Cheesecake Toy T-shirt

This t-shirt design came from the Toy Story-ish design of the "Teamwork to the Rescue" t-shirt. It's a similar idea, with toys coming to life, only this one "set" in the Second World War. It's based on the very famous pin-up poster of Betty Grable. It was a fun little design, though getting the angle of the green army man who is knocked over by the beauty of the poster was pretty tricky. I tried to keep the poses of the toys are true to the real thing as possible.

The Lego-style Betty Grable was a lot more difficult to do, since Lego people don't have a whole lot of curves, and I didn't want to change it too much. I used the shadows to give in controuring more than changing the square shap of the toy. The shadow, however, comes straight from the real poster, so it's got plenty of human shape. The half-tone dots are, in my opinion, what really sets that off. The dark part is coloured around the dots, and the light half the dots are coloured. Gives a good contrast with just black.

This was a fun one! I think the design works well at capturing a Forties feel, with the halftone dots and vintage shapes. The design is named "Cheesecake Toy" because pin-ups were often called "cheesecake girls."

It's available in a few different forms at RedBubble. Enjoy!

Yesterday's Jam

I really enjoyed The IT Crowd. It was a really great, geeky, show, and had a few really terrific moments. One of the most memorable is the scene about 'Yesterday's Jam'. So I took it, and made it into a t-shirt design:

There are many references to the show packed into this little design: The 8-bit opening credit sequence is referenced in the lines, colours, and square 'half-tone dots'; the logo is 'The Internet', the 'Red door' of the jam (do you see the shape/colour of the jam and also the doorknob?), and the company name; and lastly the best before date is the emergency number.

I'm very happy with how this guy turned out! Head over to RedBubble to get a shirt or iPhone case.

And We Shall Call It This Land

I suddenly realized that I haven't posted about the t-shirt designs I've done over the past couple of... years. Years! So, I'm going to begin a series of posts covering all the designs, because some of them are really good, and I want to share them.

This is a reference to one of my favourite TV show, Firefly. It's from the very first scene, one of the funniest moments in the show. I decided to make it into a Soviet-style propoganda poster, which included having to make the font. Right now it's just in Photoshop, but I might look into getting a program to make it a real font. I'm happiest with how the dinosaurs and half-tone dots came out on this, it really worked well.

Head over to Redbubble to get a t-shirt (or hoodie, or iPhone case).
 

Spaceman Spiff Evolution

This was a fun little design that came about, like so many drawings lately, as I was waiting to fly. I was thinking about flying, and that brought to mind a character that also spends a good deal of time thinking about flying. I love Calvin and Hobbes comics, especially the ones about Spaceman Spiff's adventures. So this little design is a version of those "Evolution of ...." designs, but with Calvin's amazingly transformative cardboard box, becoming Spaceman Spiff's spaceship.

Buy this one on Red Bubble.

Take Me Away

I was sitting around thinking about another t-shirt design, and looking at some of the most popular shirts of redbubble, when I came up with this idea. It's very very geeky. It's a combination of my favourite ways to escape reality, the spaceships and quests I wish I could be on, all made into balloons to carry me away. Clockwise from the top that's Serenity (from Firefly), the one ring (from Lord of the Rings), the Millennium Falcon (Star Wars), the Nimbus 2000 (Harry Potter), and the TARDIS (Doctor Who).

This is my original sketch. It didn't change much from this to the final version. I thought about switching Serenity and the broomstick, because I thought it might be hard to identify the ship without the nose, but then the similarly coloured balloons would all have been side-by-side, so that wouldn't have worked. I move Serenity up a little, so that it's more visible, and I think with the detail anyone who's seen the show will be able to tell what it is.

Purchase this shirt at Red Bubble.

A Memorable Introduction

This is a little t-shirt design I did this morning. It's a polished version of a graphic I did waaaaay back in high school after watching Dr No. And I mean, who doesn't like James Bond, right? I'm not normally much of a minimalist, but I think this is a pretty neat little design based on that amazing opening. It's a version of the gunshot sequence, and the dot pattern during the theme song. I took the colours from my trusty Retro Graphics book in the section on 60s posters.

