January 29th, 2017, 03:08 PM
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#17 (permalink)
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Member
- Join Date:
- Jul 2016
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- 92
- Liked:
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Re: T1 How do you improve your digitizing?
I like to answer these questions from a middle ground perspective. I run an apparel and promo item business but I do digitizing in house/myself. I don't digitize nearly as much as a full time digitzer does, so artistically I am often challenged and can't always deliver fast artwork, cause I have to think about the artwork more where as experienced digitizers might just bust it out and move on. That said I continue to do it because I find the end results can be run faster/without thread breaks more consistently.
1.For me the best training has been self taught by doing/experimenting/pushing myself to digitize something challenging. I have an artist friend who I often will with his permission take his abstract/modern animal sketches and digitize them. Each time I do that artwork, or a cool logo/vehicle that i saw I attempt something new that i have never done, and pull from the creative side of how stitches work together.
2.Going back to square one in training videos/manuals anything i can find and rewatch/reread them. Often times you learn 5 things from a video/chapter. But you only retain and use 2-3 of those things. Going back to square one you sometimes learn those other 2-3 tricks that make your artwork 100% better. Like Robert Young just said READ THE MANUAL. Both for the software and your machine. I only just learned about a tool on my machine that reduces puckering by 20% and ive run the machine professionally for 3-4 years.
3. Anytime I see something embroidered, good/bad, on a toy, on a shirt, on a hat. I Look at it, study it, try to reverse engineer it in my mind in my own software. Look at the bobbin side see how their tensions were set or what backing they might have used as well. use a finger nail and see if i can pull a stitch aside and see underlay. Look for start and stop points/tieoffs they can give directional information.
4. And lastly read opinions and boards like this. I don't always agree with how one person does it vs another. But I bank what I learn in order to apply it later when I can.
There is another challenge of an outsource digitzers vs an in-house digitizers. I say this with an absurd amount of respect for outsource digitizers, your job is HARD.
In-house digitizers have the luxary of control and oversight and usually KNOW how the machine in house will run, they have more of a garuntee of what material is going to be used, and can give some more complex instructions to get a high end result.
Where as outsorce digitizers have a tougher time predicting all the variables or even guaranteeing that the client/customer will follow the instructions they gave you. As such many digitize in ways that make it a bit more "idiot proof". The best example I have ever seen is American flags, or checkered flags. Creating a white FILL stitch base and then creating red satin stripes, or black checkers on top, as an alternative to alternating fills or alternating satin stitches that might not register correctly on different materials, where as the satin on top of fill is reliable and is recognizable. where as a fill next to a fill looks cleaner/smoother but is incredibly hard to keep in register especially on different materials.
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4Likes
I'm getting there. I'm gearing up for a lot of performance wear embroidery so took a shirt, adjusted the settings and just built a stitch out grid to see what formulation worked best. See my other post though on whether anyone has a recipe that works best and created an auto fabric setting in Wilcom.
i really don't mind helping at all. i remember what it was like (20 years ago! jeeeez). i had a couple people i could turn to back then and it made all the difference in the learning curve. i'm really happy that you're learning, and not putting out ***** and calling it gold. 
