"He who marches out of step hears another drum." ~ Ken Kesey
Quote from: DKgrafix on February 16, 2012, 07:46:03 AMQuote from: Dottonedan on February 15, 2012, 07:24:33 PMThe following people are members here and are among the TOP printers in the US.Dan Zamuda - Castle Shirt Co.Rick Roth - Mirror ImageToni Pepitone - Not sure where he's at now.Mark Coudray - Not printing himself but is consultingHow about our own, Pierre. He took some awards in last few years, and that is only after a few years of printing.Yeah but didn't he work with an award winning and famous art sep artist to win the awards? I mean that raises the question " what is award winning mean"? Your only as good as the artist really. Anybody can shoot screens, make films, set up a job, and put ink in it but if your art is junk you get junk.... my .02!
Quote from: Dottonedan on February 15, 2012, 07:24:33 PMThe following people are members here and are among the TOP printers in the US.Dan Zamuda - Castle Shirt Co.Rick Roth - Mirror ImageToni Pepitone - Not sure where he's at now.Mark Coudray - Not printing himself but is consultingHow about our own, Pierre. He took some awards in last few years, and that is only after a few years of printing.
The following people are members here and are among the TOP printers in the US.Dan Zamuda - Castle Shirt Co.Rick Roth - Mirror ImageToni Pepitone - Not sure where he's at now.Mark Coudray - Not printing himself but is consulting
It all comes together when every part of the process is world class. If any of the major variables are sub-par, then the final print will show that. If you have the greatest seps in the world but use 10 newton screens with swollen threads then the print will show it. Everything works in unison and I really think that the old adage about a chain being as strong as it's weakest link holds true in screen printing when you get to that "world class" and "award winning" level of printing.
Andy's Tee Shirts not 5 miles from my shop has been winning awards for years. And as far as I know, up until a few years ago it was all done on American Multiprinters.As for art vs. printer, it really comes down to art. Bad/stupid art printed excellently is stillbad/stupid art that no one likes and is boring. Awesome art printed badly is still awesome art. What's more interesting, a 700 micron HD print stacked eighteen times in the shape of a square or Godzilla crushing Bambi printed on a Speedball setup with wood frames and a halogen exposure? Any decent shop can or should be able to expose and print in register 60 LPI screens. The rest is in the art/seps. And the best are artists that know and can make use of differenttypes of screen printing.It reminds me of a post by a certain longhaired Texan in which he exalted a printer in India that producedapparently beautiful prints using much less than the setup described above. All things he would chastiseany American printer back to the land of AB Dick for doing.The true test of a printer is when a screen pops on press or the blanks come in late or they are some ridiculousfabric content or you have 1 flash and 8 spot art plastisol colors to print on an underbase on poly garments.