Purchase it on Red Bubble.

Moose Milk t-shirt

Yay! More t-shirts! So I'm stuck around in Portage La Prairie (read: middle of nowhere on the prairies) waiting for my first flight training, so I have loads of time to do some drawing (and avoid studying). The idea for this design came from the fruitful night that also brought about the Teamwork shirt. Moose Milk is a drink that originated either with the RCAF or RCN, and is basically a mix of milk, ice cream, and a few different types of liquor. The recipes are all a little different. The idea was to make a fake, vintage looking label, as though it were an actual brand. The slogan came from a mash-up of a few different things I read on old snake oil bottles while I was doing the research for this. It's dated to 1909 because that's a date of the establishment of the RCN, and I've always heard it most closely associated with the navy.

Here's a picture of how it started out. This is where I realized that I would have to use computer generated text, and adjust it to look hand drawn rather than actually drawing it out. This is the first design I've done by hand out of the last few t-shirts because it needed that imperfect, vintage feel:

So I kept the outline, adjusted all the text to look less computer-generated (holy labour intensive), and added some colour:

Even though I put a bit of a vintage filter on it, it just wasn't enough, which is why I ended up actually cutting out some of the label for the final version (at the top), so it looked really worn out. I'd originally thought about having it on a light shirt, but as it turns out is also looks really good on some of the darker colours.

You can pick out the colour yourself, though: Purchase it at redbubble.com

Teamwork to the Rescue

I'm really enjoying designing t-shirts lately. This idea came from a night at the pub listening to a couple fantastic bands. A few of us were discussing the Angry Birds shirts I did, and then we saw the stamps we'd been given at the door were of a little monkey. We started talking about monkey t-shirts, and someone suggested turning the Barrel of Monkeys monkeys into SARTechs. SARTechs are Search and Rescue Technicians, and pretty much have the coolest job in the CF. They where bright orange suits, hence the colour, and SAR aircraft are painted red and yellow, hence the barrel that's been turned into a Cormorant helicopter.

This is available on redbubble.com

Angry (snow)Birds

I enjoyed my last Angry Birds t-shirt design, and decided that the cute little Snowbird needed it's own design I love how it turned out! So, go buy one right away.

RCAF Birds

I put this new t-shirt design up on Red Bubble. It's based on the game Angry Birds, but I made all the birds look like different RCAF aircraft. The idea for this came from the patch I'm designing for the nav course I just started. We wear a course patch on our left shoulder of our flight suits, which we (and that'll mean me) choose and design. We were talking about doing an Angry Birds theme, and I said I would make one that looks like a Dash 8, because that's what we fly in for training. It went well, and now we just need a motto before we can get them made. I enjoyed doing it so much I decided to make a few more, and see what kind of design I could come up with.

This is the first version of the planes I came up with. They're based on (left to right) a Polaris, Hercules, Aurora, Cormorant, Tutor, Sea King, and F-18. I tried to choose different types of aircraft used for different purposes. to have a good variety. I couldn't do one of everything because I was limited by the number of birds, and it just would have gotten to be way too many planes to make into a nice design. I decided it would be nicer to limit the numbers and do something cool to the layout instead.

Some of the plane/bird pairings I choose because they went really well together for more than just shape. The Polaris is used for air-to-air refuelling, so the bird that lays eggs was a good match. In the final design I used a trail of little clouds, similar the the ones the game uses to show the path the birds take in the game, to 'connect' it to the F-18.

The Cormorant is used for Search and Rescue, so it's painted yellow and red, and it's similar in shape (or as close as you can get in a game made of geometric birds attacking pigs) to the triangle.

The Tutors are the small planes used by the Snowbird acrobatic team. The little blue bird that splits into three was perfect for that. They're my favourite.

