Once a Backstabber, Always a Backstabber; The Tanto

(you can count on that)

Upon sitting down to start preparations for my next "deviation" blog, I realized that I hadn't actually gone over one of the designs that I would be featuring a deviation for. Obviously, that's no good, so here I am!

For this post, I will be (briefly, I predict) going over a "Backstabber" variant, this time (if you had't surmised as much from the title) featuring a Tanto. As mentioned in this follow up Backstabber post I plan on making several other Backstabber variant designs, featuring all sort of pointy objects. With as many ideas as I have coming into my head, it's difficult to actually execute on very many of these (and yes, I have a long list of Backstabber variants already). I won't even mention my time constraints (but I did)!

So, the same as with the KA-BAR, I created a Tanto "icon". The process was pretty much the same. The reference image used was this one. I like it. It's plain, clean, sharp, and gets the message across (that being "Hey, look! I'm a tanto!!"). Next I opened up my Backstabber "work" file (I save the "work" and "finalized" versions of every design separately. Makes it 79% easier to go back and make any fixes or revisions), removed the KA-BAR, and readjusted the blood a bit. Once the Tanto design had been completed (you can't really tell, but I'm pretty anal about these designs, and the final appearance betrays the attention to detail that goes into it), the rest was pretty much just about orientation and what-not.

Anywho, here's what the "Tanto Backstabber" looks like. I'm considering (meaning, I will...just not yet) creating some "Backstabber" text of my own (meaning not from one of the template Illustrator fonts), so I haven't actually gotten a t-shirt of my own with this design on it yet. With as many Anime/Japan geeks as there are in my school though, I'm sure several would stop and ask me about it if I wore it (sure, the KA-BAR Backstabber that I wear every now and then gets reactions, just...y'know).

In other news, a recent gaffe involving a digital direct print has halted some of my Spreadshirt shopping progress. Basically, I want to wear this damn design (done right!), so I'm waiting until the return gets back to them and they credit it to me before trying again. Until then I'm gonna sit here (not the whole time, mind you) and wait for the email with the digital coupon code. I understand that they'd recently become very backed up (some partner's shop was getting a massive amount of orders for digital direct printed designs), and they had to up production by adding more personnel and working throughout the week, so I'm attributing it to that (especially since the t-shirt that I ordered with my "GI1911 RELOAD! 2.0" printed on it over half a year ago looked awesome, and still does after many washes!).

Well, I'll stop boring you with my personal problems now. I'm gonna try a little harder to at least do one of these a week, so that I can finally get caught up. The designs featured in my shop with a blog post of their own are currently outnumbered by the ones without, and I'm not exactly happy about that. It sort of dissuades me from getting to cranking out some of my other ideas, because that will just back me up more on this end, and that's not good if getting more designs into my shop is my goal. That's enough for now. Until next time, carry on!


J, out...

*Biggest* Fan Reactions

(Post last updated 10/30/2010)

Hey there. I just felt in the mood to post something, but not enough to get to my next "deviation" post, so I thought I'd go with something that I can wrap up quicker.

It's been about 2 months or so since I ordered a "*Biggest* Fan" tee of my own to wear, so I thought I'd share, briefly, on its reception by the "audience" that's been exposed to it.

Honestly, I had a doubt or two about this. But after seeing that 4 sold soon after I had made it available on Spreadshirt, as mentioned in the design's introductory blog, the doubt began fading a bit. So, I ordered my own and patiently waited until it came in the mail.

The reactions to it have been varied, but positive overall. One instance that sticks out in my mind was that of an acquaintance from school. When she initially saw it, her first reaction was to roll her eyes and say "Oh my god..." but it was followed by laughter, so I thought "Alright, that's not ALL bad, I guess." Later though, I ran into her again as she was talking to a group of her friends and she went, "Oh my god, y'all have to look at his shirt, it's *epic*."

..."Epic?", I thought, "Didn't she roll her eyes?"


I figured I'd just go with it though. I mean, it is pretty silly, so I suppose a roll of the eyes to the self-assuredness of a claim such as being the *biggest* fan is the appropriate response to expect (can you tell that I didn't ponder what the response to this would be as much as I did with my "Backstabber" tee?).

