Aspective Design

2008-05-15T14:07:00.000-07:00

i couldn't find a side t-shirt template. this is sad news because i wanted to show you where lower-left-side-area of the shirt is. this is because i want to put the rest of the design there. i guess you will just have to use your imaginations.

i accidentally left my color pallet on the picture, oh well. so that is what i want to put on the lower-left-side-area. i wanted something else though, but i don't know. something "emotional" like "goodbye." any ideas? i am out of my stock of emotions.

this is what the design looks like after i made black grey.

God bless.

rush in a crunch

2008-05-13T22:16:00.001-07:00

i just finished the last tshirt design. its the front at least, the back is still rolling around in my head. i need to get this design into the shirt printer asap so if you want to have a say, i need to hear it asap.

these are massive images. hope it doesn't take your pc half and hour to load them. but with such high quality, comes great criticism. ok, sorry about that--no more lame pop culture references.

UPDATE: even though i didn't put it up here, i changed the black of the hands to a dark grey to resemble its original pencil graphite color.

other then that. rutti and i finished the stencil art. i got some pics but i am in a hurry so i'll try to get those up soon though. i'm graduating in a week and a half.

God Bless.

some accomplishments

2008-04-18T20:08:00.001-07:00

this is a blog post, remember what those are?

i got two sexy models to put on my newest school tshirt (thanks rutti and andy). yes, confirmative, the outline design tshirt became reality, even on sweet, sweet preshrunk cotton. i know. if i get enough people to order this tshirt, i can ship a batch out. if you really want one, email me at xfreak210@yahoo.com or just post something here. i'll probably use an online tshirt site like cafepress.com to make them and have the shirt shipped directly to the buyer. capiche?

about my stencil. as of today, i have it all cut out (thanks to a friend that helped out). i wanted to paint it today after school but the time was scarce and it was threatening to rain. i did however, test it out by tagging my locker. :P

like that photoshop effect? :P

that's all. God bless.

made! and i am not talking about the MTV show...

2008-03-04T12:01:00.000-08:00

so i got the shirt made. i know, it took forever and it took even longer for me to post on this blog. oops. i am fairly pleased with how everything came out, (i'll get some pictures up here asap.) i did the shirt in various colors on different colored shirts. i also officially sent my first long distance t-shirt request (its getting there, david!). thats pretty exciting. oh yes, i only made 12 shirts (i made 22 last time and didn't sell them all so i decided to be more prudent this time). the good news is that i sold them all and just ordered 11 more. yeah, i know. i put them on 100% cotton shirts (not the ideal but a lot better than the last one). hum, thats about it for that shirt.

i got an ok to do my stencil art on the inside of the bathroom. i am pretty sure there is space. i am planning on staying after school Thursday to get the stencil made. i'll take some pictures.

i am going to get the school t-shirt made asap. i'll make then independently but sell them for cheap, something around R$15. i'll make them in white and black, to keep them simple. i am contemplating setting up a paypal account and opening up the shirts for long distance orders (for people in the states). i'll charge the price of the tee and shipping. the basics. i thought that would be pretty cool. i have already (along with some of my colleagues ;) started thinking up the design for the LAST school tshirt for the LAST semester of the LAST year and the LAST graduation and the LAST....well, you get the idea. i'll keep you posted on that.

God bless.

stencil art.

2008-01-20T13:44:00.002-08:00

right before Christmas vacation, i shifted my focus a little bit. i had found some sweet stencil art of London on the web by the artist Bansky. it really caught my attention. apperantly, this is guy is some mystery. anyway, i decided to make some of my own.

you won't really understand the art if you haven't watched the scrubs episode "My Musical". thanks to amazing YouTube, you can watch the part of the show it is based off of. its hysterical. you non-scrubs fans might not understand very well but oh well. note the line "there is nothing gay about it."

"but in a totally manly way."

ok, here is what i can up with. i want to spray paint it on the school bathroom wall but i need to get it approved by our lustrous principle (or princible, princble, princapale, ect ect)

so yeah, that is going to be pretty sweet. i am trying to make the "rei dos reis" shirt but this stupid place is being stupid. urg.

