Success Stories Ep 90 - "The Courtroom Screen Printer"

One of the things that I've always enjoyed is talking about art with our other artists.  On today's Success Stories podcast, we'll wade forehead deep into some tasty art ways with my friend Jon Anderson with XLNT 3D Art. 

Jon has been designing amazing t-shirts for years and now, he applies his craft to something completely different: courtroom graphics for trials. So, t-shirts, courtroom exhibits, it's all a design project for Jon!

It's gonna be a great show as we'll discuss design, inspiration, and more than likely some artificial intelligence stuff too!

Transcript

Marshall Atkinson 
One of the things that I've always enjoyed is talking about art with our other artists. On today's Success Stories podcast, we'll Wade forehead deep into some tasty art ways. My friend John Anderson has excellent 3D art. John has been designing amazing T-shirts for years. And now he applies his craft to something completely different for room graphics for trials. Oh my god, right. So T-shirts, courtroom exhibits—it's all a design project for John. It's going to be a great show, as we'll discuss design, inspiration, and more than likely some artificial intelligence stuff, too, because John and I both have a fascination with that. Right. So, John, welcome to the Success Stories podcast.

Jon Anderson 
Thank you. Appreciate it.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, and you've been at this a long time, probably as long as I have, right. 2030 years, right? Yeah.

Jon Anderson 
Yeah. Since before, satisfying statelessness before computers.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, me too. Like word like caveman. Like, we used to roll out the stone tablet, you know,

Jon Anderson 
a bar and stack cameras.

Marshall Atkinson 
All that stuff, right? And so anyway, I'm not you know; I don't know if you know; many people who might be listening know who you are. But once you just give us a quick background on what you're doing now, And then. And then part two of that is how you got started with the Traveling Circus. Right? So take us back to the early days of, you know, what you always wanted to do this year. I was doodling on the back of your test in grammar school, whatever, right? I want to know all that. Right? So, what are you doing now? And then, where did you come from?

Jon Anderson 
Okay, so my main thing now is, like I said, litigation graphics. And I got into that by accident while I was in college. And I never left because that provided extremely well for my family, and I saw the value of drawing a circle. In high-state, high-exposure litigation is so much higher than drawing a circle or a shirt. But I love you, you know; either way, it's a circle. And I'm using the same software and the same tools, you'll see, but my passion is still a little bit with the t-shirt because that's where I started. But so when we do the graphics for litigation, we're telling the story; that's a big thing, and, you know, for working for the defense, that's who you're working for the plaintiff; that's who you're trying to convince a judge or a jury that their story is right. And it makes sense. And the best way to do that is with pictures, right? A picture's worth 1,000 words. And so, and a lot of time, and that's the big part of the testimony. And then the challenge in it is that it can't be too biased on top of it, so it can't be too good. Or that the judge will actually say, Hey, you know what, this is a disadvantage to the other side. And so the game is really interesting. I call it a game because, as I learned by becoming an expert witness, it's sort of like a game. The people that are involved at different levels—it's not a game; it's high stakes. But you know, when you're in that environment, especially in the US now, it's a little more rigid in the US than it is in other countries, as we're a super litigious society. So you think it is really advanced in the US? Yeah, there's all kinds of foundational stuff to get that work in, and people fight it, and they're looking for holes in it to destroy it and kick you out. Or it's sometimes, and I'm good at this. I found a niche in it and learned how to use other people's graphics against them. So, and that's kind of it sounds bad, but it's fun. Because when they spend a ton of money on stuff, then you can find the problems in it. And instead of trying to get excluded, you use it against them. I mean, so

Marshall Atkinson 
what's the art jujitsu

Jon Anderson 
the great word port art did. But I found an interesting thing, and again, because of the restrictions and, I think, the level of exposure and intensity, sometimes it doesn't allow you to be super creative. And so, that's why I've always done the t-shirt work, which was my first thing that got me into the industry. And T-shirts are fun. I don't have to worry about getting excluded. You know, somebody might say I don't like it or, you know, the client doesn't like something or whatever it is, but it's cool seeing your work on a shirt, and when it goes out and my kids don't run around going, Oh, can I see your courtroom graphics? But when they see a cool feature that I get to be a part of making, they want to wear it, and I get one that feels pretty cool to my kids, who run around with shirts, and they feel that way. They have shirts with my artwork on them, and that's kind of cool. My blood is gloomy, and

Marshall Atkinson 
There's nothing cooler than a t-shirt. And I think that's why we get sucked in. Right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. I've been Thomas for a long time. And you know, I did T-shirts when I was in college. Just because I was in college and college students, we like T-shirts. And I was designing that. And then, you know, I did that after that. And then I decided to go back and get my master's degree, which I didn't finish because I started a shirt company to pay for my school. And I like the t-shirt part of it more. Right? And guess what? You know, that was 1999–92 doing the shirts. And then I started working for a shop, and 93 Yeah, because guess what they go, Hey, we got this new thing called a Mac. You should learn to use this new program called

Jon Anderson 
flourish everywhere the Mac's first came out little tiny box it was compared to today. It's a Photoshop.

Marshall Atkinson 
This is new, saying you should learn it, and like, oh, what is this? And that's how I got sucked in. So, you know, you were in college? Where did you go to school?