The Sea King is based on the exploding bird, which I kind of thought was funny because they are so old and we always joke about their state of repair. I originally had the explosion from the game behind there, but I though it was too close, in regards to copyright, and figured it would be a good place to put the RCAF rondelle. I used the yellows from the Cormorant, and the vintage maple leaf to get get a bit of the 'explosion' feel.

News from the Grey Side of Life

 I love mail! Especially when it's a brand-new sketchbook. My soon-to-be filled entry for the 2012 Sketchbook Project I wrote about just arrived! Many photos are to come as I start filling it. I choose the theme 'The Grey Side of Life.'

I put this design up for sale on redbubble.com. Buy one! Tell your friends! It's a great site for t-shirts so I'm going to start putting up plenty more designs and artwork. Just as soon as I get to it...

I learnt a little about createspace.com this weekend, and I'm looking into using it to publish copies of The Tell-Tale Heart. This will be a huge amount of work, so it will be long-term project preparing all the images. Please let me know if there would be any kind of market for it, because I don't want to go through all of that for nothing!

T-shirt designs: Zeppelin rides.

I spent the last couple of days working on this t-shirt for no particular reason other than to try it out. For the non-geeks out there it's based on the sci-fi trope that parallel universes always seem to have zeppelins. This was a fun project because I got to pull out my Retro Graphics book and mimic art deco travel posters, which I love. It was also a way for me to experiment with vectors in Photoshop, which I'm finally getting a hang of. I also enjoyed having to limit my colour palette to six colours (for printing), which made me get creative with the design, and learn to do halftones for the gradients. I think this would be kind of cool on an orange shirt, which is why it's pictured on that background, but there are probably a lot of colours that would work well. Now to find a good place to publish this!

Rock From the Inside Out, a new t-shirt idea

I've been working on this design for a couple of weeks now. I was playing around with the idea of doing something with anatomy, and got the idea of playing around with traditional, rockabilly style tattoos to mimic the shape of the organs. I think it turned out very well. Now the only thing I have to do is decide what goes in the banner. I think this would made a great band t-shirt, but since I'm not really familiar with anyone needing one, so I have to come up with something else. It'll probably just be 'Rock n Roll' but if anyone has a good idea, please let me know!

Nijmegen T-shirt Design

This is a t shirt design I did for the Nijmegen team at CFB Winnipeg. The team is training for a four day march in Nijmegen in the Netherlands, and will be doing 40km per day, totalling 160 km. I had to drop out of the trainnig because of scheduling conflicts unfortunately, but I'm still working on the design (mostly so I can get a shirt!). Check out the March's website for more information.

Canada has been participating in the March since 1953, so I wanted a vintage feel for the design. I started with the old RCAF crest and manipulated the orientation and banner, and changed the wording to reflect the occasion. I took the maple leaves that were around the roundel and alternated them with tulips to represent the Netherlands, and after that drew in all the swirls, which are loaded with more maple leaves and tulips. I used the wartime crest with George's crown to keep with the vintage feel, but we're switching it to Elizabeth's for the final print.

I'm going to find somewhere to print it now, in white ink on Air Force Blue or maybe brown.

But how are you going to make things?

When I was leaving for basic training one of the questions I kept getting was "What about your art?" And it turns out that I did get a big opportunity to make pretty things. I designed our platoon t-shirt, and I have to say the results are pretty much awesome. Usually these things just have the platoon number on them, and maybe the school's logo, but we're going all out here!

The design is based on 'nose art' (paintings on the front of planes) we saw at the Canadian War Museum, which you should all visit if you're ever in Ottawa. About two-thirds of my platoon is air force (myself included), so it's appropriate. We have very little navy, so they only get the tattoo on the army girl. The saying is something our instructors say frequently that we've picked up on. They're mainly Francophone, so the spelling is supposed to pick up on their accent. The maple leafs with the bombs were taken directly from one of the pieces on exhibit. It was how the crew had marked their hits. It was a pretty cool design, so I used it and added the ranks of our instructors to them. Then I made it look vintage in Photoshop, and we're good to go!