[1st Update, 10/30/2010]


Just a few days ago, I had a few more reactions to my *Biggest* Fan t-shirt that I thought I'd report, one being a reaction of my own. This first reaction might also be a "note to self", as this could be avoided in the near future (but would I want to?). So, I had some stuff to take care of at my apartments' leasing office, but as I began to state what my business there was, the lady just busts out laughing! So I'm standing there, giving her a bit of a confused look she goes "You are always wearing the funniest t-shirts!", at which point I look down and go "Oh...right. So, anyhow, as I was sayi-", but again, I was interrupted by more laughter. It took a few more moments of this, and of her asking which one I was wearing the last time (it was the "Meat Pyramid" one, by the way) before we could get to talking business. Honestly, if it wasn't for the fact that I had a sense of urgency about things, I would have found it very amusing. I guess next time I wear this thing out, I'll try to keep the fact that I'm wearing it in mind, so there aren't too many surprises, which directly relates to this next "reaction".

The next reaction, which was more of a thought, came from myself. As the day went on, and I returned to my normal level of self awareness (contrast from self-conscious), again I found it curious that more people than normal (thus making me consciously aware of it) were staring at me with odd looks on their faces. I was having dinner with a friend that night, and after returning from a trip to the little boys' room I sat and told her "Y'know...I should probably try to remain more conscious of what I am wearing when I'm out and about with these on. I keep getting these funny looks and forgetting why..." She agreed.

[end 1st Update]

Most times the response is a smile with a shake of the head, but I haven't actually worn it very much, so I guess I'll wait and see some more. I think that's about all I have for that one. My next post should be on the next "deviation", and for those of you that keep up with what's currently up in my designer shop, the next design should actually be a digital direct design that'll be sure to flare up my phobia. So, until the next time, don't eat that, and carry on!

J, out...

1st Departure: Are Two Girls Better Than One?

(...many seem to think so)

But I'm not here to make a statement or to educate anyone on latent (??) sexual preferences (heh). This is about a deviation (sounds more fun than calling them "variations") born from another design, and the first of its kind.

This first one was born from a part of the Danger & Beauty design. One third of the design, to be exact. The following four deviations came from the "Beauty" design. Both the original one, and the negative space bikini one were used. They're no surprise, so I'll go ahead and show all four of these puppies, and then expound on how they came to be. I believe it will be easier that way...

(Click images for larger versions)

Unless you're half blind (or spatially challenged...), then you've probably noticed that the girl on the right of each of these pairs is simply a mirrored image of the one on the left. No voodoo magicks there...

The way that first pair (without the "Twins!" font) came about was from my messing around with combining designs to display as examples of what anyone browsing through my shop could arrange themselves, to put up in the shops "product examples" section. As I might have mentioned before, each part of my Danger & Beauty design is available to buy/use individually.

So what I did was take two and stick 'em on a shirt, then I horizontally flipped the one on the right and voilà! There it was! But...I noticed that the price on the product with two designs on it was too high for my linking, so in the spirit of keeping the cost down as much as possible for any possible customers who might like that arrangement, I went back into Illustrator, replicated what I had done in Spreadshirt with both the bikini and bikini-less designs, and uploaded each back into Spreadshirt as two color, single designs!

Next, during another session of messing around with the Spreadshirt product designer, I added "Twins!" underneath  the girls and placed it on a t-shirt to display on the product example window. As any of you who've gone and at least messed around on Spreadshirt know, adding font adds to the cost. Things remained that way for a while after...

Fast forward to this post, and while simultaneously messing around with my designer shop and writing the blog, finding the whole "Twins!" thing funny enough to keep around, it came to me that I should probably unify the two girl design with the text myself, and upload it all as a three color design (meaning anyone can change the color on either of the girls and the text independent to any of the other elements), thus what you see just above. Hm...

(stepped away and wrote down a bunch of new ideas)

Anywho, that's about it for how those designs came to be. There is no philosophy that fueled these designs, or any crazy revelations received while hanging out in a cave, simply opportunity, and my aim to keep my designs affordable. You can find these designs under "Twins!" and "Beauties", "Alpha" for the the ones with bikinis and "Beta" for the bikini-less. I'll have posts on other deviations coming soon. Stand by.

J, out...

Variations and Deviations

(but aren't they all deviations?)

