The post is me taking a break from my last 1.5 series regarding the logistics involved in indie creation. I collect gaming dice or items that fulfill the dice mechanic (a.k.a. dice rings). However, when I go for a gaming session with my friends, scrambling for a makeshift dice tray at the game site so that your dice won’t go all over the world is a problem on its own. So here’s my attempt to alleviate the situation: And this was how I made it – I made this over lunch break so it’s pretty quick and simple once you have everything together. All you need are:
Step 1 (Optional): Fit Your Dice You can skip this step of you don’t intend to have this tray to be multi-functional. I thought the movable partitions were a great bonus so I used them to store my usual play dice. Step 2: Fit the Tray Padding I went by estimation and by eye, but you can measure the inside of your container and transfer the measurements on your choice of dice tray padding. I used sheet rubber for mine (the kind they use to make DIY rubber stamps) but you can also use foam sheets – as long as the dice doesn’t sink into or bounce off the material easily. Cut your material to size to fit your tray. Step 3: Adhesive Time to glue! Apply a good amount on your tray. Step 4: Stick it in! Before the glue dries, stick your tray pad in and let it sit for a few minutes. Step 5: Dice Tray Get! And you’re done! Enjoy your dice storage + tray.
This has served me well so far – the best thing about it is that it fits into my mobile game case, but that’s another assembly for another post. Thanks for reading and I hope you’ve found this helpful. What other containers do you use for your dice storage or dice trays? Leave your comments below.
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A common question we’ve been getting during our events is this: “How did you get your book published?” The easy answer is this: You write / draw, you format and convert to PDF, then, you print. The more complicated answer happens in stages. This post talks about the first stage that comes to play right after you’ve laid your work out.
If you have some basic knowledge on how to lay your work out and have it converted to PDF, that’s good. To make your printing process a little smoother, here are a few questions to answer: Are your pages even-working? Even-working means your content fits into a number of pages which can be divisible by 2 or 4. Most printers will come back to you if your pages are not divisible by 2 or 4 – check this specification with them. Printers tend to fold / print pages on larger pieces of paper, which results in 1 sheet of paper taking about 4 pages of content or more. Bleed – what is that? Not paper cuts. Bleed is a term used to describe the overflow of your page design over your page borders to make up for any minute, measurement-related errors in cutting. So if your page edges are white and you’re printing on white paper anyway, there’s no need to worry. For cases where your work is on a black background, make sure you give a bleed of black around your borders so you don’t get that line of white paper in case the cutting is off by half a millimetre. What size do you want your work to be presented in? A5? A4? B5? Most places take A5, A4, and A3 quite easily. Any odd sizes may result in more expensive printing because of any expenses going to creating a custom die cut. Grayscale or Colour? The most common we’ve seen are black and white interior / content, with colour covers. Remember to check the colour policies with different printers – most of them won’t entertain “discounts” even if you just have a single line in colour. Colour is colour. What kind of paper would you like to use? Very much like colour vs. black and white, different papers bring out different textures and prices. What’s important is to know how you’d like your work to be present in the best but most economical way. (E.g. I know Vellum is amazing, but a 50-page Vellum book of poetry probably needs to be priced high in order to make your cost back) Saddle-stitch or Perfect bind? Unless you have the time / energy to print everything on a large sheet of paper, cut, and sew your books together one-by-one, printers will ask you to choose from a variety of bindings. Do note, though, that in most places, perfect bind (glue) can only be done if you exceed 100 pages. How many copies? Be mindful about this – have a good gauge of how much you intend to give away and sell. Consider your storage solutions as well – storing 100 books in your room is no joke. We’ll talk about logistics in another post. That being said, we’ll talk about sourcing printers in our next post. I hope this post has given you some pointers with what to prepare before going for a print job. Do you have other factors you look out for before you send your work to print? Share it with us in the comments! The second half of the year is coming – which means the bulk of fandom, pop culture, and indie booth events are coming as well. Following my trilogy of Event Prep posts, I thought it’ll be good to put out a checklist for all of you to use as a template for your own booth management. So here’s my first printable: The list will cover three main areas: Administration, Booth Management, and Deco & Design. It’s not a definitive list, so feel free to use this as a beginner’s platform to manage your event booth. To download this printable, click here. |
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