Thursday, January 21, 2010

Two Threadless submissions: Vote purty PLEASE!!

I've known about the Threadless T-shirt company for a while now, and never really looked into submitting a design for whatever reason, so I was glad that the opportunity came up in my Vector Art class to work on a design submission. I came up with two ideas I was really connected to and worked on them both, even though I only was required to do one.

The first design I did was based off the nesting doll set I did of Animals in Space. I had this kind of disgruntled octopus character, and thought about setting him in space fixing a satellite and losing track of tools from one of his tentacles.




This next design was created for the "Threadless Loves" challenge in which the theme is to create a new trend for 2010 (jeez, could they think of anything more difficult to conceptualize for a T-shirt design??). This is a special challenge with a specific theme that I think they do monthly. There is a greater cash prize available for their selection of the best design. The additional caveat of the assignment (for class) was to do a two color design. (EEek! Color limitations!!) Which is actually something to be mindful of, since I read that Threadless tees have an 8 color limit to print.

The sketch for this design started out much different. My initial idea was to have the woman in a disappearing dress that faded into butterflies, but as I started working this one out a little more, i started to like the fact that in the drawing it looked like the woman herself was breaking apart into butterflies, so I went with that instead.


My experience creating entire pieces in Adobe Illustrator has been limited up until this point. I am slowly exploring more of the tools, and learning more about what the program can do. I can see so clearly how piece will turn out when I use Adobe Photoshop--I've adopted my own methods for working within a certain style, and I can visualize when I sketch out an idea how the piece will look finished. I don't feel that comfortable yet in Illustrator--the entire time I am drawing, I feel held back, thinking to myself, "How would I do this?" which leads me to making some different drawing choices, since I feel like I have limitations in the program. Through these different pieces I feel like I have expanded my ideas on what is possible in the program (especially through the second piece--I never knew I could get a weighted line in a single stroke!), and I look forward to making more new discoveries.

Anyways, long story short, please vote for my work (Clumsy Space Octopus and Made of Butterflies) to be printed on a T-shirt! You can create an account at Threadless and vote on other designs too, or submit some of your own designs. You make decent $bank$ if you design is chosen for print. I've really gotten into this site, and hope I can submit something another design soon.