Jon Anderson 
Well, the funny thing is, my first thing was marine biology. I didn't know I could make money with art. I just did it for some cash and fun. And so I thought you're supposed to go out and have these big careers. And I worked in marine biology. So I was going to school for marine biology. I worked at the aquarium in Baltimore. And, but all the time, I was even doing my science career. I was always doing brochures, and I was making side money for shirts. And I was doing point-of-purchase displays for wherever I was working. So eventually, I got burned out when I got burned out of. And I got burned out of the science thing. I dropped out of college for a little while. I didn't take a break, and I'm burned out. So then I pursued art full-time without a college degree. And then I got into the Maryland Institute of Art, which was cool but so expensive. was like 100,000 a year, and that was 1991. Wow. Yeah. And I had gotten a scholarship to get in, which was great, you know, but it was only like $6,000 a year, which wasn't going to offset that $25,000 a year for me because I was paying for myself. Yeah. So I continued to work. And it was in the t-shirt companies. And I enjoyed it. And then eventually I went back to school, probably in 1995. I think it was when I went to school at the Colorado to depart, which doesn't ignore the fact that the fact that the Art Institutes exist anymore. They found out they were profit-making schools or something. I don't know. They eliminated all envelopes. I'd agree to that.

Marshall Atkinson 
Well, I had. I had one recruit me back when I was in high school, but I got a full-ride scholarship to Florida State for art. And so let's write it down because it didn't cost me anything.

Jon Anderson 
Well, I was okay, so this was a little better. I think it was fine. It took me three times to get in. But I did get accepted into the Ringling art. Oh, great. Now down, and then a third photo of Florida. And it took me three times to get in there, and I just kept trying because that was like my dream. And so while I was in school for 3D animation in Colorado, I got in there. And I said, Well, can I transfer my credits because it was going to be like $125,000, and I was in 1997? Like, 96, I got anything 96. And I was like, No, no, no, we restart you. None of your credits are going to transfer. We're going to teach you the right way. And how's that? I've got to take math, English, and everything like that to get the art part. But, like, the foundation I had to do, and they're like, yes. And so I said, I don't want to do that. And I said, How about scholarships and funding? We don't give scholarships. Everybody here is really good and talented. So if you got in, you're good enough to get in. So there's no scholarship. If you can't afford it, you need to let us know, and we'll put somebody else in your spot. And so I had to think hard about that. I didn't want to be 125,000 in debt coming out of school. I had had scholarships and funding to go to the Art Institute. So I didn't know, and that kind of sucked, but you know what I've done, okay? I think I've done really well for the school there, but it is good. Yeah, and I think just getting accepted in there was kind of cool, but you know, whatever I had to make long-term, these Asians and you know, so I graduated from artists to what a degree in computer animation I wasn't going to there's they don't teach degrees and t-shirt art, I looked at illustration. But everybody at that time was starting to get in, like desktop publishing and graphic design, and when I noticed everybody was getting in the graphic design fitting, Macintosh started to really become extremely popular.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, and I didn't know Quark when a crappy program out loud god

Jon Anderson 
Yeah course.  I got a story later pretty about that. So yeah, learning QuarkXPress. And of course, when I was in Colorado, that's where their headquarters were, doing some of that out there. It was good for what it was, you know, for page layout and stuff. But that wasn't. I didn't enjoy page layout and desktop publishing because I wanted to do illustration and graphics, but when everybody's mother started, there was a point where I felt like that, like everybody was starting to do graphic design from their house. And I started noticing that the salaries and the money started to drop a little bit. Right, you know, still high, the higher end. But it was starting to become a little more crowded; the space was coming and going. So I got into computer animation, because that was a very blue ocean. It was extremely hard to do, and a lot of people were washing out of it. Then I noticed that, checking with the local companies around me, most of them couldn't do it. So I said, I'm going to do the hardest thing possible. So I could try to make the most of it. And that got in. And that was good. And so, while I was going to school, I was working for a t-shirt company. The pay was for the cost of living, though. And that was a hard choice to make believe in the T-Shirt Company because, at that time, I was getting royalties on designs. I did a lot of tourism-type stuff. And at the time, I was making a little bit more at the T-Shirt Company that I was making doing the 3D animation. But I knew long-term 3D animation and 3D graphics were where I wanted to be. And so

Marshall Atkinson 
I remember the Halcyon days where I used to get $1 A t-shirt royalty. Yeah. And it was really great to go to a football game and go. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to all the people around me for being aware of the stuff that I designed, and I made $1 on all those shirts. Oh, yeah. And like when the team won the national championship, you know, it was like a $30,000 payday for me, you know? 

Jon Anderson 
Yeah, those are huge. And I got to do some really cool stuff in Colorado. That was the biggest screenprint company I've worked for. They had two shifts, and we had five artists on staff. We once had about 20 to 30 people. After people I remember Colorado, half the people actually lived there were from Mexico, super friendly, but they would go home on the weekends sometimes or go visit family. And if we had a big T-shirt ROM, a lot of times we'd have phone calls from the border, like they'd stop them. And we'd have to guess they work for us. Yes, they have green cards. Yes, their gameplay leads to the macro-China print shirt. So we need our weekend because they can't get it back across the border. There wouldn't be the Brixton sometimes, but they're super friendly. And they ran two shifts. So it was like a day shift and then a night shift. That's how busy they were right now, which was fine. That was crazy. But we did stuff for the Colorado Avalanche sort of Denver Broncos. And that was kind of big, you know, baseball on now; it's kind of cool because the first company I worked for was small, which you normally see with upcoming companies—maybe 10 people at the most. And we did a lot of policing college stuff. Now, it was cool because we did everything college, all the college across up and down the East Coast. It was kind of cool. Nobody knew who I was. But I was like, I worked on that design. I worked on that. Yeah, I worked on that too.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah. So let me ask: do you think people with an art background can like to draw and paint even though we're not doing that? Well, we do computer graphics have an advantage over somebody who's just the I'm going to I'm just I'm just a Photoshop guy and I really can't draw. What do you think about that?

