ImagesMagUK_December_2021

www.images-magazine.com DECEMBER 2021 images 29 KB TIPS & TECHNIQUES www.lynka.eu The award-winning team at Lynka in Poland came up with this impressive print – despite having only an 8cm-wide photo to work from. John Lynch and Marta Wolos reveal the work that went into producing this high-definition design for construction giant Komatsu Anatomy of a print Can a bulldozer be considered a work of art? If you ask Komatsu – one of the world’s largest manufacturers of construction machinery – the answer is a resounding ‘Yes’. The Japanese company supplies equipment that works in the most demanding conditions. And guess who makes the largest bulldozer in the world? You got it, Komatsu. Bearing all this in mind, when our client asked us to deliver some promotional printed garments for Komatsu, we understood that this job was all about power. And, of course, size really does matter! It took dozens of hours to arrive at the final version of the project. The design was supposed to be spectacular and large, but the client’s input file was an 8cm-wide picture of the machine. Creating a 40cm-wide print out of this was quite a challenge. In addition, the design needed to be adaptable enough to be printed on to a wide variety of T-shirt colours. T-shirts were a crucial element of the entire mix of kit and merchandise created by our client and targeted at people from the construction industry – typical hard-working guys. Our graphic designer worked with the client to create a design that reflected the power, strength and scale of this giant gear, with the goal of making a static image come alive. When you look at the shirt, you might just get the impression that the excavator bucket is about to move. The basic T-shirt used was from the Stanley/Stella collection, the 100% organic cotton Creator in anthracite. We used the following screens (mesh by Saati on Newman Roller frames): for the first down and the white, 260 lpi; for other colours, 280 lpi; and for the puff print, mesh 110 lpi and Capillex 300. The screens were made on M&R i-Image STE equipment. The idea was to use a 3D puff technique to emphasize the structure of the chains on the vehicle’s tyres. In addition, to strengthen the 3D effect, the photo was subjected to a series of retouching treatments using tools from the Healing Brushes palette (more usually used to process photos of models in fashion magazines). The puff print technique was implemented as an underprint with a white 3D pigment under selected elements and all colours, right after the first down and the second white. The order of printing was: first down – flash – second white – flash – puff – flash – and then the other colours. We used plastisol inks by Rutland Group. The shirt was printed on an automatic M&R Challenger 18/16 press with three flash dryers. The print was cured in an M&R Sprint 2000 gas dryer. The original background, which almost blended with the foreground object of the machine, was removed and replaced with specially selected elements of grey stones and sky in order to make the graphics realistic. It was also crucial to add abrasions so that the entire print would blend into the T-shirt.