I probably should have posted this ages ago, but we have a new home on the interwebs away from Tumblr. Tumblr is great. It’s social and filled with more photos of cats and illustrations of unicorns than we could ever hope to look at. But it’s a bit limited and we needed to make our own space. Come check us out.
I wonder if this type of thing happens anymore. Something tells me that an artist becoming famous off of someone else’s IP or product would quickly receive a cease-and-desist (notwithstanding the arguments for Fair Use, etc).
Source: lettersofnote.com
We are going to mess around with claymation this summer. Krissy is planning on working it into the curriculum next year, and we wanted to experiment with it first at home to work out the kinks.
That said, if you have any helpful information or tips, feel free to send us a message on Tumblr, Facebook, or Twitter. We’d also be open to any suggestions since we have literally no experience and do not know what is easy or what is hard.
We plan on using plasticine (or something) clay and making do with tools we have around the “studio” already. This will be a pretty simple undertaking, so we don’t anticipate needing much in the way of tools.
We will photograph the scene with my Nikon mounted on a tripod and create a static scene. Any motion will likely be in the background and with the clay object itself. Perhaps drawing a background on a roll of paper and slowly moving it across the scene will be the best way to accomplish a “dynamic” background.
We will light the scene with artificial lighting to keep the color consistent across the frames, regardless of date or time. I’ll probably boom my monolight over the scene for this, but we’ll see. Maybe we can pull off something a bit more dynamic lighting-wise.
So, claymationers, do you have any tips for a couple of newbies?
Put my temporary studio away today. It feels good not to have to walk around an ironing board every time I enter/leave my bedroom.
Source: facebook.com
A little while ago, Krissy and I headed to our favorite spot to score other people’s old stuff—Savers. I’ve long had a fascination with printing, especially screen printing, and I’d heard about Gocco a year or so ago from Krissy’s now-defunct laptop being left open to the Gocco wikipedia page.
So when I saw a Gocco machine on the shelf with the puzzles and board games, my heart skipped a beat. The best part? It was only $5. I proceeded to tell Krissy about it and she didn’t really seem to know what I was talking about. I told her that people go nuts for Gocco.
I doubted myself because she seemed to have absolutely no idea what I was talking about. So I opened the box to see if it looked like everything was intact. I didn’t know what I was looking for exactly, but the machine clearly hadn’t been used.
It seemed to have an extra 4 screens in it and only had 4 bulbs, but everything else was sealed and unused. We figured for five bucks, we didn’t have much to lose, right? (Checking online when we got home, it turns out they sell for ~$150 or so.)
So I decided to print!
The trouble was that we only have four bulbs, which means two prints: One for me and one for Krissy. So whatever I decided to draw and print had to be pretty spectacular. I settled on Krissy’s favorite animal the fennec fox!
I wanted the drawing to be made up of lots of little lines (dashes?). I don’t know what the style is, but I liken it to engravings. I didn’t know the resolution of Gocco screens, and I hoped that my lines were an okay size and spaced decently.
I cut some Fabriano watercolor paper to the appropriate size. I ended up cutting more in the middle of printing because I used way, way too much ink.
The handy dandy pen that comes with the Gocco machine. It has carbon in the ink which gets transferred to the screen when you burn the master. You can also use a laser printer, pencils, and some other pens as long as they contain carbon.
Take note of the previous owners loss. Then, feel sad that they didn’t use their birthday present. =(
Next, I trimmed the fox out and placed it on a piece of scrap paper. This made it easier to position the fox where I wanted him.
Next, the master is inserted into the machine. It only fits this way so you can’t mess it up. This machine was apparently designed for children to play with in Japan, so easy is the name of the game.
Here is the box of specially formulated highly toxic killer bulbs. Unfortunately they’re no longer made, and finding bulbs may prove to be the hardest part to more Gocco printing. They run about $25 for a set of ten (plus shipping).
The bulbs are coated in something yellowish which would probably kill you if you licked it. I wouldn’t recommend licking it. The bublb is also filled with soemthing resembling steel wool. The idea is that between the metal in the bulb and the coating, a lot of heat is generated which burns the carbon from the drawing into the master.
After flashing the bulbs you cannot reuse them. The metal (I’m guessing) causes them to crack. This could also be why they’re coated. Maybe it keeps the glass from shattering everywhere. I still wouldn’t recommend licking the bulbs, though.