Jon Anderson 
I 100% believe that because when I switched, I was traditionally an airbrush artist. I used a pen and ink and charcoal and whatever, and I was trying to go into illustration markets where, as you know, we use Crescent boards, and they would peel that off and take it to service bureaus to scan and reproduce. When I started learning Photoshop, it was Photoshop version 1, but it was on a PC, not a Mac. In learning how to use the all my airbrush skills as the same information the same way the layer the same way I tried to taper things, bleed things off. Don't use black; use purples and blues to create shades of darker colors and things. And then what I was taught as a traditional artist because when I was airbrushing, it was kind of slick, and the traditional guys were really, really amazing. I got to intern with some of the top illustrators in Maryland; they did stuff from Merry Go Round back in the day and for these big, huge companies. And so the fact that I got in there with them made me so fortunate, and they were amazing. I wasn't that good. But they were amazing. But they really drilled that into me and said, Draw, draw, draw; it doesn't matter how good you can airbrush; if you're under the foundational drawing, it's crap. If it doesn't have the right perspective rules, if it doesn't have the right flow, if it doesn't have, and they said do things in black and white, because if you don't have contrast at all, it just blends, its poop. And they were right. So I noticed the difference, even in traditional days. But, you know, airbrush artists that were doing T-shirts and things, if they didn't have a good foundational drawing background or understanding of composition, their stuff didn't look as good as the person who, you know, could draw really well by hand. And that was totally transferred to the digital. And the same thing happened with animators back in 3D animation. And it was the same thing for people who want to be animators. And they didn't have a foundation for movement or understanding, even of drawing storyboards or figuring things out. And their animations are really stiff. And they didn't. And the best animators back in the day were originally traditional animators who understood squash and stretch, you know, and stuff. And so I think it doesn't mean people can't go out there and, you know, do arts for everybody, right? Yes, they were caves; people did art. So I mean, if somebody wants to go out there, and that's kind of cool with the AI art, some people don't like it, but somebody can go in there and have some fun and get something done. You know, but in the end, whether it's commercially viable or the difference between the commercial art of a professional artist versus an amateur, you'll always see the difference. And the people that are art buyers, the ad agencies, or whoever the production companies are—well, they know the difference when they're dealing with professional artists versus when it's not professional, especially when it comes to making changes. Handling, you know, making stuff look, because you're competing against professional artists, so you're not going to compete against them if you're not polished. And in anything else that doesn't have anything to do with drawing, But communication is a big deal. I know art directors and creative directors can get extremely frustrated. And so you have to be different, like a professional artist who normally knows how to communicate and take direction, keep their mouth shut, and listen to direction.

Marshall Atkinson 
I don't know about that.

Jon Anderson 
In the content battle, but when you understand the game, you know, I mean, you understand what an art director is dealing with their creative director, and you don't fight them necessarily to give them what they want, because they're dealing with a much bigger picture than the artists typically. But people that aren't trained don't; they're kind of egocentric, like a small child is egocentric, you know, because that's just how they are to survive. People sometimes forget to, you know, let go of that. And it's the same with T-shirts. People, sometimes I get lost, and I want to put more colors in something they're like. No, John, it can't be over two colors. I'm like, Klein can be more than two colors. And it's like, no, it's a budget thing. Yeah. 

Marshall Atkinson 
Well, yeah.  Well, so, you know, I appreciate all that. And I think the people who are really good have an ego, right? You have to have it. I'm an ego; you have an ego. Or good, have egos. Right. We know.

Jon Anderson 
That arrogant? Yeah.

Marshall Atkinson 
And so, yeah, exactly. So you can have an ego, but you can also be humble at the same time, and you can listen to other people's ideas. And I think it's really important to take directions, especially from the customer, and ask good questions. And one of my favorite questions to ask is what I call the pertinent negative, which is, you know, if you were to go see a doctor, right, they're going, you know, My knee hurts, Doc. And so the first thing you do is they weigh you in, take your temperature, listen to your blood pressure—you know, the blood pressure cuff and the whole thing—and they go, What's that got to do with my knee? But, you know, maybe you've got a blood clot or something, right? And yes, what's causing the issue? So the pertinent negative is ruling things out. And so a lot of people, when they get a creative brief, say, Here's all the things we want. But if you start listing all the things that we don't want, right, that helps us modify our choices, and then we can get to the end result faster because we know that we don't need this, that, or the other thing or whatever, and it really helps us.

Jon Anderson 
You know, like sometimes that helps them more. 

Marshall Atkinson 
It helped knowing where to go. Yeah, so we're doing a bass fishing tournament t-shirt, right? And it's been 10 or 12 hours since this amazing picture of this dude landing this monster fish in a boat. And then you present it to the client. And they go, No, we just want to fish. Right? Yeah, I just wasted all that time rendering all that stuff, right? And so that's why I think it's important to find out what they don't want at the beginning of the process. And that's the pertinent negative question: What don't you want? Right? 

Jon Anderson 
And well, of course, I'm going through that. Yeah.

