Shout! - T-Shirt by Matthew Dunn

Sometimes the best effects come from simple techniques.

What I particularly like about this great design by Matthew Dunn is that not only is it just rocking minimal colours, it’s got a great feeling of leaping ‘alien-style’ from your chest.

The lines in the face and the expression are very Stan Lee, making the subject appealing straight away.

Simple subject, but the face detail and colour combinations make this a really effective and cool shirt.

Melbourne Heritage Tram T-Shirt

If you’re a visitor or a local to Melbourne, trams are an icon part of the city scenery. From the heritage trams like this one, right up to the bumblebee ones with ’simulated’ bells.

I wanted to draw something that struck me as ‘Melbourne’ without getting too contrived.  This (being a tram) isn’t typically ‘cool’ or ‘creative’ as such.  Just my vector interpretation of a Melbourne icon.  Great to show the world where you’re from (or where you’ve been).

There’s also a black and white alternative if you don’t like wearing the colours.

I love it when enthusiastic people find the time to write positively about other people’s work (I try to do it myself).  Cathie Tranent’s a great creative talent who’s channelling such thoughts into a new blog devoted to t-shirts and other designers.

Is that a Tenacious D reference I spot in the title?

People visualise Andy Warhol and Campbell’s Soup when they think Pop Art. This tutorial shows how to quickly create a subtle, stylised effect using some simple Photoshop filters and adjustment layer techniques.

Things to note:

• The choice of photo is more about and expression, or style than the resolution or technical quality as you’ll potentially be zooming into an area and cropping.
• There’s lots of different ways to strip the detail from photos in a cool way – half the filters in Photoshop can do that, so you can substitute the filters used here for many others.
• Don’t be afraid to try different colours (in the filters), and merge multiple effects on different layers to create your own style.

If you’re looking for other techniques then check out my other tutorials.

A big thanks to everyone who voted for my Grinder Mincemaster Music Machine (try saying that with a mouthful of popcorn) in the Redbubble Demo Music Machines challenge.

It’s reached the top 20 (out of almost 300 entries) to be considered by Demo stores in London.  The top 5 chosen by Demo get their designs printed by and sold in their stores.

Congratulations to all the other people whose designs made it through, and my day just been well and truly made!

rain-bows make my hearts grow - Amanda Cass

This beautiful design by Amanda Cass shows that a great illustration works just fine on a tee.

There’s something very sweet, yet a little bit dark about this that I just love.

Shades of Tim Burton I think.

You’ll find this character quite familiar if you look at more of Amanda’s work on Redbubble.

There you’ll find not only more interesting t-shirt designs, ranging from Darth Vader to cats – but also some really fabulous digital art.

Our love is on a journey...

There’s lots of ways to create most effects in Photoshop, and this particular subject is no exception.  Here’s a little video tutorial using a few techniques to create rubber stamped text in Photoshop.

Other ways to achieve the ’stamped’ look

• Take the text and outline and add a ’splatter’ filter
• Take another image and apply threshold to it (to get some irregular black/white shapes), then paste into your layer mask.  You need to find an image with the right kind of contrast for this to work well

Share any other methods in the comments…

Fast Food Evolution by schytsoframe

Fancy a hamburger with the lot?

Well this design by schytsoframe might make you think twice.  I’m guilty of the odd takeaway here and there, but here’s the unfortunate reality of what happens to too many people in the (developed) world these days who can’t say no to the temptation of high-fat fast food.

It’s true of course that there’s many social issues at play here too, so it’s not just about simple greed. As I’ve said before, one of the problems in hard economic times, is that it’s easier to eat cheap than it is to eat well.

You can even buy a litre of Coke cheaper than a litre of water these days!

Grinder Mincemaster Music Machine

I like a challenge, and this challenge is all about music machines (as the excellent ‘synthetic rose‘).  This is a pretty open brief of course and so here’s my interpretation.

It’s a mincer, a grinder, a fender, a mixer – well all sorts of things.

It ‘does’ go to 11 of course.

Synthetic Rose by wtiller

I’m wasn’t quite sure what I like about this design when I first saw it.

I couldn’t work out what it was at first, but then realised it’s certainly ‘organic’ (geddit), and I love the style and colours.

It’s a music machine – for a challenge on Redbubble with the same name.

It’s a cool vector shirt, with some great detail and nice shapes.

It’ll get a vote from me.