Here’s a recent shirt design commissioned by Happy Hollow Park & Zoo in San Jose.

So metal!

I submitted three roughs with the same dragon artwork, and this was my favorite. (Unfortunately, the client went with my least favorite, a more typography-centered design. Ain’t that always the way.)

This was a fun illustration job, as the client wanted to have a cartoony mascot illustration in the shirt based off their centerpiece ride, Danny the Dragon:

Danny's seen better days.

My first instinct was to go for really bright colors since the design was meant for kids, but the general vibe of the park seemed very retro. The design shown here was inspired by video game and toy licensing shirts of the 1980s.

One thing I struggle with these days is finding the time to just kick back and sketch. I spend 8 hours a day at the computer designing shirts for the day job, then I go home and color comics. I love the work, but it’s a little disheartening when I look over my sketchbook and I’ve only filled up two pages in as many months. So I always relish the opportunity to doodle when I’m designing, and yesterday was a great chance to do that.

I was assigned to design a shirt with the University of Montana’s mascot, a grizzly bear named Monté. I spent about an hour and a half just sketching, trying to loosen up and let some creative juices flow.

Okay, the sketch in the middle was just me having fun.

After I had something good to work with, I scanned in the sketch sheet and composited two sketch elements- Monte loitering around looking moderately cool, and a rad motorcycle. (I did mention he rides a motorcycle, right?)

I actually printed this out and tightened it up, but you can't see that one because I forgot to scan it. Tough luck for you, buddy!

Took the pencils into Freehand (We use obsolete software at the shirt company. Just because, apparently.) and used the Pen tool to ink it.

My favorite part is definitely the little curly lines in his ears

Then I began to color it. Creating fills with vector paths and strokes is a different way of coloring than I naturally do, but the biggest challenge is using 6 colors or less, to accommodate screen printing limitations. I’m not entirely finished yet- I’ve still got some work to do on the layout of the text, but I thought I’d throw it up on the blog anyway, just for kicks.

As a Bozemanite, I felt dirty after making this image. But on the other hand, hey money money!

–Steve-O