Next Needs Up: "Demon(s)"

(Have I mentioned how much I love titles? Coming up with and giving them to things, namely? You should see the files in my computer. Sometimes [...] sits here trying to find my pictures so she can reminisce on something and she just gets frustrated at how little sense it all makes to her. Haha.)

Anyhow, here's the first design entry in the Next Needs Up series. (But be sure to stop by and read this post first, if you haven't already gotten acquainted with Next Needs Up's origin story.)

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Here, to the right, is the official (*cough*!) design document...

So, Ok, maybe it isn't so "official" looking. Or even very clean and thought out! (Excuse alert! Brace yourself...) But I'm not on a "team", so I've got little need to create accurate visualizations of what I have in mind for anyone else to follow. I've pretty much got what I want fully visualized in my head, so a quick, messy sketch like this one, with the only "corrections" or "revisions" being substituted by chicken-scratchy notes works perfectly.

If you took a second to read said notes (if you can read my handwriting...), then you should be getting an idea of what Next Needs Up's "essence" is. If I had to put it into as few words as possible, I would have to say that it is tension, discontent, confusion, and anxiety, overall. He's a character that I've always imagined would look shaky and jittery at all times, stopping to look over his shoulder every so often. It's possible that it was born from my arachnophobia. (Which, I should probably note, a friend mentioned that she doesn't believe that I'm scared of spiders very much anymore, after spending the last few years obsessed with them. She might be right.)

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And here is Next's  full body, simplified "icon" rendition, based on the above shown sketch. Not that it wasn't already a streamlined character, but these lines capture the basest essence perfectly, I feel. I am pretty happy with it as an icon for Next. I called this design "Demon"...at first. If you noticed, the title makes mention of there being a plurality of this "Demon".

Some artifacts, that come from my design process when working with vectors, created some questions in my mind, as to which "Demon" version I should choose to represent Next with. I will attempt to explain this as plainly as possible. Basically (you know you're in trouble when I start a sentence with that word), to make the negative spaces that form the eyes and the fanged frown, I used curves with no fills and strokes set to about 0.04 of an inch (Spreadshirt's minimum size for space between elements) in size. With them, I made the circles for the eyes and the lines for the frown and fangs on a layer on top of the solid shape that I had set down for the body. I then flattened the transparency to turn the strokes into outlines, then selected them and the body shape and merged them using the pathfinder window. (Found under "Window > Pathfinder", or by hitting "Shift + Ctrl + F9") The strokes were colored differently from that of the body shape, so when I merged their outlines on top, everything on the body shape that was underneath them was subtracted. And, since they were a different color from the body that they were merged to, all I had to do was select them on their own, with the "direct selection tool", delete them, and voilà!

Here's how the design looked by this point. The leftover circles in the eyes, and the triangular shapes in the fangs are the "artifacts" that I mentioned. Next, again with the direct selection tool (shortcut key "A" in Illustrator), I proceeded to select the circles in the eyes and deleted them. No qualms there, since the big, empty eyes communicate what I wanted the design to perfectly. But then, I selected the triangular shapes, deleted them, and stopped and thought, "Hm...does it look better with or without the triangular shapes filling that space?" So, I undid it and stared at it for a while. Then deleted them again. And undid. And deleted again. Finally, I copied it over to compare them side by side. Still undecided, I took a picture of them with my cellphone and sent it to several of my friends, in hopes the they would help me defeat my indecision. (One of them being Adlyn, of course. With her being Next Needs Up's "godmother" and all...) The verdict was mostly mixed, but one of the people who replied asked why I couldn't use both. Brilliant! Why couldn't I think of that?!

So I uploaded both, naming the one with negative space for eyes and fangs "Demon Alpha", and the one with shapes for fangs "Demon Beta". Not long after, I decided to also make one with shapes for both its eyes and fangs, and one with only shapes for eyes available, and renamed the whole bunch. Here they are, from left to right. Demon Alpha, Demon Beta, Demon Delta, and Demon Gamma. What a happy (but tense, confused, and anxious) family, huh?

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They're currently available as Flex prints as either singles, pairs, or trios, grouped by type, and arranged horizontally. (For example here's an example of a trio of Alphas.) That's all I have for this one. I'm not making any promises or predictions, but I'm going to try and crank out as many posts as possible so I can catch up to all of the designs which I've yet to cover. Feel free to swing by the shop if you want to sneak a peek at any of these. (Or purchase a t-shirt or accessory with the design on it to see it in its full glory.) Until the next time, y'all carry on, I'll be going to sleep!

J, out...