This is just a quick update. So, I feel like I am at a point (as far as catching my design blogs up to the available designs) in which I can start rolling out some of the alternate versions of some of my main designs. Less of a variation from RELOAD! 2.0 to 1.0, and more like the difference in between the KA-BAR Backstabber, and a Backstabber featuring a different knife. And then, some of these are combinations of elements from other, multi-part designs.

I'll be starting to post some of those soon, so be on the look out for them! That is all. Carry on.

J, out!

Spiders Gotta Eat Too!

(...and I'm fine with that, s'long as it ain't me!)

Another quick update, since I'm still too busy to sit and prepare a full on blog post. Been really busy, too busy, to bother paying attention to the priorities in my life lower down on the list (sorry, but this is definitely nowhere near the top). School has kept me busy enough this quarter, and a lil' someone (the same lil' someone who thought this design needed more cock) has been occupying more of my time.

Anywho, I paid my eldest sister a visit about a week ago, wearing one of my t-shirts (with a design I've yet to blog about) so the conversation headed in that direction and I was reminded that I had promised my nephew one. Specifically the [...] t-shirt, which was one of my very first ideas (and the first I attempted, before realizing that it didn't fall within the strict standards for vector designs on Spreadshirt). So, with that brought to my attention (I have a hard time with letting kids down) I've rededicated myself to getting the design to work, so that I can get him the t-shirt that I promised!

My sleep cycle is thoroughly fucked at the moment (thanks to the same aforementioned things that have been keeping me occupied), so I planned to come home and pass out, last night after class, but instead I sat and started roughing out some ideas on paper. I felt like I had it down, after 7 or 8 sketches, so I got it scanned, digitized, and dropped into Photoshop for a quick crop of the specific rough that I wanted to work on top of, in Illustrator. And then...something happened.

Basically, I'd recently updated my touchpad (Yes, I'm seriously working off of a laptop touchpad. Will purchase my own tablet later) driver, and it reset all of my settings, so I went through, quickly, and set everything as it was before (I HATE IT when a touchpad can be used to click. I cannot stand that!). Or, so I thought.

So, with the freshly cropped image dropped into Illustrator to work over, I zoomed in and attempted to move the image around to survey the landscape and get a good idea for how I would do this, and to find a good spot to start off on....but it wasn't moving. Now, I don't like having to press "H" to choose the "Hand tool". I prefer having whatever tool it is that I'm using and holding the space bar to quickly switch it to the hand tool, and then letting go of the space bar when I'm done to have it revert back to my previous tool. But when I would go about it in that manner, it wasn't working. Holding the space bar caused the pointer to freeze in place. I fought with it for a while, going through tool settings to try to resolve the issue myself among other things, to no avail. So after much frustration I gave Adobe a call...

WELL...after a total of 63 minutes and 27 seconds (I wish I was lying, this is so embarrassing), the nice Adobe support specialist, after telling me shut down Illustrator and having me attempt to move the mouse around while holding down any  key, and making me realize that it wasn't the program, kindly directed me to call my computer's manufacturer, as this seemed like an issue with the computer itself, completely unrelated to Illustrator. Well, after 32 minutes on the phone with them, I learned about a little option, called "TouchCheck" (something I'm sure Bobby Boucher's mother would rightly refer to as The Devil), which locks the pointer from being moved while any key is held down. Yep... That's all it was. Nice, huh? By the time I got done with all of that being put on hold, troubleshooting, and direct-connecting through the internet I was freaking done, so I called it a night.

Still, I'm kinda excited about getting this design done. It will actually be my first (public, these don't count!) spider design, and with a shop named "Tarantulas" I probably need about 20 more of those!

(*reads back over blog*...)

Wwww-OW! Some much for that "quick update", huh? That's why I gotta try to stay off of these rants that I jump into. It's not good, in the interest of time. Well, that's about as much as I should have written for that one. So with that, I leave you. Carry on.

J, out

"Beautiful Strokes"

(I just like that name, I don't know why...)

So I just upgraded to CS5 last night, but I've been too busy to try playing with any of these new things yet. My school is still on CS4, and was on CS3 when I started there in the Summer of '08. I can't say I ever took the time to learn what was new from CS3 to CS4, but I'm taking a little more care to find out about some of these things now. I figure knowing about these could open the door to many new possibilities in my head, at the least, and with just about everything I do starting there, that would be optimal.