Here’s the housing for the bulbs. You have to push them in and turn them 90 degrees. Sometimes bulbs have oxidized. You’ll want to rub the oxidized parts with aluminum foil or steel wool to make the base shiny if that happens. You don’t want to waste a screen because one of your bulbs didn’t go kablooey, right?
Shiny, shiny.
Place the housing onto the Gocco machine. Line the arrows up. Again, it was made to be a child’s toy so it’s pretty fool-proof.
After pushing down on the handle, the bulbs flash (avert your eyes). Hold it down for an extra couple seconds, and carefully remove the bulb housing. At this point, the bulbs are really, really hot, so don’t touch them. Lay the housing on its back and try to ignore the smell of burning metal and toxic chemicals. No licking!
I’m not sure if you can see in the photo, but the bulbs are cracked over most of their face. Also, there are black spots on the bulb from the metal inside the bulbs. I’m not sure what the best way to dispose of the bulbs is. I’m going to try to re-purpose them somehow.
Next, pull up the handle and your original drawing will be stuck to the master. This is a good sign. You’ll have to remove the master from the machine so you can ink it. There’s a plastic flap that keeps the ink contained within the screen. Don’t use too much ink. I used way too much ink. Just loosely cover the area of the drawing (that’s why you want it stuck to the underside, so you know where to ink).
Here are the (unopened) inks. They’re special ink for the “high mesh” count. They smell, so if smells bother you, take heed. Krissy didn’t mind them much. They smell like I imagine rubber-based letterpress ink smells.
I settled on blue ink.
Here you can see the original stuck to the underside of the master. The top is covered with plastic that you lift up to ink the screen. You don’t have to go crazy covering the entire area because the ink will spread under the pressure from the machine. Properly inked, I think you can get fifty to seventy prints fairly easily.
After inking the top, you can remove the original from the underside. It will have ink on it. Press the handle down and your scrap paper you used earlier will now have your design printed onto it. Now’s the time to make sure coverage is okay. If there are any issues with the printing, you don’t want to discover it later on.
Here is how my test print came out. It’s kind of sloppy and very heavy on the ink. I suspect this is from the massive dousing of ink I gave the screen. The amount of pressure put on the handle probably played a role too.
Regardless, I’m quite happy with the print, mostly because it worked.
I found that I didn’t really like how the machine printed the cards, though. Even later on when there was less ink on the screen, the prints weren’t as clean as I’d have liked.
Determined, I decided to get rid of the plastic ink covery thing and treat this more like screen printing. I made a makeshift squeegee out of folded card stock and scraped down the screen and found that I was much, much happier doing it this way. The ink is well distributed and the lines were much cleaner. You could use an old credit card, the debit card from the bank you left recently, or anything that is flat, really. You’ll just want to be careful about tearing the screen. They’re probably pretty fragile.
A view of the cards drying. You can see the ink on the leftmost cards is much heavier. The painting on the left was done by Krissy before I met her. The small painting on the dresser is one I painted awhile back based on Where The Wild Things Are. You can see the front of our Christmas cards poking out from behind the painting.
Say hi to Puffs the squirrel!
A close up of a few cards. You can see these came out much better hand-pulling the ink.
This is probably half of the prints.
Also, Krissy would like it to be known that we did not pick out the wall colors. You might think, “Hey, the walls aren’t that bad!” Well, that’s because I tricked you! You cannot see the lower half of the wall which is, believe it or not, bright lime green. True story.
So that’s my adventure in Goccoing for the first time. I enjoyed it, and the money was well spent. Really, this more than anything, solidified my desire to screen print. Hand printing is very fun and therapeutic. But carving linoleum blocks takes time and when you’re hand pulling the results can be pretty hit or miss.
Until next time!
Dennis
We want to interview you!
Don’t worry, though. It’s nothing too fancy schmancy, and the questions won’t be too hard-hitting. We just want to interview people for our Tumblr who create things in a Proust questionnaire type style.
This is open to anybody who makes anything, really. Painters, drawers, book artists, bakers, blacksmiths, musicians, song writers, poets, illustrators, so on and so forth.
If you are interested, You can use the ask box to let us know you’re interested (or just click here).
