Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

So what's the difference between plotted and printed artwork?

lostpixels.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 85 posts

Re: So what's the difference between plotted and printed artwork?

#41

Post by dylan604 »

buffet_overflow wrote: post #14
LinuxAmbulance wrote: post #8

I always thought of plotters as legacy tech, but considering the variety of marking tools you can attach to the head, I'm wondering if I should get one. Does anyone know of an inexpensive plotter you can buy or build?

I made one for roughly $100 USD from an Arduino, steel rods, some stepper motors, and some 3D printed parts. Having an existing 3d printer is a bit “draw the rest of the owl” for this, but being able to extend and modify a device like a pen plotter is pretty nice.

But wouldn't you need to have the plotter working to draw the rest of that owl? so it seems like a chicken and egg situation as well

Re: So what's the difference between plotted and printed artwork?

#42

Post by coldcode »

I only make art designed to be printed on 10-12 color large format inkjet printers. Making plotter art is not inherently better or worse that printing, it's just a different type of art. I love what people do with plotters, but I just prefer doing printed versions, since what I make is often not possible with a plotter, as I deal in pixels (up to 200+ megapixels), and plotters deal in vectors. It's like Photoshop vs Illustrator, the don't compete as much as specialize in different things. https://andrewwulf.com if interested.

Re: So what's the difference between plotted and printed artwork?

#43

Post by NelsonMinar »

LinuxAmbulance wrote: post #8

I always thought of plotters as legacy tech, but considering the variety of marking tools you can attach to the head, I'm wondering if I should get one. Does anyone know of an inexpensive plotter you can buy or build?

AxiDraw from Evil Mad Scientist was what a lot of us were buying a few years ago. He's now part of Bantam Tools and is making a thing called the NextDraw. Same design but better built and a lot more expensive. https://bantamtools.com/collections/bantam-tools-nextdraw

There's a world of cheaper unbranded Chinese plotters that folks are using that seem to work well. Quality does matter, you want something very precise and stable.

Re: So what's the difference between plotted and printed artwork?

#44

Post by NelsonMinar »

mattdesl wrote: post #23
NelsonMinar wrote: post #7

I love plotter art and have dabbled a bit myself. The really fun part is how pen-on-paper is not completely reliable or a perfect line. You get a little texture if the pen skips. You can use watercolor pens that bleed. You can get crazy with something like Copic markers on Yupo paper so the whole thing stays wet and smears for minutes. It's part of the art. This bit from the article made me laugh ruefully though: "it…

A lot of it comes down to which pens you happen to have - I’ve had some success with Sakura gelly rolls for white, and also more recently have been enjoying sharpie creative acrylic markers which has a moderately opaque white ink. I’ve also had some really frustrating experiences with some other pens and instruments!

JetPens has been an invaluable resource for learning about and buying pens. Their blog is great: https://www.jetpens.com/blog

Re: So what's the difference between plotted and printed artwork?

#45

Post by snoman »

coldcode wrote: post #42

I only make art designed to be printed on 10-12 color large format inkjet printers. Making plotter art is not inherently better or worse that printing, it's just a different type of art. I love what people do with plotters, but I just prefer doing printed versions, since what I make is often not possible with a plotter, as I deal in pixels (up to 200+ megapixels), and plotters deal in vectors. It's like Photoshop vs…

I’m sure you know this but it took me entirely too long to really understand and feel the satisfaction of taking and printing my own photos.

It’s very accessible these days to have a finished piece of art that’s all yours - even with little artistic ability.

Re: So what's the difference between plotted and printed artwork?

#47

Post by m463 »

Reading this, I think of paper technology that has probably been lost.

I remember using flatbed plotters with a "static-cling" button. (maybe HP?)

you clicked the button out, put paper on the flatbed, then clicked the button in and a static charge sucked the paper down and held it in place.

You would generate your plots using a language that could select various color pens, move to x1,y1, pen down, move to x2,y2, pen up, etc...

I think better printers and then inkjets are what finally killed them off.

Re: So what's the difference between plotted and printed artwork?

#48

Post by TheGoodBarn »

I splurged on a iDraw H SE - A3/A2 earlier this year and have been coding / making birthday cards for friends and family all summer.

I feel like I get asked a lot the same questions and I think this article describes it best. Like yes I could have just upgraded to a nicer printer, but there is something fun about the process of getting an artwork plotted that makes it fun for me.

I need to upload some of my plots to share.

---

On a similar note for others who want to get into this, there was a thread awhile back on "What is the 90% activity in your favorite hobby", for example sanding taking 90% of the time for woodworking. For pen plotting the 90-95% is the art side. Taking images, converting them into g-code either via SVG or other processes, or writing code to make generative art, that is the 90%.

At the end of the day the pen plotting itself at the surface level is a projection of the effort taken to generate the art. Where it gets really exciting is the capabilities and unique aspect of the medium (like touching on white ink or watercolor) that create truly unique ways of presenting the art.

--

Some related subreddits:

https://www.reddit.com/r/PlotterArt/

https://www.reddit.com/r/PenPlotters/

Re: So what's the difference between plotted and printed artwork?

#49

Post by pimlottc »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #43
LinuxAmbulance wrote: post #8

I always thought of plotters as legacy tech, but considering the variety of marking tools you can attach to the head, I'm wondering if I should get one. Does anyone know of an inexpensive plotter you can buy or build?

AxiDraw from Evil Mad Scientist was what a lot of us were buying a few years ago. He's now part of Bantam Tools and is making a thing called the NextDraw. Same design but better built and a lot more expensive. https://bantamtools.com/collections/bantam-tools-nextdraw There's a world of cheaper unbranded Chinese plotters that folks are using that seem to work well. Quality does matter, you want something very precise…

Looks like the Bantam Tools ones start at just under a thousand. How much were the AxiDraw units originally?

Re: So what's the difference between plotted and printed artwork?

#50

Post by cubefox »

alt227 wrote: post #11
ziml77 wrote: post #4

Printers using CMYK isn't strictly true, right? Aren't you able to choose the ink colors when getting prints professionally made?

At work we have CMYKW printers, which add an extra channel of white ink to the mix.

To print on non-white paper? But I think then the ordinary cyan, magenta and yellow inks can't be used. Normally those are translucent in order to create red, green and blue via subtractive color mixing. E.g. overlaying yellow and magenta dots creates a red dot.

But if the paper can't be assumed to be white, CMY need to be opaque, otherwise yellow on black paper would just look black. Then you can no longer create red, green and blue. So you need additional red, green and blue pigment, likewise opaque. So "CMYRGBKW". Then the other colors can be mixed via dithering the eight base colors as usual.

Or maybe your printer still needs white paper, and the white pigment has some other use?

Post reply on HN