DR.ME - Development

Practical

The decision was made to choose 4 natural patterns. We choose:

• Tree rings
• Fly wings
• Human finger print
• Fish scales

We spoke to the guys from DR.ME and they seem to really like the idea of marbling and the idea of natural patterns, so we began designing the patterns that would be cut out from the vinyl. 

Imogen began tracing the finger print and tree ring pattern. I started on the fish scales and the fly wings. We thought that DR.ME did a lot of work that was quite illustration based and because we wanted to do something refreshing, we decided to hand render the patterns and scan them in after. 

We had to make a decision about how well we thought the vinyl would cut. If the patterns are too intricate it can be difficult to remove them onto the transfer paper. We spoke to James (print technician) and he wasn't sure the vinyl could manage it. We simplified the images and made some mock ups:

You get a feeling of how it could possibly look, best case scenario! Hopefully our prints will be better then the Rama studio mock up prints I used.

Wood

Imogen was in town and decided to go into Clas Olsen to check out the prices of wood. Clas Olson have oak and pine in different sizes.

We found the wood that was appropriate in woodwork. We decided on birch ply -6mm. Originally we wanted to do it on 3mm but the technician said it would warp if it got wet - no good!

We also asked the technician about the vibrancy of the ink but he didn't know. We will have to do some tests on offcuts before we marble the actually cut out wooden boards.


Ink

We found some ink online as Rama couldn't suggest anything as Pebeo had gone out of business. We bought some ink off Amazon that had good reviews, touch wood its good ink (excuse the pun)

Vinyl

Me and Imogen met up to proceed with cutting the natural patterns into the vinyl. James sorted out the correct vinyl we would need and also he set up the machine. We printed the four vinyl's and removed the areas that we wanted the marbling ink to touch. 

It was really hard to remove the excess vinyl and leave the area we wanted to apply to the wood and resist the ink. James was really helpful. The best technique is to use a scalpel removing the excess patiently.