GotPrint, Overnight Prints, and iPrintfromhome: a Review

I've been doing a lot of print-ordering lately in preparation for a new string of mailers, as well as getting up an online shop, and as such I have been using some different print companies. I just got my new set of mailers today, and, well...I'm not particularly ecstatic about the quality. Rather than whine I thought I would do an overall review of different companies I have used for comparison as I figure it might be helpful for those of you wondering what companies to use for all your illustrative printing needs.

Thus far I have used 3 different companies for various printing functions: GotPrint.net, OvernightPrints.com, and iPrintfromhome. GotPrint and Overnight Prints are both more for marketing purposes, whereas iPrintfromhome does professional-quality prints (they offer both photographic prints and giclee fine art prints). GotPrint I found when I was in school and it was the stand-by for my classmates and I for our mailers as they offered a pretty quick turnaround, plus good prices (you can get 100 4x6 single sided postcards for $23.36, and 100 single sided business cards for about $9). I have ordered two sets of mailers from them, as well as my business cards and have been thoroughly pleased with the quality.

However, for my current set of mailers I decided to go with Overnight Prints. My pal Jade posted a review over their products recently, and they had a few things that I wanted to take advantage of. One, they offer smaller postcard quantities in their "value" line of cards (printed on a digital press rather than an offset press, as with their "premium" quality cards). I've been planning on opening an online shop that will offer both prints of my work as well as card sets, and the smaller quantities would be perfect for the latter. ONP also frequently offers coupons for their products, to that kind of sealed the deal. I ordered 25 value cards to test the quality for sellable notecards, as well as 100 premium cards to be used as mailers. I have used ONP in the past for holiday cards, as well as for some business cards I designed for my stepdad, and both times I was happy with the quality. This time...not so much.

 Original painting on the left, value card print on the right. The values are much, much darker.

There was a large discrepancy between the colors on the value cards and the original piece, although I will be the first to admit that may be due to monitor calibration and/or how the cards are printed. I ordered my Syd piece as a test print, and this piece is also featured on my new mailer.  The values look fine on the mailer, but not on the value card. I know the image above isn't great, so I'm including a scan of the card, as well.

The values are waaaaay too dark, plus it also printed rather "cool". While I wasn't too happy about that, the value cards are pretty cheap, even without a coupon, so I figure it will be something I may just have to play around with on the digital file.

 The 4x6 mailer. If you click on the image you can see the white dots along the left side of the card.

My mailers came out...okay. The cardstock and glossy coat on the front are fine, and the same quality as GotPrint, but the values aren't as dark as I wanted. The black background isn't "black" enough. It almost seems like a "light black", if that makes sense. I wanted a black-black. Plus to the left of the pig head there are a bunch of tiny, white dots. I thought it was maybe just on one, but no, it's on all 100 mailers. I'm also not super enthusiastic about ONP's packaging. While my 4x6 mailers came packaged in a form fitting box, the value cards were thrown in a cardboard envelope, leaving plenty of opportunity for their corners to get bent in the shipping process.

All in all, I'm not super happy about my ONP cards. I will probably give them another chance with the value cards (after all, I'm only out about $3.95 with the sale price...not a huge loss), but with the mailers I could have gotten exactly what I wanted from GotPrint for the same price.

**7/26: I emailed ONP customer service over the weekend about my disatisfaction, and they responded that day. As of today they offered to either reprint my cards or give me a refund, provided I send back defective cards. I will do another update once I receive my reprints, but for now kudos on the excellent and prompt communication.

**8/3: Received my reprinted mailers today and they look great---blacker blacks, and no white spots! Plus a super fast turnaround...just a little over a week! Thanks to Overnight Prints for great customer service and for taking care of my order.

And now for something completely different...iPrintfromhome. Like I mentioned above, iPrint is for professional prints, so they are a bit of a different animal. I don't have scans of their stuff as a lot of it would be hard to register as a 2D picture on a computer monitor, so I will try my best to describe their work. I ordered a couple kinds of prints: fine giclee prints, lustre photographic prints, and metallic photographic prints. Since I wanted to see how a collection of my pieces looked on the different papers, I resized some of my pieces and formatted them on an 8.5" x 11" image so I could just order a few 8.5" x 11" prints on different papers. I also resized my "Which One's Pink?" series to ACEO-sized prints and ordered a 5 x 7 metallic print. Everything was good quality; I just preferred certain pieces on different papers. I found that some of my pieces (the Greyhound, Animal Farm, and Human Rights poster) looked better as lustre prints as the blacks looked "blacker", while others (my Drawgasmic and The End bomb) looked better as giclee prints as the values were too extreme as lustre prints. My Pink series looked good as both lustre and metallic, though I prefer the metallic as it gives a really nice sheen to the pieces that really makes some of the colors pop. I plan on ordering real prints as soon as I can afford them. Fortunately iPrint has really great prices! Photographic prints are very affordable, and the giclee prints are, too, especially considering they are archival, high quality prints. If you're thinking about ordering prints, I definitely suggest doing the test print route. And for first time customers, they will send you a monitor calibration kit that includes samples of their papers so you can see the difference between matte, lustre, glossy, metallic, and giclee prints. I highly recommend them!

