a connector between the drain hoses leading to the capping piece (the assembly that gooses up to the print head itself).  Basically, i had to take the entire thing apart just get at that stupid little adapter - but it’s nice to have the whole thing clean and working again. 

So, i lost most of a day to that, which sucks - i’m really behind in getting orders printed and finished and out the door.  I appreciate your patience as i catch up here.

July 16, 2011, 10:29am   Comments