My Life With Yudu - The Overly Detailed Tutorial

A little while ago, Anita and I went to Maker Faire and stumbled across this new home silk-screening system called Yudu. It seemed like a great way to make small-run T-shirts (or whatever-s) of my designs, so a few weeks later I picked one up and decided to give it a go. Since I wasn't going to have any new toys for Comic-Con, this seemed like a good way to whip up new swag reasonably quickly without having to sink tons of cash into it.

I know this sounds like I'm leading toward something disasterous, but in general I'm happy with my Yudu set-up - I just thought I'd jot down my experiences with it, in case some of you out there were considering trying it out , too.

The startup cost isn't too bad when you compare it to ordering T-shirts from a printer. The device itself runs between $200-$300, depending on where you get it. I bought mine at Michael's along with some extra supplies, so the initial purchase was about $500.

I would recommend buying extra emulsion sheets and screens in case you have a learning curve like mine - you only get two sheets with the machine, and just one screen. You'll also want to get some emulsion solvent, which doesn't come with the set-up and is only sold in small bottles. I'm able to clean roughly two screens per bottle, so it's good to have extra on hand - you'll either want to buy more screens and keep some of the designs for a while, or have fewer screens and clean them more often.

Using the system is pretty simple, it just takes practice. The videos on the Yudu website are helpful - just don't panic (like I tend to) if things don't turn out exactly like they do in the demonstrations!

Extra things you'll need:

* Nearby sink access
* Scissors
* A soft sponge
* Low-tack cellophane tape
* Packing tape
* Some sort of indoor clothes-drying rack
* Clothes iron/heat press
* A cheap plastic spatula that you'll never want to cook with again
* Yudu emulsion remover/solvent
* Some hand-wiping rags
* "Expendable" fabrics or products for test runs

Extra things you won't need:

* Yudu Squeegee Pro - harder to clean, and oddly not as good as the one included in the set.

The first thing you need to do is prep the screen. So far, I've had the best results prepping a screen right over the sink. In general, I think more water is better than less - run the tap over as much of the screen area as you can, and use a sponge to help flood the rest of the area. I used a fabric-covered sponge, and it worked fine. Go over both sides and wet the screen down thoroughly. Wipe off a little excess with the sponge - this is the tricky part. Practice is how you'll figure out how much water to leave on the screen. Try not to have any big drops running around, but don't wipe off much more than that.

Cut open the emulsion sheet bag and pull out one of the sheets (try to do this in a dimly lit place, as they're sensitive to light). Set the screen on the sink with the flat-cornered side facing up, and place the sheet shiny side up onto the screen. Use the squeegee to smooth out as many wrinkles and air bubbles as you can. Don't worry, you won't be able to get all of them.

Hold the screen up and check out how many areas aren't sticking to the screen. Flip the screen over and using your sponge, lightly dab those areas. Your sponge won't need to be soaked, but wet enough so you won't have to dab much to blot out those areas. The more you dab or rub, the more risk you'll run of wiping off the water-soluable emulsion. Don't worry if more of it comes off than you'd like - my first completed screen was pretty blotchy, and it still worked fine.

Take the screen, put it in the machine's drying drawer (I used the lower notches - I'm not sure how important that is), and dry the screen off with the machine's inner fan (not surprisingly, it's the button with the fan on it). Do not try to do anything else until you're sure the screen is completely dry - that's where I tripped up. I found that one drying cycle wasn't enough, and wound up running each screen three or four cycles instead. A good way to check is to rub your hand over the shiny part of the emulsion sheet. If you get a little staticky crackle, you're probably ready!

Now - the shiny side of the emulsion sheet is actually a seperate sheet unto itself. If it's fully dry, the sheet should pull off very easily once you get your fingernail under a corner. If the screen's not dry enough, some of the emulsion will stay on the sheet and tear off the screen. I learned this the hard way. Twice.

Now you're ready to burn your design onto the screen. You'll probably want to leave the screen in the nice dark drying drawer while you prep your artwork. You can either use one of their transparencies (they only supply you with one), or draw/print a design on a piece of acetate. Any sheet from 8.5"x11" to (I think) 11"x14" will work. The tricky part will be finding a printer that can print on them. Xerox machines jam easily (Kinko's wouldn't even let me try), but printers will work if the sheets are fed manually. You want to print your artwork as black against a clear background, just like any other silkscreening process.