God bless.

finishing touches.

2007-12-22T08:49:00.000-08:00

i am trying to get my designs finished and ready-to-print. i have been working on my crest design. i came out with this...but i need your opinion. i added a "grunge" effect and i don't know if i like it. tell me what you guys think.

other than that -- i like how it came out. especially, the back. once i print this shirt, i will officially have a "brand." you know, officially as in "not really but good enough to call it that."

II - oh yeah.

God Bless.

mirror image

2007-12-11T14:16:00.000-08:00

i had an idea for a shirt last year for a church retreat. the theme was "refletindo a imagen de Cristo" [reflecting the image of Christ]. i finally got around to doing it. this is what came out. tell me what you guys think.

here are some tans...

some other random colors i thought interesting...

i know you can't really tell what it says at first glance, but i think that is the point. this shirt isn't made for other people to look at, its for you. if you still can't read it, get a mirror. look through the reflection at your computer screen.

the font was a hard choice. i still don't know if i like it. any suggestion?

God bless.

Back on Beat.

2007-12-02T10:03:00.000-08:00

ok, so i re-did everything. redoing things feeds a certain pet peeve, so it was a pain in butt. nonetheless, it's back to the first new draft stage. in my last post i talked about making it more cuiabano, well, i didn't. my idea was to add sao jeronimo and santo ant onio in the skyline (if you have no idea what those are, you probably aren't from cuiaba.) this would probably include a long line that would go all the way around the shirt. tell me what you think. another idea that i had would have a black and white shirt. not black with white or visa-versa. let me demonstrate.

though this would probably call for two differant color cloths sown together. i don't know if they do this.

well, i re-did the front of the shirt. it should look oddly like the one a couple of post ago...

...i even took a step further and did the back.

now the "2007 - 2008" looks kinda awkward where it is. well, i think so. any ideas? maybe on the sleeves? that would be cool. feedback!

God bless.

Bad News

2007-11-24T11:08:00.000-08:00

illustrator will not open my design's file. thats bad. its probably related to the same idiotic move the program pulled earlier. it randomly wouldn't save. i am going to re-install illustrator and start over. bummer. just gotta buckle down and do it - life.

here are some changes i was planning on doing. the theme wasn't just "outlines of representative buildings," thats rather vaguely meaningless. what the theme was was "the cuiaba skyline." so, i am going to try to stick true to that theme but without loosing the simplicity everyone liked.

here is to your amusement while i work:

and

...don't forget the prank:

God Bless.

simplicity and innovation

2007-11-19T15:04:00.000-08:00

so, we thought up a totally new idea. with the help of david for the "famous building" and bill for the silhouette /outline idea. flags are apperantly boarding and my last design wasn't anything exciting. i came up with this as an innovated alternative.

i know. they are outragously simple. don't get me wrong, it took me a while to outline those things, tough stuff. i just wanted to show you guys the outlines, and how they came out. now that i have the "hard" work done, tomorrow i intend to give them a little twist. we will see what happens.

here are some of my designer comments on the tee: i decided to take a different angel to the cristo redenor. well, not so much an angel. i let the statue small to include some of the mountain. i liked it, tell me what you think. do you just want the cristo redenor nice and big? and about the korean palace thing, at least you can tell its kinda asian. maybe i can add something to distinguish what country is what. that enough for now though

alternatives.

2007-11-18T06:35:00.000-08:00

here are some other colors. the major one is black, the others are just some i thought looked good.

in the comments of the last post david brought up an interesting idea. why not use famous buildings to represent the different countries. (i.e. statue of liberty, that government building in Brasilia) but what about korea and canada? this building is apperantly something famous in korea. in canada, there is a famous lighthouse, right? i don't know how that all together would look. feedback = good.

God Bless.

back from the dead...again?