Marshall Atkinson 
See, season, 

Jon Anderson 
Folks know that so well, and it's usually through some hard lessons. I don't know how many people have listened to that when they've been told that. But as soon as you upset a few people and lose some work, and as soon as you have to redo things over and over, you learn really quickly. I have to ask more questions. Even now, I've been doing this for 30+ years, and when I get myself into a situation, I'm excited. This thing sounds really cool. And I started to go after it. As you forget, it's somebody else's idea, sort of to initiate. Hey, I want you to do something like this. And then they turn you loose, and then it's in your head. And you have to remember that somebody else has a vision that you're going to actually try to create. And when I get started, that's like, what do we really think about this? And I was like, gum, I should have asked some questions. So even though I have to make a list myself, okay, these are the questions I'm going to ask people. Before I get going, and I am a screenprint, you really have to do that. Like, what kind of press do you have? How many colors? How long have you been printing? It sounds silly. But when you do work for somebody who's just starting out, they're sort of limited in their skill set versus somebody who's been doing it a long time. And you can do much more advanced artwork and separations; they can handle the same thing. And then, with litigation graphics, it's even more critical. Because you have to, we have to make sure we don't make stuff that can be used against us. And then we got to make sure it didn't help the other side, no matter what. So sometimes we don't even show everything because it's like, Well, this is the truth. And it's like, not that we're going to lie. But we're just not going to. We've been told before that we can't show that it's going to hurt us. So we're just going to show this over here, which is still the truth. My wife calls it selective truth, like if you lie, you are still lying because you didn't tell me everything right. But that's in court; it's different. It's a battle with the game. And then you know, but you have to know the questions. Can we show this? Can we show that? No, no, we don't want to show that we don't want to show this. Okay, good, then I know where we're going. Is it a defense or a plaintiff? Because if it's a plaintiff, we're going to make it look as scary and horrible as possible. And as real and as close to the humans that were involved. If it's defense, no, we're trying to minimize losses. So we're going to use crash test dummies instead of actual, real-looking people. So it's not; it's a little bit. What's the word? basis?  Yeah, it's a little bit colder, and my dispatchable. 

Marshall Atkinson 
And so, so, you know, you say you have selective truth, and my wife says I have selective hearing. I guess that's probably effective. Alright, so I think this is a good segue into my next question. Really, you know, as a fellow artist, I like to compare notes regarding process, right? And let's just stick to the t-shirt stuff. Right. So, okay, where do you go for inspiration or ideas? Right, like, how do you when you're creating a zine? You know, you have some strategies. My go-to process is square post nodes, where I'm scribbling, and it's just a messy thing. And I'm working on the layout: the scribble at the top—that's the headline—the oval—that's the picture—and the logo at the bottom. Those are little squares, and I go, No, no, I want to put the headline at the bottom and put the picture on top because I liked the foundation, you know. So I'm working all that out with just some little scribbles. Yeah, and then and then that forms the architecture; then I just need to build the thing, right? Yeah. How do you do it? 

Jon Anderson 
It's sort of similar. I used to use post-it notes, but I find them too small. I like to look, but I like to work bigger. So I usually buy, you know, paper pads from the Dollar Tree because they're cheap, right? You know, I can buy a book of what and I'll just sketch in there, but they're not really fancy sketches; I do the same thing. Sometimes I just block stuff in a block in big shapes. Is it going to be triangular? Is it going to be circular? Is it going to be square? You know, am I going to have stuff from an angle like you said? Is the hero stuff going to go at the top? You know, where's the text going? And I kind of get a flow I don't always get; I used to show that to the client and say, Hey, I'm going to go with these directions; they normally couldn't handle that information. I was looking at it all. What is this stick and crack?

Marshall Atkinson 
I do that all the time.

Jon Anderson 
It's especially not something sophisticated buyers can handle, but don't get discouraged. They think, You know what, my kid can do that? Why am I paying you to do this? And I'm like, because I don't want to waste money and time. So I want to point someone in the right direction? 

Marshall Atkinson 
Well, I've found that you've got a client who is constantly changing stuff. So their thing is that they have to put their change into the process, right? Because then they're not involved, right? So if you've got a client like that, a great way to do that is to just show them a sketch. And go, this is what I'm thinking; what do you think? And they're going to say, I really want to headline at the top, or Hey, can I forget to tell you the year 20? You know, it's got to go to the bottom.

Jon Anderson 
you've got to give him some ownership of and then they do that. And

Marshall Atkinson 
then you build the thing. They've already made their change, and it gets approved first time. Yeah,

Jon Anderson 
I learned another great secret from an amazing mentor I had way back in the day; he was in the late 90s. And it was in 3D animation. But he also came from the traditional world and had a print shop. And I would make some mistakes then, because I was still under 30. And so, this guy was in his 50s. And he looked at me like I am now, and he's like, Let me teach you a little secret, John, because we'd have to put together four or five cops. And we put it out there. And the client would pick something, or the boss at the time was our client. And he would always pick the thing we wanted; sometimes he wouldn't pick what we wanted. But he goes, You need to make a deliberate mistake in each one. And I'm like, What are you talking about? We're going to make everyone perfect, because we're going to be awesome. We don't make mistakes; there are zero defects. And he's like, no, no, no, no, no, no. But something obvious is very obvious that way, and he'll change it. And then he won't bug us about all the other stuff. But if you don't have anything obvious in there, you're going to go after something else. And that's going to be a pain. And then, and then he said, If you like that, if you like the design, make all the others crap in the best one that'll steer him towards it. And most of the time, that worked, but every now and then he would pick one of the crap ones. And then we're like, Oh, God, damn it, like that government. Yeah, like that, Jonathan, but they always put an egg in there to let the client change it. And that's what they focused on. And then they had ownership of what they had; you know, they had contributed, right? Yeah,

Marshall Atkinson 
I have used that strategy before. But I'll tell you, I never liked doing four versions of anything, because that's just a waste of time. I was trying to do it right the first time, right? We're just one.

