T-shirt

The challenge was to create a graphic t-shirt using bent text or a bent image, and only four print colors (not counting the t-shirt color.) I really love being a nerd-girl, so I decided to create a nerd-girl image with CSS coding as text. Here is my final image:

Process

The first part of the process was deciding on the concept. I wanted something that I would actually wear, and that fit my personality.  After looking through dozens of ideas on Pinterest an Google searches, I found a similar version of my text on a website with nerdy puns. I had no idea where to start with the style. I am not completely pleased with the comic style I finally decided on, but not being satisfied motivates me to work on it in the future.

For references ideas, I used the following images:

I loved this one the best, and as you can see my finished product is most similar to this one.

I liked the background here, and the colors.

I liked this background, too, but gradients were not allowed.

This image helped me with shaping the face and hair.

Next I made sketches of my idea. I promise I was not stoned or using my right hand (I’m a leftie) to draw these. Using a brown crayon, I was attempting to draw “freely” and just let my ideas flow, because if I don’t, I end up working on details that don’t matter. Truth. Ugh. (Stop laughing.)

Next was applying my ideas in Illustrator. I went through many, MANY different phases and stages, but only remembered to save a few times. Here they are:

In this step I am looking closely at the shapes used to create the image on the right.

I used two opacities of yellow here – that’s a no-no I found out later.

Trying to incorporate red, yellow and blue. But I was stuck on how to give the hair definition.

I used a default artistic brush to give an outline to my shapes.

So at this point I thought I could only use three print colors. My instructor clarified that it was four, not three. Yay. So here I have my four colors.

This is close to the finished image. I was working on the speech bubble at this point, and about to add more lines to the hair. Apparently I can’t count. I’m such an idiot sometimes.

This is closer to the finish line. I changed the glasses to be the same as the t-shirt background, and after this I cleaned up some loose yellow.

If I could have a do-over on this project, number one, I would save more often. I lost a nearly completed image when my Illustrator crashed, and I had to go back to a much earlier version to start over. Made me want to cry. But aside from that, and buying an abacus, if I had had more time I would have loved to add a distressed filter over the illustration. I think that would add to the retro-nerd feel I was aiming for.