2007-11-13T11:34:00.000-08:00

yeah, yeah, i know. i could give some excuses but its just not worth it.

one of my friends (i will refrain from saying her name for her own protection from internet stalkers) drew something she thought would look cool on a shirt. after i scanned it in, i inked and colored. i would like for this person, whose name i will not say, to comment on the coloring and all. maybe this wasn't what was on her mind. you other folk can just critique it as a shirt, camprendo?
also, i am designing a shirt for my school. you may remember last year's tee that i designed, well, this one has to do with flags too. my teacher and i kinda wanted to avoid the whole flag thing but nothing really came to our minds. its all right though, because the diversity really makes up some of our school's identity. here is what i came up with as a first draft.

on the back (or front) it will say something like "we are the Ambrakornadians" (i will have to double check my spelling) i think the shirt will look best just on normal white but now days people tend to avoid it. if any of you want to see this shirt (or the other one) in another color i will put one up. tell me what you think, critiques are welcome.

here is an alternative flag order - tell me which you like better.
some interesting advantages i just thought up about this design are: (a) brasilian stars are included (b) less white border (c) the more dynamic part of the maple leaf is showing

God bless.

color.

2007-09-22T10:39:00.001-07:00

back from the dead

2007-09-20T15:48:00.000-07:00

death being laziness, that is. forgive me anyone that is actually reading this. i have used my spare time lately to play an amazing game called DotA, its basically the new counter-strike but this time warcraft style. i would take some time to explain it but that would be (1) a waste of my time, its a pretty complicated game (2) technically off topic. if anyone is interesting in a LAN capable game, take a look.

ok, back to what i am suppose to be talking about. i finally started working on some art. i have about three projects going at once but i am proud to say i finished the rough draft of one. alot of brasilians have been wearing medieval themed shirt. you have probably seen them around. they usually have those awkard side angle dragons or lions, most likely a crest of some sort. they are super popular down here so i decided to put on together and this is what i came up with.

the template doesn't show a couple of things. i want this design to be on the back. fairly big. also, if you guys have any shirt colors you might like to see this on, just leave a comment. i can't put that sample up. thanks.
i personally like the crown of thorns. originally, i was going to include a cross in my crest but frankly, crosses are overrated. i like them, but apperantly so does everyone else. the cross hardly represents the death of Christ, anymore. the crown of thorns, on the other hand, probably wasn't worn by anyone else's saviour. i don't only have the crown of thorns but i included His exalted and glorified crown. this crown could possibly represent the crowns we will be laying at Christ's feet. i hope this design, other than being in style :P, will catch people's glances. Christ isn't written all over it, woah nonconforming, but i hope this will give the person wearing a chance to explain.

thanks for reading, sorry for not writing. God bless.

where you hail

2007-08-31T13:35:00.000-07:00

you may have noticed the new element i put on the right. its a clustr map. it shows where everyone that visited this site lives. i found it interesting that people in india and indonesia stopped by. i was wondering if i could get some comments telling me where you guys hail (no, i am not going to stalk you or even, for that matter, send your information to my stalker friends) i just thought it would be cool...

about the latest art. i decided that it might work out for a strictly female shirt and only if i could touch it up some. i am working on two new shirts now and hope to get them put up here soon. thanks for reading. :)

God bless.

praise theme tee

2007-08-22T18:32:00.000-07:00

i am finished with a rough draft of a t-shirt i have been planning on design for some time. well, ever since that hand design i did a while back. i want to hear some good critiques about this design. you don't need to be in anyway an artistically experienced design. a bunch of fine art da vincis arn't going to buy my shirt. i need a common view, your first impression. help me out here. i would give me own personal critiques but i don't want you leaving comments like, "yeah, cool, but you are right. its too..." this comment = lame. i'll put a nice and big pic of the design right under here. thank you.God bless.

new tee

2007-08-21T16:32:00.000-07:00

got you excited didn't i? :P they arn't done yet but i am working on them now. keep updated so you can diss my work when i post it here.

