02 September 14 - Printing vs Hand Painting

Bouncy Castle Artwork / Hand Painted Vs Printing

Better Bounce Direct are proud to have on board one of the UK's finest hand painting artists alongside some of the most advanced technology's in the world. Our artists are able to produce just about any image you require no matter how difficult it seems

If you've seen something you like, simply point us in the right direction and our team will be happy to meet your requirements. We are happy to work from photos of existing units, online images, physical images, sketches or simply let our artists have a play & I'm sure you will be happy with the results.

For custom printed Banners, Mats, Velcro Panels & much much more, Please CLICK HERE

Isn't digital artwork frowned upon in the industry?

Yes. It was frowned upon in the industry until recent development in the print world. The technology to be able to print direct onto our heavy duty PVC material quickly used to be extremely expensive, had unreliable results depending on atmospheric conditions such as temperature, pressure, humidity and static electricity.

The machines were also very complex to run that ensuring that only expert and specialist printers were able to take on such a task which made the average cost of an 11x15 bouncy castle manufacture with full artwork circa £450 for the printing alone and even more if you required a back wall. The problem of durability was also an issue, the inks didn't last as long as paint, were subject to Ultra Violate light fading issues and generally didn't work as they should. Even the lamination process took an age to complete and wasn't up to the job either.

As such, The industry as a whole didn't move forward with digital technology and kept the hand painting method for economy and the option of Digital technology didn't really progress so like the rest of the bouncy castle manufacturers, We stuck to the good old British way and have continued to do so ever since.

For custom printed Banners, Mats, Velcro Panels & much much more, Please CLICK HERE

But I have seen other manufacturers do printed panels and they look fine?

This is true, these prints are generally printed using a wide format printer available at a cost of £5,000 or so depending on the make & model onto a 300gsm banner material which is a paper, vinyl or hessian base cloth with very little structural integrity and not really fit for the job. It is suitable for velcro type artwork but as soon as it's sewn into an inflatable it has to be able to resist flexible movements and be effectively screwed up into a ball every time the inflatable is used which causes problems down the line.

Think of a nice new shiny banner. It looks lovely when its first made and to be honest usually for the first 12 to 18 months but remember the banner by its nature is a 1) A temporary sign and 2) is pinned flat to a surface, hung from a structure or stretched across a sign frame where it remains completely taut and flat for the majority of its life.

Now take the same banner on day one, screw it up in a ball and sit on it for 5 minutes. Now erect the banner exactly the same as before and it will never ever look the same again. The material is designed to be rigid, not flexible and to be erected high up and out of the way, not in front of children all day every day.

For custom printed Banners, Mats, Velcro Panels & much much more, Please CLICK HERE

Why is our printing any different?

Why, should PVC coated 610gsm bouncy castle material be printed on in the exact same way as above the material it will flex, twist, fold, screw in a ball and behave exactly the same as it is designed to do so without damaging the print itself. However, to do this you need a specialist machine, specialist inks, specialist drying & laminating techniques to ensure everything works as it should.

There are many many reasons why our printing is better than the rest. (We won't bore you with the trivial stuff, 1, because it's boring and 2, because we have worked very hard on perfecting the formulations and we don't want our competitors finding out how we do it)

The main reason being that we have trailed 28 different printers from 12 different manufacturers, combined with 35 different ink types and 12 different laminating solutions and procedures to reach a level we are happy with. This whole process has taken well over 3 years to trial and perfect as you can imagine. The results we have now though are fantastic and all our hard work has paid off.

The formula we have chosen is described below:

• We use one of the top named makes of printer in the industry. This make has been around for a long time and is time proved in the industry. The printer is designed and set up specially to print on PVC & plastic substrates such as our bouncy castle PVC.
• We use specially formulated inks, specifically designed for printing on PVC & plastic substrates such as our bouncy castle PVC.
• This ink is almost moulded into the PVC as its printed ensuring maximum adhesion and longevity of life.
• The ink is then super-dried at and almost burned into the material as its cured. This ensures that it is hard enough to withstand everyday knocks, scrapes and bangs from energetic children and over-enthusiastic participants.
• If requested the material can then be super coated. The printed material is now placed in a specialist liquid laminating machine using again, another specially formulated PVC lamination solution. This is the exact same laminating solution used to laminate the curtain sides for Eddie Stobart trucks. This solution if applied to curtain sides is guaranteed to last 5 years or 500,000 miles, whichever comes first. When we asked the manufacturers what the life expectancy they could offer on a bouncy castle, they simply laughed and stated 30 years given its extremely low usage when compared to a Stobart Waggon on the road at 60mph, 365 days a year! I don't fancy waiting 30 years to find out but we're confident that the formula is ideal for the bouncy castle manufacture trade : )
• Please note that we do not work to exact pan tones as standard but can still help. Please see T&C for more details. There will also be stencil sewing guidelines within the artwork to help make our units as strong and neat as possible.
• Please be aware that all products with velcro artwork are completely different from product to product no matter how similar it may look unless it has the identical reference numbers it will be different. Even at that stage, there will be minor discrepancies as everything is handmade.

For custom printed Banners, Mats, Velcro Panels & much much more, Please CLICK HERE

Printings all well and good but what about the quality of the artwork in the first place?

Good point! All our images are NOT pinched from Google or scanned in, they are digitally re-created using state of the art illustration software by our fully qualified graphic Illustrator. She is an expert in her field and really brings your images to life.

She creates the artwork by using a series of codes, not pictures. These codes are compiled so that the artwork is basically a series of infinite data that is fully scalable. The image can be blown up to any size without distortion. Its a very clever technology and it works like this...

