Free Comic, Cheap (sorta) Poster

[spqrblues]

Anyone know of good alternatives to a storefront on CafePress for selling posters and magnets online? Or is CafePress pretty much the best option out there?

11x17 feels a bit huge considering how small I tend to draw :) What do you think? I'll see what other sizes they offer.

Comments

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

I hear Cafepress T-shirts are low quality.

If you didn't want to make a profit, things like Snapfish.com, Flickr.com, and Kodak.com can make posters and magnets of your stuff.

If you can produce the items yourself, you can sell them via Etsy.com, Ebay.com, or PayPal.com.

I don't know of any other source though to both create and sell the items for you.

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

The first mug I ever got from Cafepress was very nice quality, and I think I had them make some t-shirts that held up well (nice printing, so-so t-shirt)--but that was years ago and the quality may have declined since then. Also for t-shirts I'd hire on Fluff in Brooklyn (http://www.fluffinbrooklyn.com) to do them for that personal artsy touch.

I'll have a look Snapfish etc.

[wootsauce.livejournal.com]

Man, I could use this info as well. I have a big (16 x 20? 20 x 24? Something in that range) drawing that people have requested prints of but the only things I can think of are cafepress and deviantart (lame) and printing it out for $1/inch at school (seems excessive for black and white.)

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

I might order poster prints from each of the online places to see if the quality is good enough (whenever I can put together the monies for the experiment).

That must be amazing quality for $1/inch! I imagine that's for a gallery-ready archival art print, but it still seems excessive--you could hire some monks to copy your drawing in their scriptorium for that kinda money, I'm just saying....

[wootsauce.livejournal.com]

It's a really BIG, really wide, super magical epson printer. It's like $1/inch but like 40 or 50 inches wide. Still excessivefor black and white line art though! It's mostly there for digital photos and, I think, design students.

fishmeal

[(Anonymous)]

I think your drawings with do well in an 8 x 10 format with maybe a half-inch margin for matting. Experiment with an inkjet printer and photo quality printing. When I bought a piece from Diane sprinkle, that's what it looks like she did. Although it was not 8 x 10. It was some really weird size and I had to have it mounted on a nice black background before putting it into an 8 x 10 frame.

Don't worry about drawing small. I love Hudson River Valley school of painting. One of the most impressive pieces I've seen was a tiny 5 x 7 painted by an engraver using a single hair brush. This person captured the patterns of moss on boulders in the foreground. You could almost tell the kind of suits people were wearing in the background. You can see individual strands of grass and leaves on the trees. I swear I stood there for at least 10 minutes just moving back and forth in front of that painting.

If the standard inkjet printing works, I say just do it that way in the beginning and when you become famous, then you can have a high-quality lithographic prints made. Stock 8 X 10 manila envelopes and sheets of cardboard (off the shelf stuff) and if people format their addresses the right way, you can print it on a piece of paper, cut it out, and then use clear packing tape to stick it to the envelope. Yes, yes we know you think you're a flake but what creative types aren't :-)

Re: fishmeal

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

I asked a pretty popular online artist once where she gets her shall-we-say mature art printed, and she suggested the inkjet route. I even priced the inkjet brand she suggested. I'll at least look into that again at some point.

I'd always thought those Hudson River Valley paintings were all done to enormous scale. A friend lent me a book on miniature portraits. I'd like to get back into painting, and as far as I'm concerned, the smaller the better :)

(I'd be more verbose, but I'm absolutely falling asleep at the keyboard... whew...)

[amedia.livejournal.com]

This is fabulous! I love the reference to Guy Noir.

Hey, can you also do a poster of ... drat, I forget what day it is - the Felix pinup artwork? The one where Mus is saying "No one wants to see that" and Spendusa is saying "I've already seen it"?

p.s.

[amedia.livejournal.com]

I went to your blog to look for it - faster than going back through the comic genesis site day by day - and hey, you changed the name of the blog! Love it!

Here it is! This one! I want this one!

[amedia.livejournal.com]

http://meritahut.livejournal.com/135077.html

Re: Here it is! This one! I want this one!

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

I'll see what can be done :)

[seian.livejournal.com]

Zazzle.com works well for me, though you get very fixed profits. (10-17%) Very nice printing jobs, though.

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

I'll see how setting up a shop with them works. Mostly I just want the pricing and shipping to be reasonable--it kinda ruins the convenience if it cost a fortune to get the item to anybody :P

[kit-the-brave.livejournal.com]

I would so totally buy SPQR Blues magnets. I have at least 2 square feet of book cart that needs decorating. (Although Saturnalia!Felix might not be "work-safe"... :D)

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

You could dress him in those magnet outfits they have for kitchen-magnet Michelangelo's David :D

[kit-the-brave.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's awesome!

... Except I have a hard enough time keeping my coworkers from stealing my cart as it is. If it had a dress-me-up Felix on it, I'd never see it again!

*pictures staff dressing Felix*

*dies* :D