This step works just like the video tutorial describes. Tape your art onto the clear registration panel, making sure to align it properly with the grid. You'll be able to move your T-shirt (or whatever) around to some degree on the platen to determine where your design will 'land', but you'll still want to make sure that the art is reasonably centered and straight on the registration panel. That goes on the bottom, the screen is next (raised corners up, I think - check the video), then the platen on top of that (felt side down). All of this goes under the lid, even though it looks like one of those layers should go on top of it. Once you get it all layered properly and weighed down, zap the emulsion with the exposure button (the one with the sun, I think). It's timed for eight minutes, and you won't need more than that. When you remove the screen, the design will look very faint. Don't freak out - just take it to the sink and rinse off the unexposed emulsion. The parts covering the black line art should rinse off, and now the screen should look more like you'd expect it to look.

After you've dried the screen off (I wipe it dry, then run it through the machine once), get your packing tape and tape off (on the flat-cornered side) the edges of the screen - at least from the silver frame to where the green emulsion begins. If you're worried about the emulsion being too thin in spots, try to tape over as much of the emulsion area (while not covering the open parts of the design) as possible.

Now you're ready to pull your design! This part is the same as the video, too - put the screen in the top of the lid (raised corners up) - your design should look the way it'd look on the product. Pull the protective sheet off the platen - that should reveal the sticky surface that'll hold your product down. Put the platen under the lid, and put the product on the sticky part of the platen. Place it carefully, making sure that the design will appear where you want it on the product.

Keeping the lid raised, pick your ink color and squirt a few lines of it across the top of the design. You don't have to go along the entire top of the screen - remember that the ink is only going to go through the screen where the design is revealed. Keeping the lid raised, use the squeegee to 'flood' the screen, dragging the ink down over the design. Now close the lid and drag the ink over the same area again, as demonstrated in the video. Practice will help you determine how much ink to use. Too much, and the design will look thick and clotted. Too little, and the design will look too light or uneven. Don't be too sparing with the ink, but try to 'flood' as simply as possible - don't drag over the screen multiple times before the final pull if you can help it. Lift the lid, and hang your product up to dry for a while.

If you're pulling a lot of products at once, eventually the ink will all get pushed to the botton of the screen. Use your spatula to gather up the excess and apply it back at the top of the design. Add more ink if needed.

Here's the last step. Once you're confident the ink is dry, either put your product in a heat press in accordance with the directions, or use a hand iron (with another cloth on top of your product) to 'fix' the ink. The demonstration at Maker Faire included cool little heat presses, but I haven't found them for sale anywhere. I bought a somewhat larger one to try in the future, but I hand-ironed the Comic-Con shirts. A heat press will probably run you another $400, so shop around before you buy.

Of course, there's the elephant in the room. Every single part of this system is proprietary. The good side of that is many of the materials are non-toxic/assumedly 'green', which is certainly not true for traditional silk-screening. You can rinse Yudu inks and emulsions down your household sink drain. On the other hand, if Provo Craft and Novelty (the maker of Yudu) goes under, you'll be left high and dry with no supplies to continue. If you want to make T-shirts for a family reunion, I guess this isn't much of a concern, but I'd assume anyone really wanting to invest in this would want to be able to use it for more than one or two major projects. I guess in today's economy, all you can do is hope for the best and try to get your money's worth out of it as soon as possible.

And there you have it! I'll try and update this post later concerning the color-fastness for the designs. Have fun!

Search Engines: A Toy Hunting Tutorial

Every once in a while, I'll get an email from a Flickr pal or blog reader asking me to help them find a toy. While I don't mind helping folks out, I think the hunt is part of the fun of collecting - while it can be frustrating, it's a blast to finally run across that elusive gewgaw that you've been searching for. Many people are amazed at how quickly/easily I can usually find something, but the search method is really quite simple. Here's how I do it:

Search engines are your friend - you can find almost anything online if you want to (and sometimes when you don't). Here's my three best guides when thrashing through the undergrowth of information:

1) Google - I guess that's pretty obvious, but maybe it's not so obvious that I favor the Google Product Search over regular ol' Vanilla Google. It's called "Shopping" in the topmost menu. Not only might you find what you're looking for, but since you're using the product search, it's probably for sale, too!

2) thefind.com - I just discovered this one. It may not be as powerful as the almighty Google, but it does turn up stuff that Google doesn't, so it's worth keeping in your backpack as another option. I have found toys here that don't show up in either of the other two methods.

3) eBay - This is especially good if your toy isn't currently available. I'm sure you've read my advice that I've written constantly in my Toy OTD columns about saving eBay searches - if you can't find your toy right away, you can save your search for up to a year, and eBay will automatically send you the latest results every day without you having to do anything! Pretty cool, huh? I generally find that almost anything I want usually turns up within a year.

So those are the tools that I use, but how do I use them? It's not super-tricky to use search engines, but it is a bit of a skill - or at least a way of thinking. Here's how to enter search terms into an engine for the best results!