Jon Anderson 
Yeah, no, I agree with that. And that's just how he had us work. And because we've worked for him, that's what I want for concepts—our  different versions—and then they weren't fully complete; they were just, okay, we'd go in this direction, like this, this direction, like this, this direction, like this. And they were sort of, you know, Pops, and then he said, I want to go in that direction. And that's the direction we would go, you know, right? And, but, but I still sketch sometimes; I used to use Google a lot. And I would use Pinterest and some websites that you know to kind of get my thoughts together. And now, with the AI, sometimes I use that stuff. But sometimes with the AI, I just go in, and especially if I'm not on the computer, I can use my phone. I'm just sitting around; I'll just put a bunch of text in, and I'll get all these ideas that get generated. And then I can either refine those or I might go create something from scratch and use those as a guide. Sometimes, I'm finding AI; it's a super fast way to do quick brainstorming.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, and I did the same thing. And we're going to get to AI here in a minute. But, you know, I think the idea here is that we need to get a handle on what we're supposed to do before we realize we spent a lot of time making the thing perfect. And really understanding the project and how it's going to print. And earlier, we're talking about, you know, maybe you're doing art for another shop, right? And it's really upsetting when you do stuff because I've done this where you do stuff for somebody and some six or eight color simulator process stuff and they call you and say This will print right what's going on. It's your art, and when they start asking me questions, you realize they don't even tension their screens. They're burning like a barn or something like you're doing the one coat you know, like, what's the lowest halftone dot you can keep an eye on? Like, what are you talking about? Okay, we've got problems. Yeah,

Jon Anderson 
yeah.  I ran into that quite a bit, and you interviewed somebody else that I talked to a lot, Bruce, Bruce Kittle, and we ended up with you. We both came up with, like we said, hey, we got to come up with an interview sheet. We call it a qualifier. Like when we work with somebody, you need to convince them that it's a good fit. And, you know, like, right, and I do that. How long have you been printing? What's your press? Are you manual or automatic? Do you double-coat your strings, single-coat, or two and one because that makes a difference when half-tones are used? Because some people are, you know, some emotions aren't good, but half tones and well, I don't have an exposure to an ABA homebuilt light table, like, oh, boy, okay, and I don't use film. I use Belen, which was like, Whoa, people are still using vellum. And yeah, you find out the halftone limitations. You know, some people don't want to go over 35 lines per inch versus others who can comfortably do 65. Yeah,

Marshall Atkinson 
I put my screens out in the sun.

Jon Anderson 
Yeah, old school gorilla screen printing.

Marshall Atkinson 
Like the back. We did, like in China 1000 years ago. That's all I do.

Jon Anderson 
Well, the screenprint has evolved a lot. But the basic foundation is sort of still there. And I think a lot of people have to learn over time, because I've seen my steps murder when I see the suits that I know are perfect. And then I see the printed shirt, and I'm like, God, there's so much ink on the shirt. What did you do? And then I find out a flash of 20 each color and a hint for each Colonel five or six times. And I'm like, just lay down some Legos. Put some lessons more like this. You don't have to make the shirt, Kevlar. Oh, you don't? Yeah, yes, everything. Well, I guess nowadays, maybe not the new thing with the screenprint of that bullet. We need them.

Marshall Atkinson 
Like once you hear so far, be sure to subscribe so you can get the latest from Success Stories. And now here's Zack shortly with the SMS spotlight, trying

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Marshall Atkinson 
As a fellow AI art enthusiast, I'm constantly blown away by the power of mid-journey, because that's what I like. And the other thing is out there, right? So, what are you using? Are you using it? How are you incorporating that into your daily workload? And let's just keep the t-shirt stuff because, you know, I know you might be using it for courtroom stuff. But this is a courtroom show. So

Jon Anderson 
Right? No worries.

Marshall Atkinson 
So we're building; we're building some art or doing something or generating ideas, or, you know, I know what I do, but I'm interested in how you're using it.

Jon Anderson 
I'm definitely using mid-journey. It's the one that I picked up and started using very quickly. I got into the paid version, and it paid for itself very quickly. So it was worth it. I'm blown away by how fast it's developing, because I can't even remember what you told me earlier about some stuff I need to try. I can't keep up with some of the new development tools in it. So you have to constantly work with it. Because how it was two years ago is, you know, quite different; it's a little bit different than it is now; it's got a lot more power now. And ability. But I definitely use it; I enjoy it. Sometimes I have to combine things I can't get one of. All-perfect image out of mid-journey. Sometimes I might use two or three ideas, and then I'll composite, you know, combine them in Photoshop or something. But I use it for simple graphic line work. Sort of, I mean, your newsletter really covers a lot of it, like those great bold logos and then sometimes full-blown color illustrations. And it's all over the gamut. And I've been extremely fortunate to work with a couple screenprint companies that are very open to it. They don't care how I get the art done as long as it's done and it's not, you know, taking somebody else's art or whatever. And so they've allowed me free rein to run with it, and that's how I've gotten better and been able to make money with it too.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah. I think a lot of people really want whatever comes out to use mid-journeys, my favorite, but you might be using Dolly Three, Stable Diffusion, Third Leonardo, or whatever. There's a bunch of them; I played around with all of them. I like the journey. But whatever you're using, okay? It doesn't have to be perfect, because you're going to get that file, and you're going to bring it into whatever program you'd like to use. And you can still play with it to make it perfect. And, for example, let's say that the clients only have a budget for two colors. You can make a four-color image on one of these platforms, then bring it into Photoshop and make a two-color image. Easy, right, that struggle with trying to get it look exactly right and mid-journey, or whatever. And they fail to realize that we can always edit it later. And there's that weird thing in the corner and in the Hebrew, playing rerolling and remixes to do a little selection. Delete the thing, Mandy, like, you know, we, and I'm not going to guess I am admitting it. But how many people have downloaded something from the internet and changed it? Like everyone? Okay. And so why is it using mid-journey? Different, right? Why not? Why don't we just know that weird thing we're going to erase, delete, or add? Or, you know, we're going to put the thing back in? Yeah, you gave us six fingers on the left hand, right? Just to lead the finger. Like, why do you freak out about it? Right. And yeah, and so I think, you know, it's getting better. And of course, it's like this new version; you know, at the time we're recording, this is version six. It does type, which is amazing. Okay, but it doesn't do it well, and it doesn't know type and doesn't know Fazio doesn't know kerning; it doesn't know any of that stuff. Yeah. And if you're a graphic designer or OCD freak like me, you don't want to mess with that anyway, right? And now