I still remember how my imagination exploded with ideas and possibilities when I first learned about and began to understand the concept of "layers". It may sound silly, but I didn't sleep much that night. My mind just kept cranking out idea after idea after idea and I couldn't get it to shut up!

Folk who know how I go about creating digital art (which, admittedly, I don't create enough of and working within the restrictions of Spreadshirt greatly tones down some of these ideas I have. BUT!...that stuff is for a later time) know I'm BIG on layers. Like...BIG! They just make things so much easier! But...I'll leave it there. I gotta watch myself, lest I got off on some random rant. I don't really have time for that today. I'll try to drop by soon to post some more t-shirt design process blogs. But until then, feel free to visit my designer profile and look through my shop and designs from there. Y'all carry on now...

J, out.

Meat Pyramid

(No, not that kind of meat, pervs!)

So, about a month ago, before I began writing the blog for the GI 1911 RELOAD! 2.0 design, and idea popped into my head. This even excited me enough to mention it at the beginning of the blog! Now, I won't claim that it is my most original design idea yet, but I designed it myself and I've yet to see anything like it on Spreadshirt. But, let's cut the gibber-gabber and get on with the blog!

The concept: The idea for this came from a pretty mundane source. I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but the origins of human behavior are of high interest to me, and I am someone who believes that we should do our best to live in a more..."natural" state, for the sake of our bodies and of our minds. So with that said, I am completely opposed to the idea that being a vegan or vegetarian is better for you. That shouldn't be that much of a surprise. I mean, I just posted some blogs about a design which includes a hot chick, a gun, and a car. Would anyone really think I'd not be a meat lover after those little revelations?! I'd think not.

I don't want to go off into a rant, but I'll say this much; A friend of me who was mostly vegetarian quit recently after seeing her health go progressively south, and after finding out that soy products are just about the worst substitute for meat, in relation to health. I had been telling her about that for ages, so my gentle "I told you so" kinda sparked this idea in my head. I hadn't made any very provocative designs up until this point (what a damn liar!) so I thought I'd take a stab at it! You could say this is my blatant, offensive way of letting the world know that I enjoy eating other animals very much. If you agree though, then you might also find humor in it.

The execution: First, as always, I began by hunting down some reference images. I got myself a hen, a piggy, and a cow.

(Click image for larger version)

I started with the hen. This was pretty straightforward. I think I wanted to go a little less detailed with the silhouette, but...well, it is what it is! The only thing of note that I can think about with this design in particular is the change I made with the legs. If you haven't noticed, this design is not a perfect copy of the reference image I have linked above. The first silhouette was, but that rear leg just bugged me to no end, so I chopped it off!...and then copied the forward leg, dragged it back a bit, played around with the orientation and there you have it! I personally think it works a lot better now.

(Click image for larger version)

Next, we have the piggy! Same as the hen, It was pretty straight forward, but I feel like it's the least detailed of the bunch. I mean, it's got a pretty plain form, but I guess I can blame the reference image for that. Same as the hen though, I altered it as I saw fit to get the message of "Hey, it's a pig!" across loudly and clearly. The more obvious of the two is the third leg back. If you note the reference image, you'll see that its hind legs are close together. That just wasn't working for me, so I took the first leg, added more leg to it and moved it back into place. The next change (which I consider the least obvious, but it probably depends on the individual viewing it) is the extra piggy ear. In a true silhouette of the reference image, you wouldn't see that second ear, but this was something else which I felt would help solidify that this is, in fact, a pig. So, there you go!

(Click image for larger version)

And last but not least, we have the cow! This was a little tougher to get done in a simplified enough manner. On one of the initial runs (I have to create an outline for these from start to finish, and it's difficult going back and fixing something midway through) I was going too detailed so I had to start over from the start. Later I realized that I didn't have a clear view of the hooves, so I had to leave those alone, find a separate reference image for cow hooves and then return and make some while playing it by eye. So yeah, those hooves are a definite edit made by me that wasn't found in the original reference image. Next, is that utter to the left. As you might have noted, there's a calf suckling the one in the reference image, so I had to play around a little with that. That's about all I did with the cow design.