Let's say you're looking for a toy from the latest Transformers cartoon. Right now, you don't know anything else but that. You can enter "transformers toy" into a search engine, but you'll get tons and tons of results to wade through. How do you narrow it down? Well, first you need to find out what the new show is called - that will distinguish it from all of the other Transformers programs that have aired over the last twenty-five years or so!

Maybe you've just seen a clip, (but not the opening title sequence). You can drop "transformers" into Google's Image Search, and look at a bunch of robot pictures until you find one that looks like the clip you remember. Every picture has a link to the original page it came from, so chances are you'll be able to figure out which program was the source of the picture. Since you're looking for a brand new show, you'll probably find it more easily, since fans of a newer program will be much more likely to jump online right away and post a bunch of stuff about it.

Another way to go is to enter "transformers fan site" into Vanilla Google, and find out about the show that way. More than likely, a huge group of internet nerds have already done a lot of the work for you!

Okay, now you know that the show (and the toy line) is called Transformers Animated. Generally, that should narrow things down sufficiently to find the toy that you want. But let's say that it doesn't - let's just say (for the sake of argument, because this will happen in other searches) that the websites that you found didn't have much more information than the title. So now you'll need to narrow things down a little further. The more specific you can be, the less digging through search results you'll have to do.

Who makes the toys? This can be really helpful to learn, especially if you don't have a lot of other information (or if the toy is an older one). You'll need to use a search engine ("transformers animated manufacturer"?), ask your robot geek friends, or chat with some online at a Transformers fan site. Most internet folks love sharing information (aka showing off their knowledge), and will be happy to help you!

By now, you've figured out that Hasbro makes a lot of the Transformers Animated merchandise. Okay, now you need to figure out which toy you want. Let's say it's an action figure (as opposed to bedsheets or something). Now you need to know which character you want. Hopefully by using one of the methods I've already mentioned, you can figure out which robot you want - for instance, you find out that the character you like best is the one that turns into a police car, and that its name is Jazz. Great!

Now you can jump onto any of the search engines you want and have a really good chance of finding exactly the figure you want (or at least thinning the results down to an acceptable amount). Here's some other things to keep in mind:

How big is the toy? - many characters (oh, say Batman for example) come in a very wide variety of sizes.

Can the name be misspelled easily? - I missed out on a bunch of eBay auctions for Dr. Seuss items because a lot of eBay sellers spelled it 'Suess'. Enter a few variations in your saved searches!

Be specific, but not too specific - you may have learned more about the toy you want than the seller by this point! Try more generic terms too, just in case, but add one really specific word to keep the results manageable. Most engines pick out keywords for additional results, but it's good to keep in mind.

Is there anything else distinctive about the toy? - is it an exclusive? Does it have a special name? Was it featured at only one toy show/online shop/convention? Who designed it? Who customized it? Etc.

Don't hunt on a deadline - some toys can take months or years to uncover. Be patient and thorough!

Well, that's the thinking that I use when I'm toy hunting. I hope these tips help you to find some long-loved, long lost toy. Good luck!

If You're Interested Dept.

I thought I'd write up a quick 'tutorial' on how I photograph my toys. Overall, I do it in a pretty straightforward way:

I use my dining room chairs to shoot my toys against. They're brightly colored and curved, so they make great backdrops, as long as the toy isn't very tall. I'll use one of the white chairs or one of the orange ones, depending on the color of the toy.

I usually shoot in my living room early in the morning (between 6 and 10 AM) to use as much natural sunlight as possible. I think the main windows face north, so depending on the time of year, I'll get plenty of light streaming in.

Since the seats of the chairs are curved, sometimes I'll put a sheet of foam core across it if I want to shoot multiple items. One toy might sit at a skewed angle, but I can usually compensate with the camera's angle. If the toy is too big to shoot in a chair, I'll plop the foam core on a stack of plastic tubs and shoot against a wall.

I use a Olympus Camedia C-3040 Zoom (3.3 megapixels). If you actually go to the trouble to get one of these cameras (it's five years old or more), be sure it has a memory card with it - they don't make the cards anymore, and to get one by itself would cost over a hundred dollars.

Ninety percent of the time, I use the macro setting (that's the flower icon on this particular camera), and auto focus (I think that's the default setting) with no flash. If the toy needs a longer depth of field (like a toy car), I'll use the manual focus. If it's the white backdrop, I'll aim the setup into the sun, keeping the whole thing out of full-blast sunlight, but not setting up in the shadows, either. If it's the orange backdrop, I'll aim it all against the sun - the light usually comes over the top of the chair at that time of day and gives me a nice rim-lit effect without washing out the toy or the background. If it's a small object, the orange will drop down to a nice, rich orange color. Using a higher camera angle and tilting down can help improve this effect.

