New Swim T-Shirt

This year is the seventh year in a row that we have had a swimmer on the Skyline High School varsity swim. Needless to say, parents always have the opportunity to be "involved" with the booster club in providing support to the team. This year I volunteered to create the design for the team shirt.

I consulted with the team captains regarding what they had in mind for the shirt and I was off. They wanted a variation on the eagle mascot, this time swooping in over the water. I sketched up a rough and went to it.

I digitally inked the drawing and then added the typography as well as some splashes on the front and back. I warped the type into a simple wave to help with the whole water feel. the final touch was to add a distressed crackle pattern to give it a well worn look. The back features the team slogan chosen by this years captains. Both the boy's and girl's teams are defending 4A state champs, so I guess "Here We Come!" will juice up the team as well as instill a little fear in the opponents. The captains are thrilled with the result and I am looking forward to seeing seventy odd kids wearing the shirt each meet.

Lion-Fish Logo

The Internet is a strange place. Put something up and maybe a handful of people find it, or then again, maybe it goes viral, at which point it takes on a life of its own and millions see it. You just never know. Sometimes, the right person finds just what they were looking for. Last week I got an email from a swim team coach in Florida who stumbled on a little demo I did for students a couple of years back. I spent a couple of hours quickly painting a little character of a lion fish. As with many of my fish characters, I took the features of a real lion and morphed them with the fish version to get at something that was a little bit funny, menacing and strange all rolled in one. Well, the swim coach was looking for a mascot logo to go on shirts for their team and thought this was just the ticket. We agreed on a little bit of a budget and I did a black and white line version for him for the logo. It's always strange when something like that happens, but you never know who is looking when you toss something into the ether that is the Internet. Keep doing work just for fun and keep casting your lines into the water. Sometimes you get an unexpected bite.

Terabytes T-Shirt Design

L to R- Mascot Dave, Will, Sterling, Britton

The Terabytes have made it to State! Will, my 9th grade son will compete with his robotics team tomorrow in the state final of  the First Lego League. He and two of his friends formed their own team this year after last year's disappointing results. Each team competes in three separate areas including a special project, Robot building and design and Core values (First Lego League defines these goals). They also compete in a head to head robot task competition. I volunteered to coach the team which came along with other duties such as chief graphic designer and blog coordinator.

My team shirt design- Photoshop

Here is the shirt design I did based on my son's sketch. Our team won the qualifier three weeks ago and moved on to the State meet. If they win here, they will move on to Nationals. If you are interested in this great program, take a look at the Terabyes blog here, or the FLL national site for more info.

3 Hog Night - Update

A while back I created a T-shirt design for Lake Country Neighbors, a community group in Emory Texas for their annual food bank fundraiser. I sent off the design, got copies of the T-shirts back and then waited. For months. The shirts were done so far in advance that I almost forgot about it except that the shirt made it into my son's favorite shirt rotation. I kept looking at the date , realizing the event had not happened yet until last week when I realized that it was THE week. Well. I got this note from Pam Bowden who coordinated the event (at least my involvement in it). I asked how things went and here are excerpts from her reply.

my pigs as cutouts on stage at the event

It was a success!  We made over $8300 for our food pantries.  In a small town like Emory, that was quite a feat!  It's more than any pig roast we've done to date... Your t-shirts were everywhere and we made Styrofoam pigs for the stage that looked like the pigs on the shirt.  As I said before, this is our favorite pig to date.

Lake Country Ladies rockin' the pig shirts

Also, it contained this bit of bad news:

Our fund raiser could not have come at a better time.  The weekend before our event, someone broke in to the fenced area where the Good Samaritan's trailer was stored and stole it along with a lot of other items.  This is the trailer we use to go to the East Texas Food Bank and pick up the food for our local pantry.  This was the second time it has been stolen in less than a year.  It seems the harder we try to make things better around here, there's always someone ready to take it one step backward.  Needless to say, some of this money will go to a chip to put in the trailer.  At least next time we'll be able to find it and hopefully prosecute some thieves.

Really? Stealing the trailer from the Good Samaritan? I hope they catch these goons. Regardless, it is always nice to be able to lend a little help to such a worthy cause. I was happy to have contributed to the success of this event and the possibility is open to have a piggie shirt sequel next year.  HAMlet anyone?

Anyone wanting to donate or see how else they might support the Lake Country Neighbors, a worthy cause in east Texas- click here

3 Hog Night

I was approached a couple of weeks ago by a group in Emory Texas about using a piece of my artwork I had originally done for the Dueling Banjo Pigs blog and exhibit. The Lake Country Neighbors hold an annual pig roast fundraiser for their local food bank and wanted to use a piece I had done on t-shirts promoting the event.

The original piece on which I based the shirt design

I offered to design the shirt for them and this is the result. The piece in question needed a little adjustment in order for it to translate better into silk screen and I added the typography as well. I removed the textures and flattened out the colors for a cleaner design. I think it will be fun to see it on the shirts and they will even be sending me enough for my family. Fun times! I hope they send me some photos of the actual event with people wearing my design.