Next I created a triangle, played around with the distances from animal to animal, and then with the distances in between the animals and the horizontal dividers...and then with the sizes of the animals and the width and height of the triangle itself. Getting it all sized and spaced to where it felt good and right was a pain in the ass! That problem took the most use of my braincells (I might have even stopped the music from playing on my iTunes so I could concentrate, haha). So, here is the finished product!

(Click image for larger version)

As you might be able to tell, the animals are not perfectly centered, but that's because it felt wrong when they were. The alignment I used was by eye and based on the proportions of them instead, and I think it worked much better. There was just something...unnatural about having them in a symmetrically centered fashion. Even though the designs were centered, their weight wasn't. Also, I mirrored the cow to face in the opposite direction. It would have been weird having both the pig and cow facing the same way in sequence when the hen wasn't, so I alternated them all by simply having the cow face left. I actually just got a version (I chose a red pyramid with white animals) of the t-shirt in the mail a few days ago and it looks great (this photo doesn't do it justice, but I have no better lighting to work off of. Also, the pyramid really is red, but the light is reflecting off of it and making it all kinds of different colors in the photo).

In relation to the "disclaimer" calling y'all pervs at the start of this post, it's related to something that happened the same night I received the t-shirt. I had a friend over, and before leaving to have dinner she jumped in my bed and noticed it laying there, so I took it and hung it out in front of me for her to get a better view and said "I call it...the 'Meat Pyramid'" but before I could say another word, she replied "You should make it have a huge cock at the top instead of that chicken!" (typical), so I told her "That would match your diet very closely. I'll be sure to make one like that just for you..." in my most sarcastic tone.

With that in mind though, I have considered making alternate meat pyramid designs (no...not with cocks), but have come to the conclusion that these animals are satisfying enough eats for now. Maybe, in the near future, I might get a clearer vision concerning other alternative food pyramids to design, but for now this is all I got! Interesting to note is that this design is still the only one that comes up when one searches for a "food pyramid" on Spreadshirt. I think that's pretty cool!

Well, that's all I have to say on this design! Remember to swing by my designer shop from time to time, as new designs will continue to drop in irregularly. Now go on, get out of here...git!

J, out....

LYPHE

(Also known as "life")

So!...things like school (and the beach, and drinking fishbowls full of alcoholic beverages, and discussing art with friends) have kept me more that just a little busy these past few weeks.

(*checking out when my last post was made*)

Holy Hindu cows! June 30th, huh? (*cringe*) O.K. so maybe it's been a little more than just a few weeks. But, what can I say? I like for these design posts to be nice, clean, and well put together. So while I could just drop in, post a bunch of images and say "There ya go!" it would be incongruent with my M.O. Half ass-ing (stuff I'm into) is definitely not my thing.

You could say that I've gone a bit art heavy on my chosen courses this school quarter, so I will be busier with that stuff regardless. But also, the first few weeks are busier to boot. It's the time when I have to make several adjustments to my schedule, acquire books and supplies, and get my mind in the game.

So with all out there, I think it's safe to say that I won't be making any significant posts for at least a few more weeks. I don't like leaving a two part post all alone by itself like that, but it is what it is!

Still, there are new designs available beyond what I have featured in this blog, so feel free to check out my Spreadshirt designer profile, or my designer shop, for peeks at those. I know, I know! The designs are not as pleasing to view in their small size on there (which is kind of the whole point of this blog!), but it'll have to do in the meantime. That's about all I had for that. I have a lot of drawing to do for class! So, until next time, carry on!


J, out!

Like I Cracked My Head Open, and Ideas Are Spilling All Over the Place

(that's gonna leave a stain...)

This is kind of funny. You might not be aware of this, but I've been trying really hard to catch my blogs up with the designs that I have made. Like, I want all of my designs to have a coinciding post of their own, y'know? I've been getting around to that, but there is a phenomenon that has occurred now that I have free time in my warm little hands; I've received an influx of creativity and the motivation to do something about it.

Just last night I ended up creating a new "Backstabber" design, another all new design, and by midnight I had revised and tweaked the KA-BAR Backstabber design! What does that all mean? Simply put, that I'm churning out designs faster than I am posting blogs to detail their conceptions and gestations. Of course, if you faulted me, a visually creative person, for this, I would disagree with you in a strongly worded fashion. But, still, I feel like at least some sort of explanation is needed. Why?

