I had a screen printing kit in our studio that was begging to be used, and coincidentally, I also needed to find some activity that competed with the kids tablets. Screenprinting was a good call because the kids had a great time at the Mini Maker Faire this year doing some seriography courtesy of Peach Beserk. So we spent the weekend learning about how to make prints, or in my case re-learning because it had been 20 years since I had done this.
The kids made a Minecraft creeper shirt and a Lego Batman shirt, respectively. They also helped out my project, which is a mashup of Machinarium and Lucy about to pull the football away from Charlie Brown. Something about the somewhat gormless look on Machinarium’s protagonist’s face made it somehow easy to believe that he would duped into missing the football over and over again.
Instead of using photo emulsion, I simply plopped the heads on in photoshop, and then traced the outlines using screen filler resist. I didn’t want the image to be too “in your face” on the shirt, so shades of grey and white worked best for me. The result was “Charlinarium”, which will keep me going until if they ever come out with a Machinarium 2.