We will contact you, add you to whatever queue we have at the time, and then peruse your Tumblr (and any other page where you feature your art) in order for us to get a better grasp on how we’d like to interview you.
Remember to tell us how best to contact you for your interview; e-mail will likely work best, but if you prefer another method, just let us know. We won’t publish your e-mail address or anything like that.
Thanks a bunch, we look forward to interviewing you!
Earlier I posted about our craft fair last Friday. One of the bright spots was being placed next to Jemma.
We can be a bit hermit-like at times, so having a familiar and friendly face next to us really made the day go smoothly. Since we’d never done a craft show before, being able to talk to Jemma and have her support (even if she was mostly making faces all day) was a relief.
She also happens to make some really awesome stuffies, so it brought a fairly constant stream of traffic to our space because we shared a table with Jemma.
You can find Jemma on Facebook and Etsy.
You can find and follow us there too!
Kleiner Eisbär on Facebook
Kleiner Eisbär on Etsy
This past Friday (Black Friday) Krissy and I partook in a handmade market craft show type shindig with some other great people. We had about a month to prepare and we probably would have liked to have another month. With these types of events, it seems like you never have enough time.
This was our first ever craft show together. Krissy had done one with her grandma last year, but she’d probably agree that this was the first real show for the both of us. We had to make books and cards, get business cards, and figure out a display in a month, and most of that work was probably in the week or two prior to Friday.
It was an interesting and fun experience though getting to see what people ignored and what people picked up. Repeatedly. Krissy and I kept joking that we needed some sort of exit polling system. Why do people pick things up? What makes them not buy things they touch?
But then again, I touch everything and buy few things, so it does make sense to me. I also know that money is tight for almost everyone today.
I went into the show less optimistic than I usually do, I think. But I was optimistic in that we would benefit by networking even if we sold nothing at all. I honestly didn’t know how receptive people would be to books. I mean; they’re books. Who uses books? Do people use books? I use books, but I’m a weirdo. To me, our hundred twenty cards was a sort of fall back. Everyone sends cards. They seemed like a safe bet to have. But they didn’t do as well as I thought. Maybe they were too vague and not specific to upcoming holidays or something. We still sold some, though, and the people who bought them really, really seemed happy with their purchase.
In fact, anybody who bought anything from us seemed thrilled. People aren’t generally that excited to buy things I think. Okay, well maybe the ladies are excited whenever they buy shoes, but that’s a special exemption, methinks.
That’s all for now. I’ll have another post from the craft show up later today.
Until next time,
Dennis
This elephant paints better than I do. True story.
-Dennis
(via art-inprogress)
Source: divertingdiversions
I firmly believe my ideal job would be working in a letterpress shop combined with a bindery. I can already imagine the wonderful smell that such a place would harbor.
I don’t know for certain what we’re giving people for Christmas quite yet, but I do know that a lot of it will probably be hand made by us and fellow creator people.
Frankly, the stuff is better made, and the artists, crafters, and designers need the money more than large companies. It’s really win-win.
We’ll be exhibiting at a craft fair on Black Friday with a bunch of other awesome people in Waterbury, CT, so if you’re in the area, totally come by. It’ll be great fun.
Unless your idea of fun is getting stampeded by a bunch of crazy people at Wal*Mart who may just send someone to the emergency room for that new Elmo toy. Together, let’s give new meaning to “beat the crowds.”
(via sosuperawesome)
Source: etsy.com
I said I was going to post the book that started this whole journey of making books, and so I shall.
Back in April, Krissy and I were getting married (on arbor day!). We knew we’d need a guestbook and that people would want us to have one, but we didn’t want one of those generic “leave your info and a message ones.” They’re terrible and cliche and just wrong. As it turned out, we ended up having something for people to leave us messages anyway, but sometimes with weddings, people get involved and you just roll with the punches.
Now, at this point I hadn’t made any books yet. I don’t even think I’d made a practice hardcover book, so I was taking something of a gamble considering this endeavor could have gone terribly wrong. But it didn’t.
Not to mention, I really enjoyed the process of making it. There’s something very rewarding about making things for yourself, and in this case when it”s for your wedding I think it means more.
The book is by no means perfect, but for a first book, I’m pretty pleased with it. I’m not going to lie and say the imperfections didn’t bother me at the time, though.
