Digital Media: Creating and producing a T-shirt design

This week in Digital Media we will be creating and producing an original T-shirt design using Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator together.  Step one is to create an original design in Photoshop, then we bring it into Illustrator and vectorize it by using select all the Live Trace, the third step is to use our t-shirt template and arrange it, finally we'll export.

Studio Art: T-shirt Designing with Adobe Illustrator

In Studio Art class we are currently working on our T-shirt Designs and now that we have drawn out the designs, digitized them, and cleaned them up in Adobe Photoshop today we will learn how to vectorize them using the 'live drawing' feature and color them using 'live paint' in Adobe Illustrator.  The image above is an example of how the t-shirt actually turns out, this one is a collaborative shirt created in my National Art Honor Society.

Studio Art: Designing T-shirts

In studio art class we will be continuing our design unit with a t-shirt design project this week. Before we begin designing we'll take a look at the amazing short documentary series above from a NPR's Planet Money which shows how the t-shirt they make for listeners is created from start to finish.  The series was funded via Kickstarter and will help us learn about the global economy.  We'll see how the clothes we wear are actually made from a cotton farm in Mississippi to factories in Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Colombia  then shipped back to America.

To create our t-shirt design we will be using Adobe Photoshop along with a new sister program Adobe Illustrator.  We'll learn the difference between the pixel based program and the vector based program and why it matters but before we get too technical you need a great idea and it needs to be sketched out.  The video below gives you some ideas on what makes a good t-shirt design and some of the basic rules we'll be following such as centering your design and choosing an appropriate shirt color.  We'll begin by drawing 5-10 thumbnails in our sketchbook wiof design ideas and variations.  Remember to be original and not to use copyrighted ideas or characters in your work. The final graphic image should be one-color and scanned in and it will be due on Friday at the end of class. 

Designing a Tshirt in Adobe Illustrator

This week in Computer Art class we will learn how to use Adobe Illustrator to create an original t-shirt design which can be printed online using companies such as MySoti. Above is the example that Mr. Needles did is class using a drawing from his sketchbook which was then scanned, vectorized it in Illustrator, cleaned up, made transparent, then uploaded online.