OK, now we are getting somewhere!
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I wonder how long it’ll take to ink all these guys? (The piece is 24 inches wide)
Remember these guys?
Mysterious pencils drawn for mysterious reasons.
The design evolution for the new “Winners Don’t Use Save States” coat-of-arms shirt was a bit more complicated than the “Whatever” shirt. When I started sketching, I had a list of elements I wanted to include, but it took a few iterations to figure out the best way to arrange them all.
I picked a two-tailed fox and a saddled, long-tongued dinosaur as my two main “sheild supporter” animals early on, but I played with a couple different ways of drawing them before settling on their more traditional upright poses. Similarly, I knew early on I wanted to include the controller trifecta “flower” element, but I experimented with using it as part of the shield before moving it up and using it as the crest. That left a big open shield to fill, which I eventually decided to model after the most famous shield in gaming (with a number of references to other gaming franchises carefully inserted).
With the basics of the design nailed, I picked a colour scheme and started inking a final version. I experimented with a couple of different ways of handling the lineart for the TV screen and shield elements and before settling on the scanlines and partially-embossed styles seen in the final.
And last but not least, when the design was nearly done, I made a couple of small tweaks and replacements to some of the references: changing the coin in the shield border to a mushroom to better match the “health item” theme, replacing the Chao with a Bomberman-type character to keep all the references in the right era, and swapping the NES cartridge with a question block. (At such a small size, the cartridge wasn’t very visually legible.)
Designing this shirt was an exercise in creating exactly the kind of shirt design I would want to wear myself. (I am a dork.) Hopefully I am not the only person who feels this way! If you’d like to snag one yourself, you can find them in my Topatoco store… and if you’d like to help spread word of it to other folks who might be interested, it would be much appreciated!
The concept for my new “I’m So Excited About Whatever” t-shirt design was almost fully-formed right in the original pencil sketch. (Though there was one valuable slight tweak suggested by Rikk in the early stages.) Sometimes things just come together!
If you’d like to pick up one of the shirts, they’re available now in my Topatoco store.
Sam and Fuzzy’s cover design process tends to go pretty smoothly. Unlike my pals in the traditional print comics world, I don’t have to design the cover until the entire book is already drawn and finished. And by then, I’ve had a full year to think about the story, and the kind of cover image that would represent it best. So as you can see (if you can make them out), most of my initial thumbnail sketches are minor variations on the same basic concept.
Once I had a thumbnail concept I was happy with, I did a basic colour test layout before actually drawing the full final pencil. Colour positioning is really important with my covers, since my book design only works when the white SAM & FUZZY logo is positioned over a relatively dark, monotone part of the artwork to maintain legibility. I also use a pretty strict two-tone colour scheme… blue and orange for the first volume, green and orange-y red for the second volume, and purple and turquoise for this one!
Below the colour test, you can see the final pencilled and inked versions of the cover art. And below THAT, you’ll see the final, finished cover. Tada!
Sam and Fuzzy goes on sale at Topatoco really soon.
Took a couple days off for Thanksgiving, but Sam and Fuzzy Lanterns piece is now coloured and done! (I think.)