[Backstabber]

(These designs have been updated as of June 25, 2010)

Been talking about this one for a while, so let's get to it! To start, I'll give you a little bit of background on what brought about the idea...at least partly (I have so much going on in my head, and I take in so much stimulation from everything in the environment that either emits or reflects light  [is that impossibly inclusive enough?] that it's impossible pointing at all definite sources. I really don't know). Well, anywho, on to the story;

Basically, I enjoy playing Modern Warfare 2 as much as the next guy, and the manner in which I was playing (sneaking around then running up and stabbing enemies in the back) earned me the "Backstabber" title pretty early on. It wasn't until sometime later, when a friend of mine with a thing for violence and I were strolling through the mall, talking about my idea for the "Reload!" t-shirt that the vision came to me. A few more did also, and I even went and decided right then and there that I would call the line Blades & Blood, but this isn't about all that, so I'll move on...

From the start my vision was of a two color design, and I wanted it to be very...iconic. Do you get what I mean by that? By "iconic", I mean that I wanted the elements to be icons. To me this means simple, clean, crisp representations of the things depicted. Like the sign on a public restroom's door letting you know which gender it is for, or the sign that represents a person in a wheel chair over the handicap parking space. When you look at these, even though people don't look anything like how they are depicted, you know what they mean, almost at a primal level. I wanted the design to speak in the absence of any font or type...and yet, I didn't want it to be so simple that it would look unrefined. I didn't want the common representation of a knife people see everyday. Don't get me wrong, that plain old thing gets the message across, but I wanted something more. This had to be mine, I had to own it. With those things in mind, a vector design seemed like the best bet.

I began by choosing a knife with a powerful link to my past. The KA-BAR fighting knife. This knife - its pommel, hilt, and blade - are ingrained into the memories of my time served in the U.S. Marine Corps. The knife itself is iconic, and as far as I'm concerned (being a Marine, so I don't really know if the other services use it), it's a Marine fighting knife! So, now that I've given you the long back story, I can tell you about the design process...

 (Click the image for a larger version!)

First off, I don't have the image that was used as reference, but a look at any old KA-BAR will give you a pretty good idea of its basic build (so, yes, the blade is supposed to sit that far forward). Secondly, I want to make it clear that Spreadshirt has very strict standards on their "flex" printed designs, so these designs can be a bit of an undertaking (I got more stories, trust). The biggest restriction is that sections in a design cannot be smaller than 0.06x0.06 inches in size, and gaps between sections cannot be smaller that 0.04x0.04 inches in size. These restrictions in particular turn generating and finalizing these designs into some sort of artistic math problem!

Using Illustrator, I took the pen tool, set to stroke only, blocked out the sections that you see, selected it all, and then switched it all to fill with no stroke. The way that I created that oval with the negative space around it, on the spine of the blade, was by using the pen tool to shape out the form, set to stroke only, in a color different from that of the rest of the knife. I then went to the top menu, and under "Object", chose to flatten, checked the box that says "turn all strokes to outlines" and OK'ed it. After that I pulled up the "Pathfinder" window, and chose the "merge" option. This made it so that the part of the blade below the off-colored oval disappeared, so after that all I had to do was individually select the oval with the "direct selection tool" (shortcut key "A"), press "delete" and voila! An oval of sorts divided from the rest of the blade by a negative space.

Above and to the left you have the finalized KA-BAR icon design. That was about two thirds of the work.

My next step was to create a dripping, blood stain (I'm not sure how else to describe it) to stab  the KA-BAR into. It's kinda funny creating a design that you won't be using all of in the end...

To start, I free handed (with a tablet and pen) the blood with the pencil tool, set to fill, and used the eraser and such to refine it. Once I had its basic form down, I went and changed its aspect and size so that all of its parts fell within the 0.06x0.06 inch size minimum. I basically widened it a whole bunch. The initial design was much narrower. From there I took the KA-BAR and, like, castrated half of its blade (Did I mention how it bothers me that a part of the design that I am proud of isn't even being used?!) and messed around with its orientation until I got it to a place where it felt right. Below is the finalized "KA-BAR Backstabber" design, in all of its vectorized, digital glory!

(Again, click the image for a larger view)

So, yeah. There it is, boys and girls! Here's what one looks like on a t-shirt, in case you were wondering. I have a fellow "artist" friend who disagrees with the flatness of the KA-BAR, as he figures it would look more "dynamic" if it had some perspective to it, but the flatness and plainness is precisely what my vision was. So in the end his opinion, though appreciated, was kind of irrelevant. You can call it arrogance if you wish. I call it staying true to the vision and to the feel that I set out to achieve from the get go. This is meant to be an icon, not principled "art".

And....I think that's about all I have for this one.

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, simply post them over in my comments and I'll see about getting back to you. Carry on!


J, out!