Im starting a new t-shirt design. I will try to make this an insightful overview with tips and tricks on how I go about creating a design.
Feel free to ask questions, or comment as you please.
I watched Water Horse, and I sketched during the movie. Immediately even before seeing the movie, hearing the words ‘water horse’ brought a vivid image in my mind. As I began to watch and sketch, the idea was formulated.
“I am his only friend” was one of the lines that stuck out. For me, I started to think what would be a good message?
“He was my only friend” rang in my head. Im secretly a tormented artist who has tendencies to be melancholic, so this phrase was delicious to me, BUT, I thought it would be better to tend towards a more positive message. So
“Imagination” is the title, and the idea is “I wish to live the life of my Imagination.” This is pending. It seems to always change…
It reminds me of a Colin Hays song lyric, “When I awoke today, suddenly nothing happened But in my dreams, I slew the dragon”
If only, we could, or tried to live the lives of our imaginations, what we could accomplish…
Anyways. Heres the sketch snapshot.
TIP: I know I will probably make it front chest centered. I have a tendency to try to make my compositions an upside down triangle when doing center chest. The reason for this, is it has a slimming effect, and in general is aesthetically pleasing as the human form is similar being the shoulder are broad and slims until the hips… erm… most of the time.
Designs that are heavy at the bottom of the shirt and rise have a tendency to make the person look bottom heavy, and also for large bosoms, sometimes designs get lost under the fold.
Laying out the general shape of the design you want will make it easier for you to imagine your t-shirt canvas.
TIP: After scanning the sketch, I leveled most of the gray out to get clean lines, then used brightness/contrast to reduce to gray with dark lines.
WHY? You dont want to stare at a high contrast image all day while working do you? And you would be amazed at how easily now you can pop things into 3d by adding white as a highlight. Thats for later…
TIP: I do everything in raster/Photoshop. I start at
16x20 inches
300 DPI
and although this is very specific to my design workflow, I work in GRAYSCALE. mainly because I save the coloring for last, and to be efficient. In grayscale, you only have one channel. In RGB, you have 4, so 4 times the data for everything you do.
That’s all for now.
Anyone have any questions? Know how to use Levels?