Because my designer shop is open for business! Now, any design that I have available there is, more or less, open to public viewing. I guess you could say that I like to give everything a little bit of context, lest I feel a bit naked. But feel free to peruse all you wish, and keep an eye out for any additions. Meanwhile, I'll continue my efforts to get my posts caught up to my designs. Until next time, carry on.

J, out!

RELOAD!

(Quick aside; Just before I started writing this I came up with another great idea. I even did a quick search on Spreadshirt and found that no one [for shame!] has undertaken the task of creating such a design, so I am taking it upon myself to provide it to the world!... Now back to your regularly scheduled programing...)

I am finally getting around to dedicating a post to the idea that started it all. "RELOAD!" One simple word, with one simple meaning, yet (I feel) very iconic! Seems crazy that I've been referring to this design since the start (and I've had it done since!) but I am just now getting around to this.

I don't know exactly what it was that was going through my head at the moment, while I was sitting in Survey of Media & Design and listening to the lecture, but I was just doodling in a sketch pad, just spitting out ideas (I was actually trying to come up with the Brand) when some pistols started making it onto the page. Now I really wish I could go back in time and get in my head, because I really have no idea what brought about the next thing. As I was sitting there doodling some more, it seems like the word "RELOAD!" did something for me, and soon after I wrote it down that first time I had what is the sketch for the original concept; a 1911 pistol that's run out of ammo, with its slide locked to the rear.

Now that I got that out of the way, let's get down into the execution! This was a bit of an exercise, though I'll probably make is sound super simple. What I did first was to find a suitable reference image. The pistol I wanted for this is the legendary 1911. Genuinely American, like yours truly! Also, I grew up on Metal Gear Solid, so when I saw Big Boss drooling all over a 1911 (starting at 03:44, but check this one out too!), it definitely caught my attention and I went off and researched it. You could say I've been a fan since!

While I referred to it as a Colt (the original manufacturers of the pistol, back when John Browning designed it) in that sketch, I ended up finding one that, while being a Springfield Armory 1911 instead of a Colt, fit my vision almost perfectly, so I went with it in the end (a little too much blue for my taste, but I took care of it soon enough!). What I did next was to take the image into illustrator and used the pen tool set to stroke with no fill, with a stroke size of about 4 points, and gave a heavy outline to all of the outer edges. Then I went in with a smaller stroke size and lined out the rest of the details.

I'll provide this image to use as reference, should any of you not understand what part of the pistol I am describing.

(Click image for larger version)

This is what the basic "outline" looked like. I had some people watching as I created this and they seemed pretty wowed. I was thinking "Pfft! Dude, I'm haven't even started..."

I always felt like it looked a little off, like the barrel was too long and the rear of the slide was too short, but if you compare it to the reference image, you'll see it's the same. I guess my artist brain doesn't want to be OK with something being fine as it is. Silly brain!

My next step was to select all and copy the outlines, open up a new photoshop file, paste them in there, rasterize them, bring in the source image on a separate layer, and prepare to add some color to the whole thing.

(Click for larger image)

I'll go ahead and make the 1911 design available now, as a living, breathing, visual aid to my ramblings.

So, with the photo in the background for reference (and color picking) I made a new layer under the outline and started on the barrel. I used the color picker (also known as the eye dropper tool) to choose what was just about the barrel's main hue and just applied it to all of the outline's barrel. Next I isolated sections (with the selection tools, mainly the lasso, actually) mimicking the shape of the highlights, midlights, and lowlights on the actual 1911 barrel and went over them with either the dodge (to lighten) or burn (to darken) tools. These ended up looking pretty sharp, squarish, and posterized looking. To remedy this, I selected all of the paint for the barrel and blurred it until I attained the look that it has now.

Next I used the color picker again to find a median shade of gray to use for the frame, slide, and the rest of the parkerized parts of the 1911 pistol. You could totally miss it if you don't have an eye for details (or if your monitor sucks), but the parkerized parts are done in gradients, going from dark to light (and vice versa) from front to back, back to front, down to up, up to down and side to side. I had fun with this, and it was probably the most time consuming part of the whole thing. Next I did the same thing with the wood grips, the went a little crazy with some hatching and cross hatching lines. To wrap that all up I picked the layer with the outlines, went into the adjustments and turned them black.

