a month or so ago a story on digg hit the front page demonstrating an online application called the rasterbator that would allow the blowing up of images to virtually any size you needed through the use of a fairly large amount of individually printed off paper of whatever size.
This is all fine and all, but to me at least knowing that I could cover my wall with a poster is a very different thing than thinking I could actually do it.
I not only decided to cover my tomb sized room wall with a poster from “The Fountain” but I also wanted to document my experiences in order to help others who are seeking more input before they drop a lot of time into something.
Pictures and movies follow for those of you who are scared of words
From the onset I wanted this to be sub twenty dollars and I hit pretty close to that mark. Since there is an office max a few blocks away I decided to go through them for my printing but your pretty safe in going anywhere as long as your sticking with black and white prints. They have a fairly extensive online order form for prints that is required in order to get a quote for the price. Since I knew I was going through them though it wasn’t too big of a hassle. After seeing the end price I determined that 108 color prints on 70# paper would NOT be the best way of going about this economically. I ended on 30# paper and black and white and I was a bit below 15$ after tax for the entire stack. I submitted the output rasterbation PDF and filled all the stuff out at around 4am went to school and picked them up on the way home – all and all its pretty painless.
After that the biggest decision you will be faced with is how to mount it on your wall. Since I was in office max anyway I got all two packs of 64 foam core adhesive square packages – not enough to do the entire project by a long shot but I figured I wouldn’t put the entire thing up in one night anyway.
Since my final poster was slightly larger lengthwise than my wall it wasn’t too hard to keep my papers horizontally aligned. At the start of the project I was even contemplating getting a leveling bar or a laser-leveling device by for my needs I didn’t need to line anything up that the prior page I put up or the ceiling couldn’t do for me.
My first session ended when I ran out of my 128 mounting pads so a few days later when I knew I would have some free time I dropped by Blick art supplies to pick up the rest of the adhesive I needed. I picked up two more of the same foam adhesive packages as I had used before but I also picked up a box of 500 thin double-sided squares.
Ultimately after my second batch of foam adhesive ran out I was ‘stuck’ with the cheaper more money friendly strips. And let me tell you, in retrospect I now wish I could have done the entire project with them. The old strips had a few millimeters of depth to them so about three quarters down there is a cut off where my poster casts a shadow on the lower, thin adhesive taped section. Nothing major but you notice it up close when you really care
The thinner pads seem to work much better in that the paper rides flush with the wall. I would highly suggest not using the thicker pads after using the thinner ones simply due to their depth adding another dimension that can go wrong with the final poster. The portions of the poster that had the thicker adhesive needed some selective taping to keep it all together, especially on the lighter sections where the shadows from the misaligned boarders can easily been seen.
For my first rasterbation in general I am super pleased with how it turned out. More money could have added color, heck it could have added foam mounting to each sheet of paper but for 20 buck the price and time spent were completely worth it.
Easy points to read if the above looked really confusing:
-There will be some humidity related warping of the paper. Your mileage will vary depending on paper poundage, environment and skills at lining up each sheet
-It’s hard if not impossible to make the poster as perfect as you think it should be. Even in my fairly small room however you basically can’t see all the flaws that you know that are there even from a few feet away… honestly don’t worry too much about it
-The thicker your adhesive mounting strips the more distortion you will get as far as paper warping.
-Be very careful as to how you fix your aligning problems. A small problem can turn into a large problem, or it might not matter. I would suggest treating your larger boarders with more merit than the smaller side of the paper.
-In my opinion doing one page at a time works a lot better than doing five or six at a time in order to put them all up at once. Than again, my poster is a bit more abstract than most so for me at least getting ahead of myself only screws me up.
Flickr image set showing the putting up of the poster
