Frankie Mcfly
  • STORE
  • Events
  • Blah Blah Blog
  • Contact

Wedding Prep…

5/14/2022

 
Tomorrow I’m DJing a wedding so tonight I spent a few hours preparing music, notes and logistics for the equipment. This is normal. I’m in DJ Mode long before the ceremony starts

Sale, Tire, Buttons...

5/28/2021

 
I made a sale yesterday! A heather gray shirt with the pink SAN JOSE print on the front. I packaged it today. I usually do a hand drawn Thank You card but this is for a friend and repeat customer so I did something a bit different as a surprise. I can't show you what I did till she receives her order and sees it first. 

In other news I found that my bike's rear tire is rubbing against the frame when I ride. I was wondering what the strange sound was and I didn't know where it was coming from till today. I'll be taking it to Good Karma Bikes soon so they can fix it. 

I also made some new buttons. The colors still need a little tweaking on a couple but they're looking pretty cool
Picture

Proofs...

5/27/2021

 
I picked up the USA map proofs this afternoon. I really like the 11x14, (smallest size) but the colors on the 16x20 and 24x36 are dull by comparison. The two big ones were printed using a wide format printer and cost a lot more too. I'm going to keep looking for a better solution for the large prints but start selling the 11x14 right away. I just need to look into shipping materials and postage costs.
Picture

FRankie Mcfly USA - Now SMoother & Lighter Than Ever!

4/28/2021

 
Tonight I finally finished smoothing out every letter of every state of my US map design. The map was drawn by hand in Adobe Fresco on the iPad using the Apple Pencil. If you looked closely you'd see all the jagged lines. To fix that I spent the last few days tracing every path using the Smooth Tool in Adobe Illustrator. It not only smoothed the lines, it also removed a crap-ton of unnecessary anchor points. In the end I brought the file size down from 2.9 MB to 896 KB. 
Picture
Picture

9 States Left...

4/27/2021

 
I didn't spend much time on the map today but I did finish North Dakota, New Mexico & Colorado. All that's left is: Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Nevada, California, Oregon & Washington.
Picture

West Coast Bound...

4/26/2021

 
Almost there. Still cleaning up the design by smoothing out the paths and removing unnecessary anchor points. This sucker is 12 states away from being print ready.
Picture

EMN Layla-Mae & Phoenix Test Prints...

1/6/2021

 
Mira, mira! I printed the names in 5 different sizes and cut them out to see how they look. They look great! I’ll probably skip the smallest size since it’s not much different than the next size up. Besides that, they’re about ready to print on adhesive vinyl sheets and get turned into stickers.

Almost Almost Done...

1/5/2021

 
I keep saying that about this project. I printed both pieces after going over them with a fine tooth comb and cleaning up all the little imperfections. They look super crisp at full, half & quarter sheets. I want to see how small I can print them so I'm waiting on my printer to spit out the 6-up & 9-up sheets. It's taking forever so I'm going to bed. They should be ready when I wake up.

Looking Good...

12/22/2020

 
Before printing this out I brought the artwork into Illustrator and went through every eye, mouth & nose to clean them up. I also a brought in the vectorized Layla-Mae, instead of the rasterized graphic I'd been using in it's place, so now the name looks way sharper. Tomorrow I'll print smaller versions to see how they look.
Picture

Better Grades...

12/19/2020

 
These remind of when you’d get your assignment back from the teacher and they marked all the mistakes you made. The best was when you had the opportunity to fix the mistakes and turn it back in for a better grade. That’s basically what I’m doing here. I’m going for that A++++
Picture
Picture

Edits & Clean Up...

12/17/2020

 
I’ve been making edits to the EMN Layla-Mae & Phoenix artwork based on the notes I scribbled after printing them out a couple times now. Some details were too small or busy and had to be made bigger and more defined. I’ve also been going around erasing a bunch of thin slivers which are partially erased brush strokes. They’re so thin they’re practically invisible on screen but on paper they print out as black marks and they’re all over the artwork. Going forward, I gotta be better about drawing & erasing so I don’t have to comb thru the whole image at the highest zoom setting looking for tiny blemishes that can ruin a print.

Tweaks...

12/7/2020

 
I finished another round of tweaks. I’m going to print it again tomorrow to see how it looks before moving on.
Picture
Picture
Picture

Layla-Mae Edits...

12/3/2020

 
  • Yesterday I printed the Layla-Mae piece and made notes on what needed tweaking. Tonight I made those edits and changed the colors per the client’s request. The name will change color too but that will happen when I bring this in to Illustrator on the desktop to finish it out.
Picture
Picture

Layla-Mae & Phoenix Test Prints...

