Navigating the Nuances of Textile Printing

When the production team for the hit HBO show “Westworld” approached MY Prints LA needing a lightweight solution for its costume designs, Steven Moreno, co-founder of the Los Angeles-based printer, became the “solutions guy.” The team working on the show brought Moreno a thick, heavy, embroidered fabric that needed to be recreated into a lightweight fabric so the actors would be more comfortable in the hot environment in which the show is filmed. Moreno scanned the fabric, created a file to match the 3D effect of the embroidery and printed it on the company’s Mutoh 1638WX wide-format digital textile printer.

MY Prints LA has worked with a myriad of designers and production departments to develop solutions to meet its individual needs. Moreno describes a call for customized unitards for actors in “Transformers” costumes at Universal Studios Hollywood, as one example. The unitards needed to look like metal pieces in the off chance the cover pieces were to move to reveal the actor’s unitard underneath. To complicate the matter, because each actor was a different shape and size, each unitard had to be carefully designed and printed to perfectly fit each actor’s body.

Although the development of the “Westworld” and “Transformers” creations required ingenuity, it also required a deep understanding of the materials and inks used in digital textile printing.