Venganza Final Design

The Submission

Experience our first collaborative Threadless.com design submission.

Like Voltron, the frognuts worked together to produce this design, and with any luck it will garner enough votes to be printed and sold on t-shirts by Threadless. A message to our friends and family who read this: Go check out threadless.com, and if you like the shirts they sell sign up for an account, then if you please, go to the ‘participate’ section and vote that you would buy a shirt with our design plastered on it.

Now for some background on this graphic.

The way I remember it I was enjoying some food at frognuts’ house when almost out of the blue he starts with, “I’ve got a great idea for a t-shirt…” I think he was interrupting nacho consumption, but I can’t be sure. However, his idea was delightfully wicked and simple: have piñatas beating up on a kid.

I liked the idea enough that I went to work and sketched out an initial version…but this sketch turned out kind of violent, check it out by clicking on the image below.

First Sketch

The sketch shows a kid on the foreground being beaten by a piñata while a crowd of piñatas looks on. I think the consensus was that it looked too brutal. Looking back now, it reminds me of a gang beating, or police using excessive force. Considering that we wanted our t-shirt design to appeal to everyone’s sense of humor, and not horror, I had to redraw it.

So redraw I did. Check out version two below…

Second Sketch

Once more, my efforts were met with shock/revulsion by the other frognuts. Apparently hanging the kid from his neck is too gruesome. I guess so…but at least I was getting closer because taking the kid off the ground was an improvement. Another improvement was not actually showing the beating.
A suggestion to reduce the gruesomeness was to hang the kid by one foot instead. That sounded good to me, so I drew it yet again.

This time things were better, however there was knowledgeable dissent from Ponder who said that the kid and characters should be simplified because it was going to be printed on a t-shirt. That is, there should be fewer lines and the shapes more pronounced so that it has more impact when worn. I agreed. The final drawing iteration that followed is found below.

Final Sketch

I scanned the drawing and sent it over to Ponder. Here’s where Ponder threw his weight in, with some digital production design. He took my ink drawing and with the power of knowledge and creativity, turned it into a colored art piece ready for contest submission.

I tried coloring the black and white art myself but I was unable to kick any ass there. Chalk it up to lack of color theory and practice. After working with my scan Ponder came back with a colored version of his own, check it out by clicking on the thumbnail below.

First Layout

Yes, he took my drawing and made it better. He added little sweat drops and the spotlight effect along with a bunch of subtle effects. But, while I liked the colors, I didn’t like how the pants or shoes were not defined. The reason they weren’t was because Ponder was hoping to accentuate the spotlight effect, but it wasn’t working out. Ponder went through a few color revisions before hitting pay dirt with the final version.

Color was the most difficult and I would say crucial part of the process. You see, threadless only allows four distinct colors in a design apart from the color of the t-shirt. That means five colors total, it can be challenging but fun figuring out how to work those five colors so that the design doesn’t look limited in the end. I think Ponder pulled it off well. Even though, I personally don’t like the shirt color as something I would wear, majority ruled and since the overall color scheme worked, it was chosen.

Why develop this idea for threadless.com? Well we like the way Threadless does business and the shirts it offers. We also like creating, so participation seemed natural to us. Lastly, the cash-money prizes don’t hurt either. If we win most of the loot will probably be blown on booze and tacos. At any rate, this is the first of a couple of t-shirt ideas we’re going to develop; hopefully some will end up on t-shirts.

Here’s the project contribution breakdown:
MEMBER – CONTRIBUTION/TOOLS
frognuts – Concept/Brain, Hubris
deadlymarxist – Illustration and Concept development/Pencil, Pen, Paper, Nachos
Ponder – Digital Production Design/Laptop, Adobe Illustrator, Mad Skillz

regular pants are unreliable.

School is wrong when all of your creative juices are ripped from the body that keeps you running. I’ve felt this way this entire semester, and now that it’s end is the next chapter, I’m looking forward to summer. Expect more from me now that my mind is back on track.

This is an advertisement I had to do for my english critical thinking class. It’s pretty funny, a bit elementary I know, but nevertheless still good enough. I dig Bob Dylan, and for that reason decided to exploit his name in the hopes that I would sell more of my fake pants.

Deadlymarxist contributed his drawing skills, and Frognuts added his extra-mind bending ideas (the drawing atop a real picture) and I just put it together to get a grade. Enjoi.