12/2/2020

 
I'm almost done with these. I printed them out in different sizes and scribbled some notes on what needs tweaking. In the end they'll be printed on vinyl stickers.

Back To Work On Hearts & Stars...

5/3/2020

 
I finally got around to filling in the background. Before inking the piece I did a mock-up in Photoshop, printed it out, and made a few edits. When I started I didn't take into account the black space between shapes so some areas barely have any background showing through. My solution was to shave some shapes down to allow more black to come through. I did everything on the photocopy before transferring them to the piece. I also tested Sharpies vs Copic markers on the same photocopy to see which black is blacker. The Copic was just a tiny bit darker so I'm been using that to fill in the background. 

EMN Redux vs Original...

1/24/2020

 
Redux on the left. Original artwork on the right. 

When I printed the EMN shirts with the original artwork, a lot of the smaller details were washed out or blurry. Now that I'm going to print more I decided to redo the parts of the image that weren't so sharp. I printed the original artwork in black & white on paper then highlighted the parts that came out blurry on the t-shirt. I then digitally made some of those lines thicker and redrew others completely. This should result in a better looking print on the next batch of shirts. I feel like I did what George Lucas did to Star Wars when he released the Special Edition versions of his original trilogy. 

Hoodie Update

11/13/2019

 
I few weeks ago I started wearing a new brand of hoodie that I've never worn before with the intention of using them as blanks for my brand. Here are some of my notes:
  • The quality feels really good. It also feels thicker than other hoodies I've owned.
  • The sizes run small. I wear a 2X t-shirt from the same brand that makes the hoodie but the 2X hoodies is really snug. A 3X might fit me better.
  • The damn pull string for the hood kept coming out when I washed it. I swapped the original string for a fat white shoe lace but the lace got tattered after a few days from snagging on the zipper and looks like shit. I think I'm going to replace the original pull string and just tie knots at each end to prevent it from being pulled out.
  • It sheds A LOT of lint. I think I've washed it 3-4 times now and it's still shedding. It gets caught in my stubble and on my clothes. Last week I washed and dried it with other clothes and they all had lint all over. I had to wash everything again and washed the hoodies by itself. 
  • I'm still thinking about how I want to embellish my hoodies. I have some ideas but nothing solid. I hope I can get something ready and out the door while it's still cold outside.

Hoodies!?

10/16/2019

 
It was easy for me to decide which brand blanks I wanted to print on when I made my Frankie Mcfly t-shirts. I had already worn the brand's shirts for years and loved the way they felt and their quality. Now that I'm considering hoodies, I don't have lots of experience with them, or at least any that I absolutely love. The ones I've been using for personal use were good but not great. Today I received a new blank. I'm gonna try and wear it as much as possible and run it thru plenty of washer and dryer cycles for the next few weeks to see how it holds up. I want to make sure this garment is the same high quality as my t-shirts before embellishing it with my work/art/name. 

    Frankie Mcfly's
    Blah blah Blog

    I haz a blog now.

    Archives

    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019

    Categories

    All
    1.0
    Aliens
    Animation
    Art Events
    Artists & Vendors
    Art Shows
    Bike
    Blanks
    Blog
    Books
    Businessing
    Buttons
    Car
    Cells
    Cheater Post
    Comics
    Coronavirus
    Customs & Pre Orders
    Customs & Pre-Orders
    Design
    Digital
    DIY
    DJ/MC
    Download
    Drawing
    EMN
    EMNSJ
    Fail
    Family
    Food
    FRANKIE MCFLY USA
    Friends
    Fun
    Fundraising
    Games
    Head Thing
    Health
    Hiking
    Holidays
    Hoodies
    Ink
    Inking
    #inktober
    Instagram
    Inventory
    Learning Experience
    Lettering
    Make Up Post
    Memories
    'Merica
    Milestone
    Money
    Monsters
    Movies
    Murals
    Music
    Nature
    Ninja Turtles
    Non Profits
    Non-profits
    Nostalgia
    Outdoors
    Paintings
    Pencil
    Plants
    Podcasts
    Prep
    Prints
    Protests
    Quality Assurance
    Robots
    Rockets
    Scanning
    Screen Printing
    Self Promotion
    Shape Thing
    Sketch
    Sketchbooks
    Small Businesses
    Software
    Stickers
    Taxes
    The Frankie Mcflyer
    Time Lapse
    Time-lapse
    To Do List
    Tools
    Travel
    T Shirts
    T-shirts
    TV
    Vending
    Video
    Website
    Weddings & Events
    Wildfires
    WIP
    Work
    Writing
    WTF
    Zines

    RSS Feed

Thank you for visiting!
Copyright 2020 Frankie Mcfly
  • STORE
  • Events
  • Blah Blah Blog
  • Contact