Republic In Peril

I do lots of freelance Tee graphics but an old employer of mine contacted me about doing a project with him. Basically he had this idea for a new line called “Republic In Peril” or R.I.P. He has a great contact for appliqué work so the tops are super heavy on the materials.
Here are some of the graphics:

It’s a bit funny… the line literally is called “Republic In Peril” to give it a bit of an edge, but when I came up with aggressive “political” imagery there was some definite hesitation from the uppers.

When one’s money is at stake, I understand that there’s a lot of trepidation about the “sell-able-ness” of a brand new line. As a result many people push to have something made that looks very similar to what’s selling now. This sometimes works, and sometimes misses the trend. Hopefully R.I.P. will find a good balance.

Here’s a close up of the above Tee graphic:

FR*A Work in Progress

I mentioned in an earlier blog that I was holed up for about two weeks in order to dish out some new designs for FR*A clothing. Here’s one of the pieces in progress. I like samurai armor.

The concept sketch - which got scanned into my computer so I could…

Create a vectorized image of the drawing! (click on the image for a closer look)

Next I need to figure out a good color scheme and placement… these things depend heavily on the article of clothing itself. I think I’m gonna add this image to one of our ninja hoodies. Hopefully I can show you guys more of the work in progress soon.

New vid, new shirt.

Hello everyone! Got a new shirt for FR*A out, it’s the second in our signature series - this time it’s a Black on Black shirt (Black foil, black American Apparel shirt). We got them in girls and guys, so let’s see them out on the streets! You can purchase one at fraclothing.com

Here’s the commerical I put together for the shirt. We decided to focus on the photographer who took the lovely pics of Aiko Tanaka. The photographer is Cherie Roberts. Cherie’s work has been published in magazines such as Maxim, Playboy, EGM, 944 and has been featured in companies like Suicide Girls and NerdCore. Check out her site and enjoy the commercial.

Skulls and Wings part deux

I started on this skull and wings shirt a while back, even before the other marine skull and wings shirt. It’s finally nearing it’s sampling life. It all started with vector comps…

I got a final image I was happy with then flirted with some colors.

And a winner emerges.

BTW - Sometimes you wanna go bonkers with these shirt designs but you gotta hold back… it may be only cents more for additions here and there… but multiply that by 1000’s and all of a sudden one color and one hit doesn’t sound so bad. So the lesson? Buy FR*A!