Use Your Arsenal of Clippings to Build a design

I am an illustrator and a graphic artist.  This is where applying graphics to the illustrator in me, helps to make a design made quickly look good!

I had a request to copy this image for some fans on a t-shirt design.  Of course I could not do that, but I could do something similar.

I only had a couple of hours to do this, so I pull images out of my arsenal of clip art.

First I had to look for a bull.  Something non-organic, but realistic.  I have a few and chose the one that I think will work the best.

Beginning with masking,  mirroring, warping into shape and curving the horn, then burning and dodging to give it contrast and dimension, I finally come up with a bull's head that I can use.

Next I grab a Texas flag, manipulate it and paste it into the image.

I then add a football texture and paste this in as well.

Hhhmmm. . .   Needs something else.   I know!  It needs some football laces.  So,  I grab a football, mask off the laces and warp it to fit the image.

Add type and get approval. . .

. . .  After the approval, I separate the colours for screen printing and Ba-Bam! 

 You have a T-shirt design!

8 Color Separation with 2 Different Font Colors Makes 10

This design was not my creation.  I merely interpreted the colors to reproduce it on a natural color T-shirt,  I had to split 8 colors in Photoshop channels to create the slight variations in each frog after it prints on the press.  

The image on the left is the color and the image on the right is way the film looks.

The first color I pulled out were the reds for mixing.  Since red is an overpowering color,  this may need to change on the press to a different shade, so I will separate the pure reds from this.

The next color is the yellow blends.  You can see what starts to happen as you blend just 2 colors at different densities together,  and you start seeing a lot of variations with just two colors.  This is close to how it will look on the press as it is printed.

Next is the blue.  Not much, but it is there.  In order to make the final as close as I can to the original and there is room on the press,  I will use it.

The next color is the pure reds that I knock out of the previous blending red so they do not interfere with each other on the press.

Next is the greens.  With a cyan blue I could have blended this with yellow,  but the one I used previously was not good to make greens.

This black is a based down process black with just enough pigment to shade different tones of the colors already printed.

The next black is more solid and gives the design definition as you can see on the image next to it.

The highlight white is to blend in and cover some of the dot gains on the printing process.  It also smooths out and helps to give the design a little more dimensionality like the original.

Next,  the separation is  brought into Illustrator where the typeface, legend and registration marks are added.  From there each color is printed on film to create the individual screens.  In this case, 10 screens were made to print this job.

Wall-a! The final outcome.

Pencil Rough for the Next Project

This is a rough draft for a design that I have been commissioned to create for retail.   I will post as the design evolves to the end, including the production separations.

Began inking this morning.

Inking in progress.

Finished inking.  Add type and changed the composition.  Next will I will add color.