(click for larger image)

After I was pleased with those results, I applied the text, colored it in with a gradient of a light to dark red, flattened all of the layers together, then made a copy of that combined layer, placed it underneath the original, filled it in with white and set it to sit slightly to the bottom and off to the right, flattened those layers together, and called it a night!

The length of this post is just about proportional to the length of work that I put into this design. I'm sure I spent over 8 hours working on this, and that's not including the sketches, pondering, and the search for the reference image. All in all, I am very pleased with the outcome, and even though it took me very long to finalize this, I am looking forward to the next one. The full title for this piece is "GI 1911 RELOAD! 2.0". The "GI" denotes the model type (it's supposed to be a WWII replica, a bare bones M1911A1). The "2.0", however, warrants a longer explanation...

From the beginning, I planned on making this a "twin" design. One replicating the real thing closely, and one in a more "iconic" style, such as the style used on my Backstabber design (I explain what I mean by "iconic" in the 3rd paragraph of that post). Since I consider the iconic one to be the "retro" design of the two, I am giving this design the 2.0 designation, and the iconic the 1.0. Stand by and I will be getting around to hashing out a post for the said "iconic" RELOAD! design. Until then, y'all carry on!

J, out!

Designer Shop

(Kinda late for an update. It's past my bedtime! Haha...)

I'm working on getting a designer shop set up at the moment. I've had a premium account on Spreadshirt for a minute now, but I haven't had the opportunity to work through the intricacies of setting up my designer shop. The advantage of a "designer shop" is that I don't have to worry about all of the minutia that I would with a standard shop (available to anyone with a free account). Some of these "minutia" include what I believe are some pretty important details. For example, what piece of apparel should a design go on? Should it be a heavyweight men's t-shirt, or a woman's v-neck t-shirt....in pink?! What about the color of the design? The exact size and placement?

Sure, as the originator and creator I have a vision, my own artistic direction, to each design. But what happens if  a person loves the design, but not necessarily my arrangement? What if an individual likes my Backstabber design, but would rather have it without the text on the front? Or even yet, what if they want the design on the front of their apparel?...

If you can't tell by now, I could come up with many more scenarios for why a designer shop, which allows the customer to set up the design they want (in whatever color, size and orientation), on what piece of apparel they want. There is A LOT to choose from, clearly too much for me to decide what gets in and what doesn't. I actually have about 10 new designs waiting to be approved, so for now, I won't be making my designer shop active. Also, I will be deactivating my old "Tarantulas" shop and designating the new designer shop as such. It's kind of useless at this point.

I'm feeling kinda rushed, so I don't know if I left out anything else that I might have wanted to mention, but for now, that is all I had for y'all. Carry on!

J, out!

A Quick Note on the Brand

So, on my last blog I spoke about my "brand" at length, but I've made a change since. Not a change in the design, but a change on where this design will actually be placed.

I originally planned to place the brand, in whatever color configuration, on the back, bellow the collar, of all single design t-shirts (some of my ideas have a front and a back). Now, in the spirit of making the products more affordable for any possible buyers, I'll be removing the brand from all shopper available products. What do I mean by "shopper available"? I mean that I will be the only person with buying access to the products bearing the brand.

So why keep the products bearing the brand at all? Well, I intend to get several of these out, as promotional products, to my close friends and family. The brand will include the shop's URL, and that's pretty self explanatory, I believe.

Y'all carry on now. That's all I had for that one.

JR, out!

JR DAVILA

The first design task that I undertook (the logical choice, I think) was that of my "brand" (click on the image for a larger sample).

Being the detail obsessive individual that I am, I first spent about 3 months obsessing on the design orientation itself and on the name. For the name I had a few ideas floating around in my head and couldn't really make up my mind. Was the brand itself going to be "TaranTulas", or would tarantulas be one of the themes? Then I thought, "Y'know, my name is probably what I should be concerned with 'getting out there' right now." Once I had my mind made up on that, the arachnid design and the font orientation was something that I also fought with for a while. I came up with all sort of "wild" ideas, but in the end I just scrapped them all and went with the most simplistic one. Font from left to right and the arachnid on top. Simplicity is...well, it just "is". It works.