When you have an image on a computer screen that looks good quality, have you ever tried to print out on a large A4 sheet yet when it comes out all you see is pixelated squares? This is because the image is flat and holds only minimal digital data. when you enlarge the image or scale it up, all your doing is stretching the information that is already there.

You can get around this by taking the image with a better quality camera with a much higher resolution or megapixel rate but ultimately you can still only stretch the image so far before the image exceeds it pixel viewing limit and becomes blurred and pixelated squares once again.

The way our artwork is created in code means that the image is ever expendable and self-rendering. The image is effectively made using a virtual unlimited megapixel camera which does not simply stretch the image we see. but actually recreates the image at a much larger size and as such never ever loses quality.

Using this technology we can have the same quality artwork from the size of a sandbag to the size of a giant 30ft fairground slide with crystal clear quality all the way. You could even print our artwork on the side of a skyscraper and it would still look amazing!!!

For custom printed Banners, Mats, Velcro Panels & much much more, Please CLICK HERE

See the artwork for yourself!!!

The images below are taken of the finished printed product. We have taken the images on a 20Megapixel camera, zoomed into its maximum extents so you can see just how the print bonds to the PVC material. If you look closely you can actually see the cape grain of the PVC bouncy castle material.

This method of printing ensures that the print stays permanently bonded into the PVC material and extremely robust. Even the most vigorous of scratching with an object such as a coin takes some serious budging making it ideal for use in inflatable products. Feel free to visit our factory and try scratching it off for yourself.

Here is an example of the type of artwork we are able to produce, We have in this case chosen to reproduce a well-known image so you can see the quality of the products and how accurate our artwork can be to the true image. Of course with this reproduction below, Full permission must be obtained by the owner in ALL cases.

Please note: That we are only able to commission artwork on our inflatables if full copyright is obtained by the owner. Betterbounce are now pleased to offer a full digital print service for our inflatables if required. To take a look at the artwork we offer please visit our artwork section or CLICK HERE to be redirected.

Please read the item description carefully to check if artwork is included in this particular product. Please remember that all artwork must have copyright permission from the owner in order for us to process the files. Copyright WILL NOT be obtained on your behalf & copyright must be adhered to by the client at all times. Likewise, if we are asked to source and image online for you the quality will not be guaranteed unless a vector image is available.

Betterbounce will not be held responsible for any unauthorised use of artwork. We merely offer a printing service like any other printers. For more information, please read our terms & conditions section https://www.better-bounce.co.uk/pages/terms-and-conditions#BodyContent.

For more information on copyright, please click here: http://www.tipe.org.uk/info32.pdf

Information provided courtesy of TIPE: http://www.tipe.co.uk/

Likewise, if we are asked to source and image online for you the quality will not be guaranteed unless a vector image is available. We aim for 1 megapixel or above.

Still not convinced???

Then we've failed! BUT... We can still offer more conventional hand painted artwork if required. The artwork is still done with the same level of care and detail as ever but with a more conventional set of paintbrushes.

I have compiled a list of hand painted images below in order to give you an idea of what we can do, If you don't see anything you like, Please feel free to get in touch.

Please note: That we are only able to commission artwork on our inflatables if full copyright is obtained. Betterbounce are now pleased to offer a full digital print service for our inflatables if required. To take a look at the art work we offer please visit our art work section or CLICK HERE to be redirected. Please read the item description carefully to check if art work is included with this particular product. Please remember that all artwork must have copyright permission from the owner in order for us to process the files. Copyright will NOT be obtained on your behalf & copyright must be adhered to by the client at the time of order.

Caring for your artwork: Whilst the artwork is of the highest most robust quality, It must be cared for properly. do not use any excessive force. Do not use any bleach or strong cleaning products. Always roll artwork up & DO NOT fold it in order to avoid cracking/ spalling over time. Do not sit objects on top of artwork and do not keep it wet for long periods of time. Notwithstanding the above, the artwork is very very robust and the above is just a precaution.

Please note: Whilst we do offer a professional printing service, we are not a printing company at heart, all graphics sent to us are processed automatically by our print rip software based on the images you provide. Should you require specific RGB, CMYK or PANTONE colour coding, this must be included at the time of order and we will send the drawing to an appropriate engineer for a quotation. If this information is not provided at the time of order Betterbounce cannot and will not be responsible for any colour discrepancies. Any colour profiling work is chargeable. standard prints may not be identical and may differ, even on the same unit.

We are not a print agency and as such our knowledge is very limited and specific to our own industry. All custom artwork must be supplied in a .AI format via adobe illustrator and must be a fully editable vector file for maximum quality. It must be exactly how you wish for it to be printed. All printing is done on white media so please do not compensate for any background base PVC ect.

You will often find physical black seam guidelines printed into the artwork to ensure maximum accuracy. These can be removed at additional cost if its imperitive.

Betterbounce will not be held responsible for any unauthorised use of artwork. We merely offer a printing service like any other printers.

Please also note that certain designs such as Slides & Disco Domes that receive large amounts of seam pressure require to be made in a conventional seam method as opposed to a flat stitch and as such can distort the artwork at seams. If this is a problem, Please let us know in advance and we can alter the panels to take a flat stitch but this may reduce the warranty length. We also reserve the right to change stitching methods on any other product where we see fit. Betterbounce do not possess the technology to produce seamless artwork on traditionally seamed inflatables. The stitching method also does not form part of the contract.

For custom printed Banners, Mats, Velcro Panels & much much more, Please CLICK HERE

Here's a few examples of our artwork. We don't update this section very often though so please bear with us & email for details should you require more.

PLEASE NOTE: ALL VELCRO ARTWORK IS NON LAMINATED

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