Tuesday 31 January 2012

Inkscape!

Hallelujah. I might have found a solution to endless hours with the Pen Tool in PS. I've just downloaded Inkscape - a free program that as far as I can see with my limited knowledge of Illustrator, duplicates a lot of the functionality at a fraction of the price. And when I say fraction I mean a very, very small number very close to zero. Zero, in fact.
The only drawback appears to be I can't export from Inkscape to PS7

Monday 30 January 2012

Fashion Victim (again)

I really like this design ... and it would appear it's probably just me who likes it. Anyway, I felt the portfolio could handle one more iteration of this design. I don't like to do too many as I feel it's confusing, but my excuse was that I have wanted to update this for some time.
My theory is that you don't want to have endless permutations of the same design slightly differing between each one. Zazzle effectively allows this and it's too easy to keep uploading minor changes, creating a lot of overly similar products which I think may put people off. Better to have the "courage of your convictions".
Hell, I'm convinced this is great!

Banksy inspired change to design

One of the artists I find most interesting is Banksy - the UK graffiti artist. His work has a wry sense of humour that sets it apart from most other graffiti artists and indeed a lot of "conventional" artists. Do I actually like graffiti? That's a difficult one. The problem with graffiti is it's very intrusive and although there are doubtless many talented artists involved with graffiti there are also a lot of unskilled morons scrawling nonsense and generally reducing the quality of life for people living in urban areas.
Anyway - on with the design. Ironically, after spending hours creating a lovely clean design using the pen tool I went back in and dirtied it up, adding the shadows and harsh lighting effect that Banksy employs, mainly with paint bucket and eraser tool.

Craic Dealer Urban Graffiti TShirt shirt


How it appears on a tshirt

Friday 27 January 2012

Craic Dealer

For those unfamiliar with the term craic (pronounced crack) is the Irish term for fun, entertainment, and enjoyable conversation. This image and play on words has been on my sketchpad for a bit and I finally decided to sit down and give it the full Zazzle treatment.

Once again it was firing up good ol' PS7 and straight onto a blank canvas. I was going to leave the design as a bitmap image but my OCD overcame my good sense and it was out with the pen tool and a couple of pointless hours zoomed in at 10000000% to get the smoothest lines possible ...




Here's how it appears on a tshirt

Thursday 19 January 2012

Not quite an Anti-Valentines Card

Look, if you're going to send an anonymous Valentines card you might as well be upfront that you are an obsessive stalking nut job!

Sunday 15 January 2012

Zombie Trainspotters

What would happen if train spotters got infected with the zombie plague? Well, maybe not a lot - maybe they'd still be obssesed by trains ... TRAAINNNSSS! For all of you not in the know a trainspotter is a person (probably of either sex but usually male) who obsessively records details of ordinary, bog standard trains. Not unusual locomotives or rare rolling stock, no just the type of train you would board to get from A to B if you couldn't go by car.

Currently available as a tshirt

Wednesday 11 January 2012

Fine Fresh Fierce

Now that the flattering sales figures of Christmas is over it's back to the hard work of selling stuff the rest of the year. A bit of a riff on the Katy Perry lyric from California Gurls ... being fierce is all that matters



... and one a bit more "in your face"