Steve Mitchell's Zipatone

Of course I've written yearningly about zipatone previously, and now the Zipatone Storage Drawer from artist Steve Mitchell's studio is up for bid on ebay! Here is the link to the auction while it lasts; the bidding ends three days from this writing. The wording of the item description suggests that it is Mr. Mitchell himself doing the selling. I will historically document what he wrote by sharing it with you here:

Hey comic art fans, here is an interesting collectible from the studio of BATMAN and IRON MAN inker...STEVE MITCHELL.

Back in the pre computer era, artists and inkers like Steve, used ZIPATONE, and LETRATONE, to create textures and special effects on the pages they created for MARVEL, DC, DARK HORSE, and the other publishers of the day.

This heavy and heavy duty storage unit - five drawers -  was created to make some organizational sense of the many sheets an artist may have at his disposal.Believe me most inkers had a lot of sheets somewhere near their drawing board(s).

While this is a relic of the analog era of comics, it is a unique collectible from the studio of an inker who worked in the business for over three decades. With thousands of pages to his credit, Steve, in the great tradition that began before he matriculated into comics, used bits and pieces of these adhesive backed dot patterns, cross hatch textures, etc. to give a panel a bit more... oomph.

As you can see in the pictures you will be getting a lot (too many to count) of partial sheets of textures, dots and patterns along with quite a few sheets of Letraset transfer type, which was used by artists, designers, art directors back in the day.

Hard to believe that this is now an antique, but it kind of is. I used this unit for a long time, and it is time to pass it on to another artist or fan of the way things were done in the good ol' days.