I’ve been through all kinds of threads here and I know I’m probably missing some but I still haven’t figured a few things out. Most reading I’ve done here on site seems to indicate that only 6 colors may be used in the derby and designs that look like they have more are using halftones. Yet I see designs in the derby that use what look like blatant solid gradients or blended strokes that look like digital paintings? I’m not sure how that is. Are some designs digitally printed based on design? Or are the halftone dot patterns applied later once the winner is decided? Can we use straight gradients in our artwork? Or can our designs be digitally painted (blending strokes without using half tones)? And if not, what am I not understanding when I see artwork in battle using these kinds of effects?
I’m sorry, I know you’ve all probably heard this a million times before but I’ve been crawling through these threads for two days and still am not sure D:
the design may just be using halftones that are finer than you can see. sometimes in the large image, the artist will include a zoomed-in view of the halftone in part of the background, so you can tell. alternatively, sometimes a design using gradients will have so few votes that woot does not bother to reject. do you have a specific example you are questioning?
I see. The main one that comes to mind is Just A Harmless Little Bunny. (awesome design btw, whose ever it is) but the background (wood) element looks like it’s a smooth gradient. Also the awesome Hey There, Tiger looks like the lovely yellows in the tiger shape are blended the way someone might paint in photoshop or painter. Of course I’m not sure if that’s really how the artwork was made or not. Sometimes it’s hard to tell on screen.
Then again I read in the FAQ that woot DOES digital printing now but I’m not sure when that applies and/or if it’s okay to submit any kind of “painted” aka blended or smudged or blurred etc. designs. If that makes sense.
I hope this doesn’t come off as me trying to call anyone out on anything or…something like that lol I’m just nervous to really begin too many of my own ideas if I’m not understanding some elements in case I approach my artwork incorrectly. I currently work in a print shop that prints tees up to 6 colors (and we even have a way of printing 4 color process) but our boss dislikes the hassle of using half tones,etc and we don’t print process hardly at all, so most of the designs I do lack texture unless its manually made. I’m trying to branch out and I love examples I see here on woot, I just want to be sure I’m completely understanding how they are done (and how I should be creating my designs) on the off chance I ever get to actually submit artwork, whether that’s here or anywhere else. T-shirt production is really intriguing to me so I want to broaden as much as I can.
BTW thank you so much for taking the time to respond. I really appreciate you helping me to learn
if you zoom in on the faded portion of the large “comp” image for “bunny,” you may be able to see where the artist made the woody colour by using alternating thin diagonal stripes of brown and yellow. subtle variations in the thicknesses of the lines create the nearly perfectly smooth gradient-like colour variation you see.
most all the shirts in the “reckoning” list (top sellers and newish designs) are screen printed. older, less popular designs in the catalog are printed dtg.
All Daily and Derby shirts are screen printed. Therefore, they must be separated out for the screen print process. This requires dots or lines for any gradients involved. When you are looking at submissions, they are probably low rez .jpg or .png images, which are darn near impossible to see gradients. And I think some people (and I don’t recommend this) tend to not do their mechanicals unless their submission falls into the ‘fog’. That is kind of risky. Anyway, the Digital Printing is reserved for the smaller runs and one-offs sold in the Catalog. Oh, and the 6 color limit is because of equipment and scheduling restraints. Remember, the Derby ends Thursday at noon, and the sales crank up Thursday at Midnight.