I really quite liked the end papers. They were made in Italy and are really very pretty. Since we got married at the zoo, it fit without being obnoxiously animal themed. The cover is actually a paper made out of banana leaves. I cut it to size since it did not take to folding very well. If there’s a trick to it, I certainly don’t know it. I like the look of it though. We coated it in mod podge to keep any flaking down. It works pretty well.
I want to say there are approximately 48-60 pages in the book. I’m not entirely sure. The book is roughly square at around 6 1/4” x 6 1/4” The benefit of making the book yourself (or custom ordering one from us, wink wink) is that you don’t have all those extra pages at the end. The number of pages was perfect for the number of guests we had. We had a small wedding, so having a book with tons of pages would not have done us any good. It would be wasteful, and any time we looked at it again we’d be reminded of the pages we didn’t fill.
The other great thing about making our guestbook ourselves is that we could make it exactly what we wanted. We were able to avoid the shiny silveryness of every other wedding book by picking every single component beforehand. We wanted a natural, neutral feeling book that didn’t stand out but didn’t get lost either. Our book looks different because it is, but it’s not so crazy that it won’t fit in anytime we move. How many silver frames and books fit with your decor?
Below you can see the book accompanied by one of our table cards. The tables were each named after an animal at the Beardsley Zoo (in Bridgeport, CT). It’s an awesome zoo, and you should totally go if you’re ever in the area. The people there are totally awesome. Our favorite animal there is the Bison, so that was our table card.
Each person at the table would have a fact about their animal on the back. I figured that if people got quiet, or didn’t know what to talk about, they could tell each other about their facts. But I also wanted to educate people about the animals a bit, too, because some of the animals have very neat attributes, while others are unfortunately facing extinction.
By the way, don’t call bison buffalo (or american buffalo). They’re not buffalo. They’re not related to them. They are bison. Buffalo are on entirely different continents. Phew!
I also knew we wanted to do something a bit different on the insides of our book. I wanted people to draw. And draw they did! I was curious if people would really draw. Everyone doodles, but doodles are usually only seen by the doodler. For this, you’d be giving us art and letting others see it.
And nobody really ever feels like they’re up to snuff when it comes to drawing.
But people were slowly squirreling away outside or in the corners with the markers and colored pencils. They were drawing! I couldn’t be happier. As the day progressed, people were actually getting rather excited over the whole thing and taking the drawing thing seriously. Shit got real.
Even the little ones got in on the action:
Some drawings were inspired, at least in part, by internet videos. (By the way, Jemma, one of my favorites, bonus points for the unicorn).
And others were simply awe-inspiring. Granted, Jessie cheated a bit by taking the book to her hotel room at the end of the wedding, but I don’t care because she never ceases to amaze me with what she does with colored pencils. I can’t even fathom something like this in my head and she’s all like eh, no big deal.
colored freakin’ pencils! I’m so envious.
So that’s the story of how I got into making books. It was out of desire and necessity, and it stuck. I haven’t been doing it long, but I love every bit of it. I spend hours looking at paper and book binding stuff. I dream of a little mini book factory in our future home art studio. One day, I’ll probably make books with our children, and maybe even illustrate and bind them their own personal books.
But that’s a story for another day.
Any questions or comments? Don’t hesitate to ask us with that little button up top.
Jessie’s mom makes excellent pottery, by the way. You can find their shop on Etsy here:
http://www.etsy.com/shop/staycenteredstudio
They’d make beautiful Christmas gifts. Shipping is Free on everything (I think) and the prices are reasonable because her mother makes pottery for fun not profit. Support a local (to North Carolina) artisan this holiday season and avoid the crowds and commercial junk.
If you have an idea for a book you’d like made, submit it to us here or on Etsy. I love making custom books (as you can probably tell). Our Etsy shop can be found here:
http://www.etsy.com/shop/kleinereisbar
I hope to have more items added in the upcoming week, but we’re pretty far behind in preparing for the craft show we have coming up on black friday.
More to come!
Until next time,
Dennis
Source: etsy.com
By Elly Mackay, magically beautiful paper crafts that have a really illustrative and dreamy feeling, some of the scenes are so ethereal.
This is beautiful.
(via sosuperawesome)
Source: therhumboogie
