My first reprint! This is still one of my favourite designs so I'm happy to see that other people like it as well. It's good to see it back in action after all this time!

Several years ago I experimented with some different drawing methods, using this one-sided ping pong game as the test subject. I don't have a clue as to where the concept came from! I'd occasionally toyed with the idea of turning this into a Threadless design but somehow didn't quite get around to it. When the Threadless Drawing II challenge turned up it was this drawing that came to mind the most.

I worked over the drawing to improve the clarity of both the concept and the art, then added colour (always a difficult process for me) with a textured brush in Photoshop. I'd considered painting the design from scratch for a 'cleaner' result but I decided to stick with the drawing theme and keep the original pencil texture as much as possible. I have to say, I quite like pencil textures!

I hope you like the design, and make sure you keep drawing!

I've finally added some of my Threadless designs (with a couple of digital paintings thrown in) to the high-quality print-on-demand site Society6, where I hope I can find a nice little spot amongst all the good stuff gathered there! Lots of other Threadless folks have joined up and it's good to see some classic designs on offer. Check the place out and see what you think; you might want to sign up yourself!

I'm not sure how this project would have gone if I hadn't worked with FA before and learned to respect his collabing awesomeness! I'd discovered from previous experience that he not only has good ideas but also a clear vision for those ideas, with enough flexibility that that he can adapt his vision to an artist's strengths and weaknesses.

This was important since I really struggled to visualise Astro-Not at first (my initial sketches were completely different to what FA was going for) so I had to go ahead on trust, relying almost entirely on his feedback (which consistently improved the design, I'm happy to say). He also seems to be genuinely excited about each design, which helps keep the creative momentum going. As Astro-Not got closer to what he was after I finally 'got it' and was able to do my thing properly, with both FA and I making subtle changes right to the end. That's another good thing about FA: he knows when a design is finished!

So, another enjoyable collab experience!

The Concept: FRICKINAWESOME (I'll call him Mr Awesome, or Mr A) and I have finally followed through on a plan to change "Do Not Enter" from two sides to one. We wanted to make the most of the new opportunity so we explored different ideas of what could be seen through the door. Mr A felt a bright bedroom would be best, contrasting a place of safety with the over-the-top scariness, plus feeding into the classic monster-in-the-closet fear. We also liked how it looked compared to the other concept sketches.

The Characters: Mr A envisioned an endless crowd of nasties melting into the darkness so we needed a few more characters. I added a couple but Mr A's brain did most of the work, my knowledge of scary movies being largely exhausted by "Do Not Enter". I thought some of his new ideas fit very nicely where there were existing characters so I made some swaps. For example, he made the silghtly bizarre but very fun suggestion of having an evil shark lying on the floor in a pool of water. I thought it would fit beautifully where the human fly was so I shoved the poor fly into the shadows.


The Colouring: This time we didn't have to compromise between an innocent front and a scary back so we could choose the shirt colour we wanted: black. I coloured the villains in stages, starting with dramatic lighting. With a nudge from Mr A, I added more colour so the 'outer circle' characters didn't disappear too much. I coloured with Photoshop, although any software with brush opacity and layers might have been fine. With the screenprinting process in mind, I limited the number of colours and kept each colour on a separate layer, with the layers in a fixed order. I made darker versions of a colour by using less 'ink' (either by cutting back opaque colour with a low-opacity eraser or painting with a low-opacity brush) so the black of the shirt would show through. I dedicated the top layer to white, so to make a colour lighter I could paint semi-transparent white over it. Lastly, I made a selection of the linework and used it to delete the line areas from each colour layer. This meant the lines used the black from the shirt rather than a separate black ink layer. The process wasn't super hard and plenty of others have done it (I've done it before myself), it just meant planning ahead and being careful.


Lastly, big thanks to Reags for doing the Threadless submission's Flash presentation!

And that's about it! If this one doesn't print, we might throw caution to the wind and go for something utterly terrifying by adding a Barbie reference. Yes, we're that extreme.

I'd intended to finish my latest design in about two weeks, since the previous one had taken ages. Thanks to life throwing some unexpected things my way, it ended up taking four months!

So now I'm curious: how long does it usually take you to complete a design, and what was the longest amount of time from concept to submission?

Incidentally, thanks again to the critique folks! I hate wasting people's time, so your contributions became another reason to finish (as well as helping me to finish at a higher standard).

Some doors aren't meant to be opened, but I opened one anyway and walked into... a collaboration with Frickinawesome! Known to friends and the feds as Evan Ferstenfeld, Mr Awesome was the Brainrust brain trust for this epic design of, um, some kid opening a door.

Needless to say, a nightmare of slavery and oppression awaited me as the wildly exciting door picture progressed under the evil eye of Mr A. Finally I'm free to creep away, broken, from my drawing desk and start plotting my revenge. This may involve me begging Evan for another chance at a collab sometime. That'll show him!

So go on, click on the design and open the door. You might find out why I haven't submitted any designs for a while!

It's up for sale!

Here's a brief description of how the design came about:

I'd worked in the old 40's style once as an animator (in the 90's, not the 40's!) and wanted to do it again on tees. The obvious choice to me was simply to have black and white characters inventing colour, and the best way to get the gag across was to use design cliches that everyone would recognise. After submitting, I was told about another, very similar design ("Finding Technicolor" by Threadless' "WanderBert") which had been printed a year or two earlier at a site I hadn't heard of (I was, and am, a 'tee noob'). Fortunately, there seemed to be plenty of room in the tee world for both designs!

I'm a bit sensitive to the originality issue now! I'm not sure how far to take this attitude because, when allowing for other media, EVERYTHING has been done (even the truly bizarre)! I guess you do your best to be original and then just go ahead and see what happens. And sometimes what we want isn't something original at all, but "the same... only different"!

Anyway, the Threadless folks addressed all issues to their satisfaction and have made the whole process as easy, professional and courteous as I could have hoped. And special thanks to those who helped me improve this design in the critique section!

Here's the sub:

And here's what I'm interested in finding out:

This kind of large painted illustration style, especially when it doesn't come with a witty visual joke (I like witty visual jokes; I'm just exploring other options), doesn't seem too common on tees as far as I can tell. I'd like to know if that's because it generally doesn't work very well on a tee, or if it's a neglected area that people would like to see a lot more of. Maybe the result with my sub will provide an idea, or maybe it'll just show if people like my particular design or not. And maybe I should stop typing and go draw something!

Voting's over and I'm very happy with the score! Some things I learned from the process:

Lesson #1 - Critiques are good! Without a couple of clear-headed commenters helping me out, I may have made some poor design decisions.

Lesson #2 - There's nothing new under the sun. Several people mentioned an older, similar design called "Finding Technicolor" at shirt.woot. I'm so new to tees I didn't even know about the site! Even just at Threadless, in the last few days I've stumbled across several designs I never would have searched for but which make a couple of my ideas invalid. So what does one do? I guess there's always a risk, so if a search doesn't turn anything up just go ahead. Lesson #2b is that there can still be room for a new version of a theme if it's a bit different and crafted with care (and preferably with good advice!).

Lesson #3 - I'm sure there was a lesson #3. Okay, try this: the most amazing lesson of all was [insert life-changing lesson here]. And I'll never be the same again.

Aha! I remembered it! I'll make it Lesson #4 - A good tee design can keep on giving. "Finding Technicolor" was made well over a year and a half ago and is still remembered fondly by quite a few people. It's hopefully still bringing a chuckle or two (at no-one's expense) in all sorts of places. Its money-making days seem to be over but it's still out there doing stuff. Something to remember, and to aim for.