I'll shoot ten or twenty pictures of each toy until I get the angle that I want - sometimes I have to 'find it'. If I'm worried that the auto-focus isn't cutting it, I'll shoot from a variety of distances to cover myself. Then I'll connect the card to my Mac and dump the shots into iPhoto. I'll pick my favorite and use the 'Adjust' tool to do some rudimentary tweaking - this usually involves sharpening, cropping, straightening and brightening the shot, since I don't use flash (I think the light from a flash looks unnatural most of the time).

Once I'm happy, I'll drag it onto my desktop and do the more serious fiddling in Photoshop, since it's a more powerful tool. That can involve separating the whole bg as its own layer, and assembling bits and pieces of multiple copies of it together, in case the natural color ramping isn't working the way that I want. Hue, saturation, contrast, paint flaws (clone paint is your friend) - it's all up for grabs. I have no problem with making the photo look better than the toy, but I try not to go overboard - sometimes I'm successful with that, sometimes not!

And that's it! I post them to Flickr and go on to the next toy. I have gone on to do a second or third shoot with a toy, or a second pass through Photoshop, but for the most part, I've got enough un-shot toys ahead of me that I try to keep moving forward.

Hope that was informative - let me know if you have any questions!

Vinyl Toy 'Tutorial'

Lately, I've gotten some e-mails asking for more details about my vinyl toy project. I thought it might be a good idea to adapt my responses into a blog post, so interested parties could use it as reference.

1) Do turnaround drawings of your character design - a front view, a profile, a rear view, and 3/4 front and rear views as well. If your figure isn't completely symmetrical, you'll need to draw both sides for the profile and 3/4 front views. Decide which colors you want to use for your character in the drawings. This'll be very helpful, regardless of which path you take next.

2) Hire a sculptor to sculpt a maquette of your character, or sculpt it yourself. If you hire someone, it's important that they have toy production experience, especially if you have any articulation (moveable joints) in your figure. You can either make single-piece figures (like a squeak toy), or add joints. Simplicity is usually best, and cheaper to manufacture. Make sure that either you A) make a toy that can stand well on its own, or B) include a stand with your toy, or sculpt a base that's attached to the character.

I hired Vin Teng of sculpster.com. Vin is very good at sculpting in a variety of styles, and great to work with. You'll have chances at this stage to give feedback, in case there's things about the sculpt that are not what you want. In my case, the tweaks were very minor - Vin did a great job of interpreting my drawings, and in some cases, improving them in 3-D. Vin's work cost a few thousand dollars, but it was well worth it!

If Vin's busy, try talking to END. I've never worked with him, but he has experience too, and he seems very versatile, too!

Vin is in Southern California, and END works in New Jersey.

3) Get your sculptor to make a casting for you from the original maquette. In my case, Vin did this as part of his fee. You'll need the maquette for the next step.

4) Make a color model/master with the maquette. That's a fancy way of saying, 'paint it exactly how you want the toy to look.' If you're not comfortable with your painting skills, hire someone to paint it for you. It's important that you be as satisfied with the result of each step as possible. Keep in mind that, like articulation, the more colors that you add, the more expensive it'll be to make.

5) You'll need to work with a factory overseas in order to mass-produce your toy. If you can, I'd try to connect with a experienced domestic company to act as a liason, as direct communication might be difficult. The company I work for has business connections with Gentle Giant, so I went with them - they make great busts and statues of Star Wars and Harry Potter characters, among other products.

They helped me to make the production mold from the maquette, and painting the color master (the latter cost me a few hundred dollars). They're going to help me handle the rest of production, including packaging the toy and shipping it to the U.S.

I'm not sure how willing they are to work with someone without the business connection. They seem very nice, so I'm assuming that if you can afford to pay them, they'll work with you. I'm going to make five hundred pieces in the first run of my toy. If you want to make less than two hundred, it'll be hard to get a factory to make your toys for you - most of them have production minimums. It's going to cost me about ten thousand dollars to make five hundred toys.

You'll also need to think about how you want your toy to be packaged - it could be as simple as a plastic bag with a hang card on top, or it could be very elaborate. Once you decide on what kind of design you want, you'll need to generate the box/packaging art, or hire someone to do it for you.

6) Once the toy gets back from the factory, you'll want to connect with a distributor (if you can) to help get them in stores, or you'll need to sell them yourself, either online, or at conventions. Try asking your favorite retailers for advice.

Right now, I've sent my color master to the factory, and I'm waiting to see production samples for approval, which I'm assuming I'll see before they make the whole run. Make sure to give yourself plenty of time between when you start planning, and when you expect to see the toy on a shelf - I budgeted a year, and hope to have the finished toy by this coming July.