Jon Anderson 
know, about what we're doing, digital artists have an advantage. Because I do the same thing I let it do, I basically let AI manage our mid-journey specifically for me as well. I let it do the heavy lifting. And then I'll take it the rest of the way. It gets to the nine-yard line. And then I can do the rest to get it into the end zone. And then that still cuts down on a ton of my time. It's fun. And you know, I enjoy it. And it's the same thing about reducing colors, or yeah, there's a little it's not it's doing this, or it's got a weird hand, or I do airplane sometimes. And it's like, why has it got machine guns on the outside? Not the other, or why did it drop tanks when they weren't there? It's easy to edit that out and paint or paint over. You know, I didn't. I did a snake when it was really cool and did well. But the snake's mouth looks like the inside of a dragon. Snakes don't have big, fat tongs. And so I just airbrushed all that out digitally. I covered it up. And then I went and found a picture of a copperhead because that's what I wanted it to be. And the rest of it was close enough to look like a copperhead. And then I just custom-painted the inside of the mount. So it matched what biology says it should look like. And I'm done. Right? I was never going to figure that out. No, I've been trying to load images. And they're like, This is what a copperhead mouth looks like. And it was like, No, I'm not dealing with

Marshall Atkinson 
that.  It just doesn't know, you know, and it's okay. Right. And of course, forward, there's, there's like super specific things that people want, like, you know, I wanted to do my dog or some specific, crazy, custom hot rod that they saw to show last year, or like, it's, it's not going to do that because it doesn't have millions of reference points for it. And

Jon Anderson 
well, and you brought up the whole point of why I started learning it back in 2022. I saw it coming on the scene. I said, Oh boy, here we go. I recognize the trend, which is important for us to see trends, and a lot of people don't do what we are supposed to, you know. That's what I learned in art school: identify trends because they all repeat themselves and they know when to move and when to pivot to deal with those trends. And a trend I saw was the same trend with AI that I saw back in the day. With digital art taking over traditional things, you know, you better embrace it, otherwise you're going to get left behind. So I said, Well, I'm going to learn AI art not to replace me. I wasn't afraid of it replacing me, but I know there's going to be a problem with it. I know it's going to have pain points, and people forget about pain points to me. I learned that in marketing, the pain point is that if you can solve pain points, you're going to get most clients because most people don't know how to solve pain points or identify them; they just go out there and go look at me. I'm great. I'm awesome. I'm Art. Hire me, and it's like, okay, well, okay, nobody's going to hire you because your art  is solving a problem for somebody. You don't know what their pain point is if their pain point is dealing with art, so you better find a different approach and get your pain out. But I knew AI wasn't going to be perfect. So I wanted to embrace it and learn as much as I could. So I could learn the data on the frustrating parts of Ayar this way, and that's why I use it, or I know people who get frustrated with it. And then I can get the work done because I know how to work around it. And then I know where my competitors are going to fail with it. So I'm not worried about my competitors who use it, unless they're like you, who's good at it. But I read your newsletter. So I'm learning all your secrets.

Marshall Atkinson 
Well, they're there for you to learn, right and right.

Jon Anderson 
Most people are learning from each other, but there are some who don't want to learn. And like I said, if you know where to pain points and limit them, let it do the heavy lifting, but don't fight it; then take it the rest of the way with your skills. That's why I think artists who embrace it will do well with it. Yeah. And those who are learning, who are having fun, who aren't necessarily traditional artists, are enjoying it. Well, they'll just need to start picking up how to fix things on their own; you know, they can learn how to write it. There's so many YouTube videos now teaching you how to do things; it's just a matter of practice.

Marshall Atkinson 
I've got a bunch. So the thing that, for me, is the feeling I get with the medical journey is exactly the same thing I got when I started using the Mac in the early 90s. It's like, I was doing this by hand, and it would take three days for him to do each thing and use it. I used the letter set to rub down letters and make a thing: what's the coffee, the target copy place, and okay, I need this 167.3% wider. And then I would strip that in with wax and lay it out. I have a wax thing, oh my god; it would just take forever to do all this stuff.

Jon Anderson 
And it's funny because people don't know a cut and paste me. Back in the day. We were actually

Marshall Atkinson 
It was awful. And then, all of a sudden, I can do that with a click and drag. Yeah. Oh, my god. I hope so. Now, what's the reason why AI is so weird for people? We know where those tools are. We know how to use the Apply Image command, how to make a little box, how to do a gradient, how to like solarize something, how to use an unsharp mask, and all these tools that we've been using forever. And now your result is based on your vocabulary. That's just weird. It's awkward. And how good is your vocabulary? And what's another word? For forest green? Do you know what we say? You know, and so yeah, yeah, well, it could be dark green, could be yeah, what verdant green, hunter green, whatever. There's a lot. So it's like when these things were all the words you used. And then when you start using weird combinations, that's when they like them. To me, the magic happens mid-journey because these are things you wouldn't normally put together. Right? And that's where they say, Oh my God, look at that. It's so surprising. And, to me, the great thing about using these programs is discovering this result that you got and not really being quite sure how it happened. But you're there.

