Damn I'm good! (and old)

[Doug B]

  Xacto #11 too. I took swivel knife baldes, wittled them down and stuck one
in my compass from drafting class. Perfect for circles.

[ABuffington]

I'd love to have some of the computer guru separators and artists go through what we did back then when we used nothing more than #11 X-acto's, Rubylith or Amberlith, a #2 Rapidograph, opaque ink, Kimoto Pens, Kodak red block out, etc.  What took hours/days/weeks back then can be done effortlessly in Photoshop.  Halftones?  PITA, just stipple in a tonal, no moire ever!  I still have art bags, with keylines, rubyliths for every color to be knocked out and reversed with neg film, hand stippling, or cross hatch texture done on negative film, plus original Disney Art from my artist who now runs Disney Character Development (or something like that).  The beauty of all this was the experimentation we all had to do to get something done.  Crashing waterbase colors to get more colors from a six color press and a craft feel that is missing in today's prints.  I love what PS and a good RIP have done for recreating great art, but sometimes back then all we had was a keyline and a basic concept that didn't fully complete itself until the print was done to see the resulting image of overlayed colors.  For as much practice as we had in hand cutting fonts back then we could all be surgeons today!  Formatt type?  Chartpak? Linotype?.  Our local film bureau output couldn't angle the halftones when we had them output 4/C process, all at 0,30,60,90, so we had to figure out how to stretch mesh, by hand at an angle, with funky wooden screens and rope to make them tight.  Yes I am that old, but I do have a rock n roll band to stay young that knows 750 songs, so gettin old aint that bad!

[Ripcord]

I'd love to have some of the computer guru separators and artists go through what we did back then when we used nothing more than #11 X-acto's, Rubylith or Amberlith, a #2 Rapidograph, opaque ink, Kimoto Pens, Kodak red block out, etc.  What took hours/days/weeks back then can be done effortlessly in Photoshop.  Halftones?  PITA, just stipple in a tonal, no moire ever!  I still have art bags, with keylines, rubyliths for every color to be knocked out and reversed with neg film, hand stippling, or cross hatch texture done on negative film, plus original Disney Art from my artist who now runs Disney Character Development (or something like that).  The beauty of all this was the experimentation we all had to do to get something done.  Crashing waterbase colors to get more colors from a six color press and a craft feel that is missing in today's prints.  I love what PS and a good RIP have done for recreating great art, but sometimes back then all we had was a keyline and a basic concept that didn't fully complete itself until the print was done to see the resulting image of overlayed colors.  For as much practice as we had in hand cutting fonts back then we could all be surgeons today!  Formatt type?  Chartpak? Linotype?.  Our local film bureau output couldn't angle the halftones when we had them output 4/C process, all at 0,30,60,90, so we had to figure out how to stretch mesh, by hand at an angle, with funky wooden screens and rope to make them tight.  Yes I am that old, but I do have a rock n roll band to stay young that knows 750 songs, so gettin old aint that bad!

Yeah, and also French curves, photostats, veloxes, Letraset, paste ups, color keys, Kodak Ultratec, and...(a #2 Rapidograph?...I had 'em in about ten sizes LOL)

[Sbrem]

I'd love to have some of the computer guru separators and artists go through what we did back then when we used nothing more than #11 X-acto's, Rubylith or Amberlith, a #2 Rapidograph, opaque ink, Kimoto Pens, Kodak red block out, etc.  What took hours/days/weeks back then can be done effortlessly in Photoshop.  Halftones?  PITA, just stipple in a tonal, no moire ever!  I still have art bags, with keylines, rubyliths for every color to be knocked out and reversed with neg film, hand stippling, or cross hatch texture done on negative film, plus original Disney Art from my artist who now runs Disney Character Development (or something like that).  The beauty of all this was the experimentation we all had to do to get something done.  Crashing waterbase colors to get more colors from a six color press and a craft feel that is missing in today's prints.  I love what PS and a good RIP have done for recreating great art, but sometimes back then all we had was a keyline and a basic concept that didn't fully complete itself until the print was done to see the resulting image of overlayed colors.  For as much practice as we had in hand cutting fonts back then we could all be surgeons today!  Formatt type?  Chartpak? Linotype?.  Our local film bureau output couldn't angle the halftones when we had them output 4/C process, all at 0,30,60,90, so we had to figure out how to stretch mesh, by hand at an angle, with funky wooden screens and rope to make them tight.  Yes I am that old, but I do have a rock n roll band to stay young that knows 750 songs, so gettin old aint that bad!

Oh yeah, all that. We used to simulate process color by drawing a keyline, then pencil shading tones onto tracing paper, which were then halftoned with a halftone screen. Since we could never get rid of the background tone, we would white it out by hand, then shoot those to film. The stuff usually came out great. The weirdest part of this, is that the same artist works with me today, and hates Photoshop, loves Illustrator.

Steve