i scream for ice cream

2007-08-15T19:22:00.000-07:00

the title is barely relevant to this post but don't get discouraged just yet (read this blog, post a comment, THEN you can get discouraged all you want)

i got another little job to do. its for a little ice cream shop, called Mixed Point, right next to the t-shirt place. don't ask me what the title means, just sounds cool to the brazilians. the place apperantly already had a t-shirt made but their only copy is medium and the guy that works there is more like a GG. just got a pic of it... (ok, this picture came out awkwardly gay, ignore) other then the shirt being to small for the ice cream guy, the graphic is...alright quality. there are some printing errors and the white base shows around the edges. they want to take advantage of making a new shirt by putting a smaller pocket size graphic (10cm long) on the front and a larger (25cm) on the back.

they gave me one of the stickers they stick on the side of the coolers. i scanned it in and came up with the image below. as you can see, there are some crinkles here and there but i can work around that. i am going to work in illustrator to do this. simply going to trace the colors (only white and purple because the shirt is orange) with the pen tool. i'll post some screen shots of the steps and the final draft when finish.

i first outlined the purple
with the pen tool. the fine blue
lines is what i came up with.

i used the "Fill Subpath"
to fill the paths i made with
the pen tool. i am making the
purple black for now and
the background white.

i outlined the white this time
and will it with black using
the same "Fill Subpath"
command.

here is a screenshot of
everything back, the purple
and the white.

this one i used to show the
sizes (pocket vs. back) and
took advantage and separated
the colors. the pocket size is
white and the back is purple.

now it is ready to be printed and handed in to get paid. :D

God bless.

pain in the butt

2007-08-12T21:46:00.002-07:00

frankly, printing this stuff is a pain in the butt, but i got it done.
as you can see, there are alot of pages. i needed to cut the big crosshair in half and i needed to make a second sheet for the names too. ok, let me explain how i did this. maybe this could help someone who is trying some screenprinting at home.

a little curious fact: epson printer black ink bleeds while HP black ink doesn't. i would need about 50 more printers to actually be able to adopt that as fact, but so far its true. unfortunately, my non-bleeding HP printer is that kind that sucks the paper from the bottom, pushes the paper through a complete 180-degree-U-turn, and pops out where it left off. you get the picture right? well, the flimsy veggie paper doesn't like that. i succeeded in printing color #1 page out without any smashing, crunching, or smearing going on inside of that demon printer. but to print color #2 i smashed two pages up. i am telling you, demon HPs. i finally just decided to print it out on my epson printer. it bleed (bleeded, blead, bled, blad, blooded, blod, bleded, bladed, blaeded, red little cells shot furiously out of) a small amount compared to what i had imagended. it is the background color so it didn't matter too much. i quite for the night. the next day i bought more veggie paper (apperantly, my HP likes salad. dang it) and started to print more. my dad gave me an interesting idea to actually tape the veggie paper on to the norm A4 page. this would help it be fed into the printer at the right size and in a more...sturdy manner. it worked, and that is how i printed the rest of the pages. any questions?

funny incident: you may have noticed in the list of names, i cut a freakin chunk of the paper. well, curiously enough, alcohol doesn't go well with ink. something about completely ruining one or the other. interestingly being the exact reason why this evil alcohol substance was by my precious ink. some of the prints smudged. well, q-tips and alcohol. perfect to take away those pesty little smudges (only $19.99 and if you call in the next 10 minutes you get this evil HP printer. $49.99 value pack!) to make this short story that is getting longer by the minute, well, short, i will cut to the stupidity. i shot my alcohol (its that stupid spray bottle gel stuff) across my work area and happened to hit my name printout. i ended up cutting the screwed up letters plain out of the picture and printing them out again. i'll let the lady work with these peaces now. if that didn't make too much sense, well, then it didn't make any sense at all (make sense?)

God bless.

work, maybe.