Whew! Was that a long enough post for you? I promise to have real artwork up on here...sometime...soon. I plan on doing a post on the Sketchbook Project, which I signed up for, so definitely expect to see process work from that. Also, you may have noticed I broke down and joined Twitter. Feel free to follow me! I promise to attempt to keep it professional and avoid any "this is what I had for lunch today" posts, though I can't promise there won't be an occasional Floydgasm on there.

Drawgasmic!

So my piece for Drawgasmic is finally up on their website. Sure, I put it up here, but you can actually BUY the piece on the website, if you feel so inclined (c'mon, you know you wanna...). You can click the link below to go directly to the page. Be sure to check out all the other awesome art that's being put up!





 Also, if anyone that reads this blog happens to be in the London area on July 13th, you should totally check out the Interstellar gig at 93 Feet East. The event is benefitting the Syd Barrett Fund, and tickets are only £5. The lineup features Skinbat Scramble, All Schools Are Strange, and Department S. And for those of you that don't care to actually watch the bands play, you can peruse prints of my book illustrations which will be on display at the gig. For all the nitty gritty details, please visit the events page on Interstellar.

 **Edit: Check out that sweet gig poster. Ohhhh, yeah!

Over The River

So tonight I had a wonderful opportunity to see a lecture by, as the marquee says, the world-renowned artist Christo.

 

I found out about the lecture through work and managed to sign up in time to get a spot. As you can imagine, the lecture sold out. The lecture focused on Christo's proposed piece "Over The River"---a temporary work of in the same vein as Christo and Jeanne-Claude's previous works. The piece would involve 5.9 miles of silver fabric suspended over the Arkansas River between Salida and Canon City, Colorado.

I was very excited about getting to go to the lecture as I am a fan of Christo and Jeanne-Claude's work. And really, how many times to you get to see an incredibly influential artist talking about his work?

If you want to read more about the project, or find out how to get involved, you can visit the official Over The River site.

Interstellar Overdrive

For anyone that's been curious to see the illustrations for my book, I've got some good news...the pieces are now up online thanks to the wonderful folks at Escape Artists and the Syd Barrett Fund. They've been diligently working on creating a new interactive site for the Fund and it launched this weekend. I must say, I am very impressed with the result. In addition to being the new online home for the Fund, the site offers visitors the option to create their own profiles, share images and videos, and connect with other Syd/Pink Floyd fans. My book has its own page that features both illustrations and my proposal for the project.

I'm really happy we could get the illustrations online as up to this point they haven't been viewed by fans. I'm hoping it will generate more interest in the project and provide us with some great networking and marketing opportunities.

If you're a Syd/Floyd fan and want to stay in touch with what the Fund and Escape Artists are doing, I highly suggest making yourself a page! It's a great way to stay updated with a wonderful organization, as well as meet some like minded people. And all in the name of Syd! Just hop over to Interstellar.org.uk. And don't forget to friend me and my book.

Illustration Friday: Trail

I'm kind of cheating a little bit on this one as I actually did this piece some time ago for another project that came to naught and it just happened to work with IF's theme this week. But I'm submitting it anyway.

P.S. I'm not anti-snake, just anti-ATV and the destruction their drivers cause when they off-road in prohibited areas.

A pig wearing a gas mask? Sure, why not?

It's been a bit since my last update, but I do have a bit of art and a bit of news. First up, the color version of the Quiet Use poster.

Next up, I'm pleased to report that I got accepted into the Drawgasmic exhibition happening in July in St. Louis. My work will be up at the show, as well as in a coffee table book detailing the exhibition. My old art school pals Cassie Dixon, Pam Wishbow, and Mallory Hodgkin are also in the show. I got in a bit late in the game and had to get cracking on a piece since the exhibitors needed it by June 1st. I finished it up today and got it in the mail, but not before getting a scan of it for posterity.

New scanner!

After a lot of waiting, I have finally managed to upgrade to a new scanner. I found it necessary to upgrade for two reasons: 1) as a budding professional illustrator, I need something than can take quality scans so I can send finished work to clients, and 2) Epson was no longer offering driver updates for my OLD Epson Perfection 1200U scanner, so when I obtained my new laptop back in July I couldn't use my scanner as it wasn't compatible with Windows Vista. Not having a scanner was driving me crazy as I use one not only for scanning in finished illustrations, but also to enlarge smaller thumbnails and drawings. Using a digital camera to take pictures of sketchbook work was just not cutting it. My new scanner arrived this morning and I was absolutely ecstatic to receive it.

I ordered a Epson Perfection V700 which was recommended by a very good friend and former professor, and I have to say I am very pleased. It has great scanning quality. The only downsides are it's expensive (though not as much as the Expression graphic arts scanners---whew!), and its maximum scan area is 8.5" x 11.7". I tend to work small, so it's not a huge drawback for me, plus with Photoshop's photomerge option, I can scan larger works in pieces and have the program put them together, so it shouldn't slow me down. I highly recommend getting one of these if you have the money---it's a lot up front, but it's an investment and well worth it if you're a professional illustrator.

And since I finally have access to a scanner again, I can prove I haven't been slacking on creating new work...

This is a piece I've been working on for the Quiet Use Coalition, based in Colorado. They promote "quiet use" recreation (such as hiking and biking) and work to protect public lands from illegal motorized recreation, which can destroy the serene mountain landscapes and upset wildlife through excess noise. The piece isn't completely done as I plan on adding a color to both the background and the text in Photoshop. I'll post the finished piece once I have it the way I like it.