Jon Anderson 
And the journey and the process are fine. And you know, the slang we used to use was, Let's just throw mud at the wall and see what we come up with. And now with AI. That's literally what you're doing figuratively—I guess not literally—but you're throwing mud at the wall. And all of a sudden, something starts looking good. And you know, I did a recent one for Tuskegee Airmen with a P 51. Mustang, and it doesn't say no, you don't Mustang, a horse comes up. Yeah. But I did do one Mustang fighter plane. And it came up with a bunch of them. And they were kind of weird. But some of them were really good. And as I just kept doing iterations, like you said, I might jet, and I'm learning now that I'm generating 100 or 200 images. Sometimes they come up with one, but the speed at which I'm doing it. Yeah, you're in, like, 1015 minutes, and all of a sudden I get a combination. I'm like, Wow, that's it. And then to get it to the separations and to see it printed, knowing that you know how many shirts moved, and then people are aware I'm and I'm getting a bunch sent to me on this one. This thing started out as this little app, and now it's here on my shirt. And this is right, and the colors are right, and yeah, they have to clean it up some. But like I said, the heavy, and if you think about the heavy lifting part, okay, so designers back in the day had apprentices, apprentice designers, right, or like engineers, draftsmen and draftsmen did the heavy lifting. Have all the lines, like all the drawing work? And I knew that there were really high-end illustrators who didn't do the base drawing; they had junior artists who were amazing and who did all the line work they needed to do anything. And then the big illustrator came in and did the painting.

Marshall Atkinson 
Comic books, there's somebody draws at the semi exit. And

Jon Anderson 
Just like inbetweeners and animation, you know, there's all these steps. So now, AI can kind of do that; it can kind of do your heavy lifting. And then you finish it and combine some things at some point, you know? And then yeah, do you have to learn a little more? Sure, you need to spend a little time understanding how to prompt, and everybody's prompts are different. I start off super simple, like three or four words. And then I start to build on those words. Some people write a big old paragraph, or they'll use other tools like chat GTP, which I haven't started doing.

Marshall Atkinson 
I don't, I don't like that approach. But there's people like go on

Jon Anderson 
super simple, super simple; see what it throws at me. And then I kind of guided it from there. And I go back and forth, add a few more words, and I see people. I hit the watch, and a lot of people, like mid-journey can see it in discord. And I'd see people use all these terms; they had no idea what they meant. And there's a lot of 3D terms in there that I'm familiar with, like cinema 4D. And, you know, in ray tracing, like, what is ray tracing? That's not a word to use, even ambient occlusion, and I'm like, they are 3D artists; how do they know? But

Marshall Atkinson 
They see it somewhere else, John; that's where they see it, right? And so, for me, I do a lot of testing, and I share what I'm testing every day I play. Sometimes, it's just one word, and that prompt sequence is what I'm playing with. And other times, it's the whole thing, you know, and it's helped.

Jon Anderson 
me I bowled simple lines, I, as simple as that is, I picked that up from the newsletter.

Marshall Atkinson 
I use some things all the time because they work right, and you kind of land on some things that work, and that helps you get through whatever you're trying to do. And then all of a sudden, the thing doesn't work anymore, or it's not the right look, and you have to adjust. All right, and Google's already

Jon Anderson 
built into the algorithm. I gotta go to beat five. Yeah,

Marshall Atkinson 
Google's your friend. The thesaurus is your friend, you know. And then one of my big discoveries is the describe command, where you upload something or, you know, whatever, and then it tells you what it sees. And then there's this phrase in there. Like, what does that mean? And I remember when I found my, one of my favorite prompts is Shadow pop art, because that phrase mana delivers every time, right? It's always great to write down shadow pop art; I love that one, right? And I use it a lot. And I did an experiment. I wanted to create a logo a month ago, and I challenged myself not to use the word logo. Okay, to create a logo, and I did it, you know, so it's like one of these things where if you start thinking about other words and also other languages, like so, there's this great prompt, if you like, that kitty, kind of like the big guy with the sparkles, you know, kind of like it's a girly kind of look, you know, a great word for that as qui K Awa, I use that a lot. And there's another one that I found, which is instead of saying negative space, which is something because a majority wants to fill up the whole background fill up the hole. Yeah. And you don't want it to be too busy, right? So right, there's a phrase; instead of saying negative space, I found this one word from Japan. Japanese is called modulus Ma. That's it in a negative space. And in this, because that's the Japanese word for it. And so you discover these things, and then you start using them. And then you get the results. And you're like, Ah, it's positive. Right? It's, yeah, I'm moving. You know, and

Jon Anderson 
Now it's interesting. It's an exciting time right now. It's like every time there's a new shift, digital is an exciting time. And now it's so every day; it's normal; the people, but for us, went from traditional to digital. It was exciting. You're now getting this AI thing. And, like you said, it's exciting. You learn new terms, and we're not really coding; coding puts me off. I try to learn how to code; I fall asleep every time I do that, but this is with prompting because you just don't know. And like you said, you start learning other languages. I know it's heavy English. I know there's certain bias, and just because it is, but the internet's biased, and as you know,

Marshall Atkinson 
They're using John; you're using mid-journey; and France; they're not using English words; they're using mid-journey. And they're not going to, I'm sure, yeah, know what these things are. You know, just because, you know, that's how language works right and wrong. All right, so we have to wrap up. And before we go, it's crystal ball time. Right? Okay. So I want you to kind of imagine where the apparel decorating industry is going, right? What's your prediction? You know, this year, next year, five years from now, whatever, right? What do you see, and how are things going to work and behave? You know, just because you've been in it for a long time, like me, and you've seen some stuff. So how does it feel to you that something's coming around the corner that maybe we should be thinking about?