2007-08-09T17:42:00.000-07:00

i have been visiting the t-shirt place quite frequently these days. every time i show up the lady there is giving me little odds and ends to do. i quickly figured out this isn't going to pay much (for just a text "art" i'll prob get a little less than R$5 but for real arts, like that shirt i designed, i'll get around R$30. you gotta take into consideration the fact that the text "arts" only take 5 mins to do anyway.) anyway, now through Sunday i am going to work with trying to separate the colors on that shirt and then printing them (with the right sizes so they fit together perfectly) on veggie paper (and no, i figured out pretty fast it doesn't taste good with ranch.) vegetable paper is a semi-transparent and cheap substitute for the more expensive polyester paper.

i got the front done with the right measurements (27cm length) i should get the back done tomorrow.

ok, so i tried to print some text out on some veggie paper with my ink printer and i figured out why you are suppose to use lazer printers. the ink on veggie paper blotches and bleeds. well, so i thought. so i took the text to a local lan house that was suppose to have a lazer printer, they didn't. but the guy said that his prints didn't bleed. so either, his ink is differant, his printer, or his settings. i am going to try this at home on anther HP printer (the same brand the guy at the lan house used) and i will keep you posted on how my printing of my color separated art works out.

that's it. God bless.

new job(s)

2007-08-06T19:26:00.000-07:00

interesting thing happened today. when i woke up in the morning (well, more like lunch time) i checked my email. there was an email from the t-shirt design place. she wanted me (i understood) to make the company logo. not invent it, nothing new, just get what they had and put in on the comp. so i did, came up with this. tried to match the fonts as well as i could, came out pretty nice i thought.

well, in the later afternoon, i stopped by to see what was up and if they had gotten my design. they had and like it but she wanted to know if i could re-make the design. she wanted something more creative and "modern." i said sure and will keep you guys updated on that...

i was there talking to them when they mentioned a different kind of screen printing technique they called chromo-something or other. he then pulled out a t-shirt design a client wanted done (one that would use this other kind of technique) frankly, the design was horrendous. (once i get my scanner working i will scan the thing in and post it right here)the design was for a lan house called "game over." i said, "man, that is ugly. i could do something better with that." he then explained that if i could do something better than this and the client like my new design, the client could pay me for the design and not them. something around 20 bucks or something. nothing big. so i brought the paper home and i am working on it. its turning out, well, interesting. i can't get it down the way i want but we'll see. when i get a rough draft done i will put the image up here.
click to make is BIG.

well, thats all folks. God bless.

whats up

2007-08-05T13:34:00.000-07:00

nothing much has been happening (as you can see, because my last post was only on the first) those college kids decided on a whole new design that i will probably get monday. good news though, i sold a total of six shirts (though two of the buyers owe me money) and i have 5 more reserved for later. that leaves me 1 more to sell to be able to pay back my investors. soon i should be working on my next shirt designs. my plans are to make three different designs this time and a lot more color variants. i'll probably end up making 10 shirts (the minimum) of each kind. hopefully they sell =\

God bless.

that networking design

2007-08-01T19:24:00.000-07:00

like i had said at the end of my last post, i got a little job design a shirt for a computer networking course for a local college class. the students had an idea they wanted me to work with and this is what i came up with...

ok, for the explanation. the college's name is UNIC (i made the hammock out of those letters.) in portugues, the word for network is "rede" which is the same name they use for hammocks. so consequently, there is a computer in a "network" ( the literal translation for the course's name "computacao em rede" ) so anyway, that is where lies the humor of the graphic. sidenote: this art isn't done yet...i need to work on getting the computer to look like it is actually "in" the hammock. color selection is still on the to-do list. whoever is reading this is very welcome to give critiques. feel free to diss my work ;)

me and my vector art

2007-07-31T09:50:00.000-07:00

well, i officially sold one shirt :D i have 4 out waiting for payments and two more reserved for "when i get the money next week." so, while i wait to sell shirts i decided to hone my vector art skills in adobe illustrator. after some work last night i came up with this...

here is an update on the art: check out this shirt on threadless

just messing around with this design has improved my vector art greatly. i learned how to make custom "splooshes" and use the rotation tool. i worked hard on tracing my hand out and coloring it and so on a so forth. actually, the hardest part of it all wasn't doing it...it was learning HOW to do it. i have figured out that illustrator tutorials (good ones that is) are hard to come by. i finally stumbled across this site which i found to have some really good resources. i highly recommend anyone new at illustrator to check out bittbox.com 5 star site with 5 star resources.

