Frog Leg Festival Shirt Design

[Boldline]

Hey All!
Haven't posted in forever, I apologize for that.
We were asked to create the 2018 Fellsmere Frog Leg Festival shirt design to be sold at this year's event in January. The client asked for a gator in an airboat disrupting a beach-enthusiast trio of frogs. They sent along a couple of general sketch ideas and gave me a lot of room to add my creativity and ideas.
They requested the frogs be two male and one female, and that we include 24 other little frogs in the piece somehow to represent each year the festival has taken place
I generally start each piece with a layout in my head. In this case, I wanted the gator swooping in from the sea with a menacing look and the frogs all escaping in fear. That concept shifted some to show different personalities with the frog trio - one astutely fleeing the scene while another climbs a tree and the third seems oblivious to any approaching threat.
I included some of the screen shots taken during the design process. I begin by sketching everything out in Clip Studio Paint in very rough form starting with the alligator and boat. I added the frogs on a second layer in another color so I could easily arrange them and scale to fit the look I wanted.
Once I had the characters laid out and approved, I went ahead and inked over them in Illustrator. With this particular design, we tested out a couple examples of poses for the oblivious frog before finalizing the beach-chair version.
We also played around with the sizing of the gator in relation to the frogs on land and in the tree.
After getting the final sizing of layout of the characters together, I put in flat base colors and began honing in on the final word placement.
Colors were edited, shadows and highlights added and a few details in the piece were edited and adjusted.
Final art is 100% vector and made to be as easy to print as possible. The design has already been posted on their soclai media and website with excitement.
Quality art is such a vital part of successful apparel sales.
I love creating designs that tell a story, that grab attention and are something you want to own, want to wear over and over and that represent the client in the best possible way.

[CBCB]

Do you mind sharing how much you’d charge a customer for a full design like this? Looks great!!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Dottonedan]

That's a great layout and characters.

Do you sketch in the computer or on paper and scan it?

[Boldline]

Do you mind sharing how much you’d charge a customer for a full design like this? Looks great!!

Thanks so much! Sent you a direct message in here. Feel free to email me to discuss as well
boldlinedesign@gmail.com

[Boldline]

That's a great layout and characters.
Do you sketch in the computer or on paper and scan it?

Thanks Dan. I typically do all my sketching digitally now. I used to do it all in a sketchbook first because nothing really beats pencil on paper. I would sketch it out and then scan it - eventually that led to taking a picture of it with an ipad or phone and importing.  I now use a wacom cintiq, which allows me to draw right on the screen as if it were a piece of paper. I also use Clip Studio Paint with sketch brushes by an artist named Frenden. He created a really nice layout pencil brush in that app that almost makes it feel like traditional pencil on paper.
Drawing digitally gives me the freedom to sketch quickly and resize, stretch the art, scale it and copy and paste for different variable tests of a layout or pose. Every now and then I miss traditional media and pull out the sketchbook! Thanks for asking

[Dottonedan]

Great!  I also have the Cintiq but mine is a little smaller than i'd like. I have the 13"wide. Doesn't seem to be enough room.

I've been using the Frenden brushes also.  Nice stuff.

[Boldline]

Dan - do you feel like that 13" Cintiq would work well as a mobile unit? I assume you have to plug it in to a laptop still correct? I'm looking for a smaller cintiq I can use in different parts of the house so I'm not always tied down to one spot with the bigger one

[Dottonedan]

Probably the best option for a lap top.  In total, it's about the size of most lap tops. Light weight.

I like it, I like using it, but it's cramped for me. I guess I just have to get used to working smaller.

[theMadArtist]

STUPENDOUS art- if you, however, used BOLD LINES (heh) around the frogs in the foreground, and an additional white ouitline- it would REALLY POP!

[Boldline]

Thanks! You might be right - that would have helped the design pop a little more - there's always next year right?