Next was the font face itself. I took typography and learned a few things, but I still felt like I didn't know enough about "font choice". After becoming a little frustrated with my perceived lack of knowledge on "appropriate" font choice, I brought it up to a buddy of mines, Jeremy Moses (you probably think I love name-dropping by now, huh?). He's a graphic designer, and has a lot more experience and education on the subject than I, an animation student, would. His advice actually caught me by surprise. It was something along the lines of "look around and pick whatever you like". I felt a little silly after that. I mean, all of that time I spent fighting with it, and it was just up to me? I thought there were some rules, guidelines, hierarchies, or something that one would follow when choosing a font for a design. I'll blame APA Style for putting the idea in my head that the font you use, beyond it being serif or sans serif, actually matters.

Once I got past that, I went online searching for some big spider reference images. Did I mention I hate spiders? That probably makes no sense, but it's true. The desktop background image on my laptop at the moment is a super close-up of some disgustingly menacing looking spider. Think of it as some sort of...self administered "exposure therapy". Funny that most of my nightmares since have included huge, disgusting spiders. Anyhow, after a cringe inducing google session, I found the image I would use as reference for this initial design. I believe it's a "wolf spider". A kind I've had to smash plenty of in my day. Creep me the Hell out...

So I dropped the image into Illustrator, double clicked the pencil tool and set it to fill outlines (I prefer the pencil tool over the pen tool for more organic subjects) and went to work. I've had to stick to uploading the current design to Spreadshirt as a PNG, since it doesn't fall within their vector parameters. I'm working on finding a different spider to replace it, but in the meantime, that's it. The font is just "Eccentric" with the counters removed and the dimensions warped to my liking. I played around with the idea of having the parts where the font and the spider legs meet turn negative, but it made the design a little busier than I would like, so I kept it as is.

For now, there is only one t-shirt using the logo, and the design is restricted to "digital direct" printing anyhow so it isn't an issue yet. It shouldn't be long until I have a "flex" friendly version ready.

The design was more of a requirement than anything, so I don't feel quite as inspired about it. Maybe one day I will and I'll revamp it however it is I feel, but until then I don't see it changing much. That's all I had for that one, peeps. Carry on!

JR, out!

I Never Thought Generating Art Could Get Me in Such a Good Mood

(How obvious is it that I am an art student that's been overworked with art assignments and hasn't made any art for "fun" in a long time?)

So, here goes my first blog post, but this is not my first time blogging and not my first time blogging in a setting open to the public. I want to start by sharing a little about myself... OK! Moving on. So, for the reading comfort of all (including English professors) I will most definitely be using proper grammar and spelling (as I know it. I've heard I should not use "ellipses" as I do, but this is my little corner and I am NOT backing off). Who knows? Maybe YOU will learn a new word from reading my nonsense updates on life.

That being said, I know about the dangers of "jargon" (I am a war veteran, after all, and I volunteered to go on a deployment without actually knowing what "O.I.F." stood off) so I will either try to keep it to a minimum, or I will try to render my definition for the word in question if I cannot avoid using it (and if I don't and you do not understand the word, PLEASE call me out).

(You ever write a whole BUNCH of stuff and then just backspace through it all? That just happened twice. Let's keep this short...)

So, about the purpose of this blog page. A while ago an instructor at my school, Mr. Liebman, who teaches the "Survey of media and design" course, got me to think a little harder about what the hell it is that I want to do with my education. The theme of the class was that we shouldn't limit ourselves to only doing work in the field that our majors specify. I doesn't matter if you're an animation, graphic design or game art student. In reality, we are all "illustrators", and can do whatever the hell we want with what we're learning. One idea he gave us was getting our names out there, and custom t-shirt sites was one of the routes that he went over briefly. As I was listening to this, my imagination just exploded and I have since not been able to find the time to put all of these ideas down on paper. It's obvious that I immediately fell in love with the idea by the amount of stuff I have spilling out of my mind still. The thought of wearing my own art is incentive enough...

This blog's purpose is to serve as my shop's propaganda spewing mouthpiece a design and idea journal for the designs found in my shop. Some of these designs have (wacky, interesting) stories behind them that I simply cannot fit into the product description. Y'know, in case I pick up any fans of my designs.

The title of the blog has to do with a design that I completed yesterday. It's the second design I have produced, but it's actually the first idea that came crashing into my head. I will give it it's own post later. For now, I conclude this post.

JR, out!