i have a couple projects planned for this break i have from my shirt. my girlfriend got my a little job to design a shirt for a the networking administration course of a local college, i'll keep anyone who is actually reading this posted on that. thats it.

on the market

2007-07-29T08:00:00.000-07:00

i picked up my shirts yesterday. my shirts are officially on the market. woot! i haven't actually sold any yet but by the end the week i should have at least half gone (that is, if my friends keep their word.)

now for the satisfaction debriefing. i'd give it an all in all 60% satisfaction rating. 3 stars out of 5.

here is why. the front came out great (even though, now that i think about it, it could have been a bit bigger) the font lined up great and all but the supposable "chocolate" brown has just a little bit too much red in it. but in the end, i am happy whenever i look at how the front came out.

now for the back. this is where my major disappointment comes in. as you can see in the picture the font didn't line up very well, it looks very poor quality (do to the font i used and the "not so professional" color separation job the third-party professional did), its hard to read, and its too small. the whole graphic should have been at least 30% bigger.

i hope they sell. i need to sell at least 12 to pay my parents back. haha. i paid R$12 each and am selling for R$20 (about 10 bucks)

i'll keep whoever is actually reading this updated on how things go.

screen printing witness

2007-07-25T15:37:00.000-07:00

here is a screen printing vid i stumbled upon (literally)

that will give you an good idea of what i got to experience today. i know, its nothing "woah!" (professional screen printers are probably stabbing themselves in the eye screaming, "and he is happy!? get out, get out as quick as you can!) that might just be my impression though.

anyway, i got my shirt preview today and it turned out great. i am pleased with how the brown turned out just chocolaty enough and how the white wasn't too faded into the light blue (its defiantly still readable)

looks kinda pink in this picture. no worries. its white. oh yeah, that 3-D dark chocolate cookie (looks more like a whole in the shirt...) is there for no real reason.

my next post will only be saturday. have a good week. God bless.

before the blog

2007-07-25T09:05:00.000-07:00

here is some background. ever since i designed our school tee, i thought how cool it would be to design some shirts for our church's youth group and all. to get some designs out there to see people walking around with my design stuck to their bodies. so during this summer, i designed a shirt. something simple...blotches and a verse.

since then, i stumbled across a local screen printing shop in my neighborhood. i got talking with the lady one day about making my first shirt, sent her the design that night and the next day i stopped by to show her what i didn't want. i took our school shirt (it turned out ok but not great. the graphic was 6 layers thick, plastic like, and the color green was actually made up of blue and yellow dots. pixelated and weird.) i got across what i did want and we settled on a price (R$ 12 per shirt.)

the next couple of days was consumed by getting the design print ready, which shouldn't have been that hard considering we were only working with 2 colors, brown and white. to make a short story just a little shorter, the shop doesn't have a printer (i know, awkward) so there was a third party included (made things more complicated.) the third party tried to virtually redo my design because he didn't know how to use CorelDRAW (i thought he did, thats why i transfered it to .cdr anyway) came out terrible. blah, blah, blah. the re-do (of the re-do) came out perfect and today i am going to stop by to look at the first shirt.

excited...

my first tee

2007-07-24T12:14:00.000-07:00

well, i guess i am suppose to put my vision for my blog and my company in my first post so here goes. i am going to use my blog to promote my work, primarily t-shirt designs, and hopefully get useful critiques from fellow bloggers. secondly, the adventure of starting and hopefully maintaining a lucrative business of producing t-shirts will be here for you to follow along. oh, did i mention i am 17 with my parents as investors?

i am on the verge of producing my first t-shirt for my personal company Aspective Design. an exciting leap for me. i am working on a daily basis with a woman at a local screen printing shop. we have to get my design print ready, a more complicated process than i thought. sometime later i'll give a shot at explaining it.

so there it is, my first post. get really to see some of my designs and read my story. God bless.