Question about printing for shirts

Started 4 weeks ago
  • Jbyrd117 4 weeks ago
    I noticed some shirt designs look like traditional pen and ink drawings, do some people scan traditional ink drawings and have those printed on shirts? It wouldn't be a vector, so would there be a problem? How big would the design have to be drawn?

    Also, when doing vector work for print on shirts how many different colors can you typically get away with using?
  • Skull With Hair 4 weeks ago
     
    you can totally do traditional pen and ink drawings. this one was only pencil, scanned, and printed.



    the final result will vary depending on how experienced your screen printer is with these types of images. just think of it like this: if you can screen print photos on shirts everything else is possible.

    as for the amount of colors in a print, i think i've done as high as 12. but that shit is expensive and is usually reserved for like nascar shit. the average shirt is 3-6 i'd say. although personally i prefer 1 color shit.
  • Jbyrd117 4 weeks ago
     
    Thanks for the helpful and fast reply! I like the cover you did for Cobra Starship's debut album. How did you land a job like that?
  • Craig Robson 3 weeks, 6 days ago
     
    All of my work starts out as a traditional inked drawing on paper.

    it can often not really matter how big the drawing is as you would have to scan in the drawing to create a digital file. you can change the output size of the scan by altering the DPI, some scanners go up to ridiculous DPI counts but i have found that an A4 drawing can be scanned at around 600-700DPI and be pretty suited to a shirt design.

    i often draw at A3 and then scan at 600dpi, then resize the raster image to the requested print size in photoshop.

    you do not have to be confined to a vector illustration for a t-shirt graphic, raster images work out great!

    and SWH got the cobra starship job buy sucking a LOT of mens thingies.
  • Skull With Hair 3 weeks, 6 days ago
     
    Jbyrd117 said: Thanks for the helpful and fast reply! I like the cover you did for Cobra Starship's debut album. How did you land a job like that?


    just being in the right place at the right time. i was doing a lot of freelance merch for FBR at the time and this album job came up for them. they didn't technically exist as a full band yet and there was no budget so everyone passed on it. i was happy to take it on and ended up doing the whole record for around what we charge for a shirt design now.

    so yeah just keep plugging away and an opportunity will pop up when you least expect it.
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