Jon Anderson 
I think we're definitely going to see a lot more AI art in the art department; I think you've already seen it. We're more screenprint companies, and it'd be interesting to see how that affects doing color separations. But I think before that, we're just going to see the flow of dealing with AI in graphics, on the heaviest end, because Adobe is already incorporating it with Photoshop, and with Illustrator built in now, I'm pretty sure CorelDRAW does the same thing. And so, you know, the artists that adopt it quickly are going to have fun with it. And I think it's going to be extremely competitive over time; it's going to give you a more competitive edge, and if you're not at least familiar with it or comfortable with it, then, you know, I think it's going to hurt a little bit to artists who don't understand that at least, because you should understand what your competitors are doing. Even if you don't use the same technique, understand why you aren't getting work from a print shop or something. Or how come they're producing something like that, but they got, you know, novice artists, or whatever, you know, so I think definitely Ayar it's going to become very mainstream with shirts. For sure, I think it's going to speed up the process. And I think as it does, it's just going to get more competitive. But I don't think being more competitive is bad, especially if, hopefully, it's not a race to the bottom type of competitiveness with pricing. But I think everybody's skill level is just going to have to kick it up a notch, you know, like I need to, so I don't get beat, or I don't want to get. So I can still stand where I need to stand, you know, to get work. And so that's it. I see it heavy in the art department first. And I don't really know about the other areas, but I'm assuming AI is going to help with mixing paints and mixing ink. I mean, paint; I called it a tank.

Marshall Atkinson 
Oh, my God, I'm such a rookie.

Jon Anderson 
Yeah, you know, if you think man, but you know, with that type of stuff, and then in figuring out things, but, you know, I'm heavily on the art side; I've tried to do the production side. And I usually get kicked out of it when I get in there and when I've been at companies. But I enjoy it. But art is the thing. And that's where I see the big change and the training. I know you do some training, right? I think maybe there's some room for training there that people take advantage of if they're on the top end of that. I don't know.

Marshall Atkinson 
Well, you know, so here's an interesting thing when I can create this amazing image, but I can't get it all on a t-shirt. I've got an issue, right? So I think people are going to really double down on learning how to do separations or outsourcing the separations. Also, we're going to see a huge influx in digital decoration techniques because I don't have to really do anything to get it on the t-shirt because of music DTF or DTG. So I think that's going to expand more. We're already having a problem getting people trained to learn everything we have to learn in the screenprinting part of stuff. Oh, yeah, when I'm doing digital, there's still a skill that you have to understand because it's all environmental and art prep. But we got to get it on the t-shirt still, right? I've had a

Jon Anderson 
huge uptick and separation work. And my biggest thing that I'm seeing is that a lot of bands are doing their own AI art because they've figured it out. So bands want to create their own art; they have members in the band; they want to create their own art for their shirts because it's like ownership, but you know, I did that. And so they don't know how to separate or screenprint. So I'm literally probably at least, you know, there's probably at least four to 10 jobs a week I'm separating, that were done with AI art, whatever programs, and by somebody in a metal band or something, and I'm like, Okay, well, I'll do separations. And I'll be honest, sometimes doing the separations takes the load off of me of being the creative one and not having to do the art. I'm okay doing something separate from this one. But I think some artists will pick up work there. But you even mentioned how long that would last. Well, so, I mean, there's great scripts out there, but it will separate because I find all the scripts and the programs. The difference between really great steps and generic Bobo steps or whatever is who puts the time into the steps after the initial run, who's tuning and dialing those channels in? That makes a huge difference. And so, I don't know if that'll be replaced by AI. I mean, I hate not to assume it, but it's going to require a certain eye and amount of training to know, how did they know how to look at those areas and understand what a 30% gain is, you know, or whatever to get, and every screenprint is different. Like,

Marshall Atkinson 
They know that, and like, you know, what, I do saps, you know, I chunk it into LA B, you know, I use the lightness channel, and I do an unsharp mask on that to pop all the detail up. And like, there's things that I always do that make it look great on a shirt because we're printed on a t-shirt with, you know, arguably really big dots, right? Even if the screen door is 50 or 60 lines, that's still a big dot compared to other print methods that are out there on the planet, right? And it's, and, you know, it's got to work with the gorillas out in the production thing who they're just trying to get through their day, right? And they're going to set it up, knock it out, and be done with it. Right. So we want to make it as simple as possible to not fail. All right. And so, to me, sometimes, you could put a lot of finesse into those steps. But you know, maybe that's in the show, but it's the print crew that's going to understand that. And that's

Jon Anderson 
true. Especially if they told me the other day, because it holds match. They get an out. Yeah, like I kill. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I

Marshall Atkinson 
learned a long time ago. Don't use it. 45% God, because that's instantly an ad.

Jon Anderson 
Yeah. Well, and I learned the same thing, because I'd have stuff around 75%. And that's going to become 100%. And yeah, exactly. You know, 7% disappears. So you really got this clamp area to work in. 

Marshall Atkinson 
All right, well, all right, John will weaken bitch and moan about production all day. But I think we're going to wrap up here. So thanks for sharing your story of success with us today. What's the best way to contact you? If someone wants to learn more about what you do, Or maybe you can help them.

Jon Anderson 
Probably the best way is just to find me. Excellent. 3d dot com, or contact me and my email, which is digital artists at xL NT 3d dot com. And you know, and I'm in the Facebook groups, I think—I mean, it's just John Anderson. But I pretty much work mainly as a white label for a lot of printers and stuff. I'm not out there with big lights and, you know, the Vegas sign or anything; I get known through just the channel's sort of talk. And I'm okay with that. 

Marshall Atkinson 
Because you do good work. I've seen your work. So you know, if you're looking for an artist or a separator, John's your guy. Thank you. I appreciate it. All right. Well, hey, thanks a lot. And I look forward to seeing what you're going to be posting next. And thanks for being on the show.

Jon Anderson 
Absolutely. Thank you, Marshall. Have a great day. 

Marshall Atkinson 
Well, that's our show today. Thanks for listening. And don't forget to subscribe so you can stay up-to-date on the latest Success Stories episodes. Have any suggestions for future guests or topics? send them my way, and Marshall and Marshall atkinson.com. And we'll see you next time.