Artists: I need some help

[CrzRsn]

I have a quick artwork request from some of you more talented guys out there seeing as how I'm artistically challenged.

I need a t-shirt design with a knight in a suit of armor riding a (mean looking/angry/menacing) giant snake going down a road.

Hopefully something like this


(note says "road lane lines")

I'd be most grateful. Thank you.

 

[Red_Bull]

That's the worst drawing I've ever seen .

What sort of time frame are you looking at? I could give it a crack but it could take a week or two.

 

[CrzRsn]

So I've never actually ordered custom t-shirts before so I don't know how the process works. I need to have the shirts on hand by April 17th, so as long as I can get by then, I'm pretty flexible.

Thank you for offering to help! If I ever visit NSW (or you visit here) I will buy you a beer.

I don't know if this would matter for a 1 color design (trying to keep shirt costs down), but the particular snake in question is a Banded Krait.

 

[Red_Bull]

What sort of look are you going for? Cartoonish or sorta semi realistic?

 

[Red_Bull]

Ok, done a very rough first draft just to see how and if my concept would work. Seems to look ok although I had several different ideas as I worked (no eraser so you can see where my thinking took me as I went along lol). This is just a rough pencil sketch though, it'll help form the basis for when I go to represent it on Photoshop and I can work on finer detail there.

In terms of colour, I'm thinking a styled black and white design along the lines of Jesus pictured below, although a lot smoother. I havent done anything like that before but how hard can it be. Can work the yellow into it for the stripes on the snake as well.

Might need some divine intervention before I'm done here!

So yeah, thoughts?

 

[CrzRsn]

That looks excellent! Seriously man, amazing!

My only comment is one that I forgot to mention - rather than a cross on the knights suit, could you possibly replace it with the letters 'esp' in some sort of lowercase, stylized font/script?

Thanks a lot man.

 

[Red_Bull]

That looks excellent! Seriously man, amazig!

My only comment is one that I forgot to mention - rather than a cross on the knights suit, could you possibly replace it with the letters 'esp' in some sort of lowercase, stylized font/script?

Thanks a lot man.

Yes.

Havent forgotten about this btw, I'm working on it as I type

 

[TerranCmdr]

Now that's talent!

 

[CrzRsn]

Yes.

Havent forgotten about this btw, I'm working on it as I type

Awesome!

I don't know how far you are, but another thought just occurred. If its too hard/messy/tricky to get that 'esp' in there or if it just doesn't look good or if you haven't got to it yet, could you get a spade (?) in there on the armor chest piece (same place the cross is)? If you're already beyond that, then no worries - I should've thought of that earlier.

And again, Thank you.

 

[Red_Bull]

I can do both and leave it up to you which one you want best, it's on a separate layer so easily interchangeable. It's about 70% there, just gotta work out how I'm gonna do a few things and see how it looks. It's a rare thing for me to draw from scratch so it's a bit trial and error, but it's coming along alright. Rough estimate for completion would be Sunday evening (my time) .

 

[Blayde]

Your drawing looks so good, i wish i had the skills to draw and then digitize, as such i rely heavily on reference material :/

 

[Red_Bull]

First version. Still some small corrections and stuff to tidy up but this is basically it. I didnt want to colour the snake completely black and yellow like in the picture because I thought that would be too heavy on the eye. Thinking of adding scales but again, runs the same risk and it probably starts to get a bit too busy then and I figure if it's going on a shirt there's no point bogging down on that sort of detail work (but then again, Ive never designed art for a shirt before!). Blayde would know more than I would in that regard I guess.

Didnt quite manage to nail the Jesus concept above but if I'm honest I think my style is better .

Hope you like it, let me know any small* changes and improvements you'd like to make. Thanks so far for the opportunity to do this, it's a bit of a departure from what I usually do (I mainly draw F1 cars!) so it was a good learning experience .

*Nothing wholesale, say stuff such as I dont like the movement lines around the piece, or ditch the shading, not I dont like the knight, redesign him

Oh, and a bigger version is available.

 

[CrzRsn]

That is exactly what I imagined it to look like! Perfect!

It looks great! Just one comment. Could you possibly remove the shadow on the snake? Pretty much all the t-shirt companies I'm looking at can't print that dark yellow, and it would look weird with no shadow on just the yellow

 

[Red_Bull]

Made the change, also added a few other details I wanted to get around to. Hope it's big enough

 

[Blayde]

If you halftone the shadow you dont need to worry about two yellows, it'll just print black and yellow and look like shading

 

[Red_Bull]

Not quite sure what you mean, the shadow is just a black layer at 40% opacity.

 

[Blayde]

yeah, you cannot print a 40% opacity on most printers, especially on colour, like that yellow, it effectively makes it two yellow colours, by halftoning it makes it a solid black and yellow combination that appears shaded but is the two colors mixed well

 

[CrzRsn]

Made the change, also added a few other details I wanted to get around to. Hope it's big enough

Hmm, I'm not so sure about the yellow eyes. I also liked the motion lines in the first version better. Would it be possible to get that one in the same large size as this one (with the shadow)?

And as far as the shirt color goes, I sent the image to a rep at the company most likely going to make the shirts for me and they didn't mention anything about the gray area or the dark yellow. I don't know if this was because they were doing a quick price quote or if it really isn't a problem.

 

[Blayde]

If they have any good people there they will halftone, but they only need to do that on a screenprint, a regular press print can usually go the whole gamut of colour

 

[CrzRsn]

Just spoke to the people over at www.customink.com and they will be able to halftone it without a problem. Originally I was planning on ordering it from www.gfxsp.com (people I know have ordered hundreds of shirts from them in the past) but I'm not so sure I will anymore.