How I make my t-shirt designs.

Before I start the tutorial I will give you a short idea on how I end up starting my cafepress shop and why I chosen the Girl-Power subject. Not too long ago I was visiting my good friend Len Simon in Phoenix Arizona. I was telling him about my COMICON convention trip and how much I would like to create my own sketchbook that will show girls in various sports and sell it there. He thought it was a great idea and he encouraged me to do it. I started with a few drawings but soon after I felt that the designs where too realistic and another approach should be considered in order for the designs to work. The new approach was more interesting and I then felt that I should be doing more with the drawings than waiting for the next COMICON to happen and sell there the sketchbook. My wife suggested printing the designs on t-shirts and to sell those along with the sketchbooks. This led me to do some Internet research on t-shirt printing that pointed me to Cafepress. Immediately I opened my own store featuring the GirlVSGirl line of designs. Soon after I found out that in order to have a successful shop you need to have content and my content was only ten designs at the time. I made my mind to stick with my original girl oriented subject and started introducing new lines of designs. At the time of this publication I have more than 50 designs at my store and more designs are added daily. You can visit my favorite chategories at www.zazzle.com/nassosvakalis
Please notice that since 2007 I have focused my activities from Cafepress to another platform named zazzle. I believe they offer more choices for the artist and the customer.

Don't forget to visit my new squidopage of how to automaticly create a thick & think line quality drawing form a simple line drawing.

At this tutorial I would explain my approach into creating one of my sexy t-shirts. This is not the only method of doing such a things but I generally following it myself since it expedites the time I need in order to bring a design form the concept stage to the final print ready artwork. The tools I use are paper, pencil, eraser, Photoshop and the Wacom Cintiq 21ux tablet. To demonstrate the process I will use one of my Girl VS Girl designs as an example.
At some point I needed to complete the GirlVSGirl line by bringing the designs to a total of twelve so I can publish a GirlVSGirl calendar. I already had my main characters designed form the previous sports so I thought of adding two more drawings one of the girls getting dressed for the games and one of them relaxing after the games. This example will use as reference one of the girls Brandy as she puts her skirt on. This stage might take several attempts including slight variations on the pose, angles or even head tilts. After finishing several rough drawings I evaluate them to see if I have succeeded not only making an anatomical correct drawing but also if I have given a nice "sexy" attitude to the pose. This might force me to further adjust a pose or chose to do something completely different from starts. Still at this point I'm working rough like the example you see here. After re-working the pose several times I reach a point that I feel the drawing is ready to be tight down. When I tight down or clean up the drawing I'm not concerned about the quality of my line since this drawing will never reach the print anyway. I concentrate into making some of the details like the face features and the hands more clear and anatomical correct. If the cleaned up drawing looks fine to me I scan it and bring it into Photoshop and the Wacom Cintiq 21ux tablet.

I chose to work in Photoshop because I'm very familiar with that software and it saves me lots of time and effort compare working in any other program including Illustrator. The Wacom tablet is a state of the art monitor where you can draw directly on it with a stylus. I'm very lucky to have access to the tablet at the DreamWorks animation studios where I work during the day in several animation projects as story artist and designer.
After I scan my drawing I crop my image very tight and adjust the image to a 2000X2000 resolution. This is the standard template that fits most Cafepress products. At this point I place a new white layer on 50% transparency on top of my scanned image (which is the background layer in Photoshop) and then a third layer on top where I trace my drawing using a the default 5 pixels Photoshop brush. At this point note that I'm using the Wacom Cintiq 21ux tablet. I can easily make corrections to my drawing by using the eraser function. When I finish I save my file and then turn by semi transparent layer back to 100% opacity, completely covering the scanned drawing and then I flattening my image. The new image is also saved with a new name. I adjust the image size to 5000X5000 pixels and I change my foreground color to black and background color to white. The new larger image will look a bit out of focus but this doesn't concern me because my next step is to use the stamp filter to smoothen all the lines. I adjust the filter to a setting that I find acceptable and I filter the image. This gives me a very strong black line with nice anti-aliasing at the curves.



If I still find a curve I don't like or a curve that could be smoother (for example a breast or a hip curve) I test a new curve on a new layer on top. I create the new curve with the pen tool adjusting it using the underneath layer (old curve) as a guide. If this new curve looks fine I stroke it with a brush, then using the white brush I paint over the old curve and merge the new layer with the layer underneath. This way I can do several corrections on my drawing. When I'm happy with that I save the file again under a new name.
Visit this lens to lern how to create a thick & think line.
My next step is to reduce the resolution to 2000X2000 pixels. I can rename my layer here to "outline". Now I'm ready to color the image.

Coloring the image is not as easy as it might sound but I have a simple method of making it as simple as coloring by numbers. Using the magic wand I select the areas of the skin from the "outline" layer and then I expand my selection by 3 pixels. I create a new layer on top of my "outline" layer, I rename it "color" and then I turn it to "Multiply" blending mode. I fill the selection at the color layer with the skin color. What happens is that though my selection is a bit larger than the area I need to paint and overlaps the line by 3 pixels the multiply mode makes the skin color pixels not showing over the black line. If there is an area of the drawing that need retouching and I can still see some white underneath I fix it. I repeat that with the rest of the colors.



The tones are done last. In order to do the tones I again introduce a new layer and I name it "tone". At this point I keep transparency at 100% opaque. Using the stylus and the standard 5-pixel black brush I draw the outline of the tone at the "tone" layer been more careful to have a nice line in the inner part of the character while closing the line outside the character can be very sloppy and doesn't have to follow the character outline. Actually it works better if the tone expands at least 20 to 50 pixels outside the character shape. Again I select inside all the tone shapes and expand my selection by 3 pixels. On a new layer I fill that selection with black and merge it with the "tone" layer creating a solid tone layer. I use the "median" & "Caussian Blur " filters to soften my tone. Setting the "median" filter around 4 to 8 will do the trick. I then select the surrounds of my character from the "outline" layer and expand the selection by 3 pixels. Then I select the "tone" layer and cut that selection out leaving me only the tones inside the character. At this point I can turn the "tone" layer to "multiply" mode and set the transparency of the tone to my liking. I save this as my final design.


In order to upload the final design to the Cafepress media basket I must flatten it, and then save it in a PNG format. This is probably the best format for this kind of artwork and it will upload fast.

I hope you enjoyed my presentation. If you like, I still have many of the original drawings that I have created for the various designs of Pure, Brandy, the Seasons and the Queens available to send to my customers for free. If you want to receive one of the drawings please go to my drawing page and select the drawing you like, then send me an e-mail with your name, address and drawing name. I will reserve that drawing for you and I will mail it to you for free after you do one of the following:
· Become a customer. This happens when you buy something from my store. If you buy something tell me what you bought and when. I will check my records and when the transaction is final you will receive my drawing for free. Please specify at your e-mail if you want me to sigh the drawing or not.
· Place a link with my banner or a text link at your web page or blog and send traffic to my shop. Again send me an e-mail with your web page and if I see my link in a visable possition for at least 30 days and I receive traffic from you I will send you the drawing you like for free.
Additional information can be found at the drawing page.

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