Hey Hive!
We're back again with another Art Attack! If you're new to the series, this is where I share my drawings and the process behind them. A behind-the-scenes look at my artwork, if you will. This is not to say that I'm very good at art, or that I'm a professional in any way. In fact this is the opposite, and serves as a reminder to how I first started, and lets me track my progress too!
One thing I like to do as an artist is to draw special personalised artworks for friends as gifts! Both because I'm a bad gift giver but also because I find personalised art a better gift than anything I could buy especially in this day and age. But here's one I did for one of my mods recently:
So for Sean's birthday last year I wanted to do something special. I realised I haven't posted about this yet but this was actually the first shirt I ever printed with my own art! He's really into Dance Dance Revolution and I wanted to get him a new shirt he could wear for his DDR sessions since all his shirts either have holes or stains on them.
And since he really loves this old, classic-style rooster shirt he bought in 2017 (which was also when the shirt was last white), I thought of making a ddr shirt in a similar style but personalised to Seany!
Essentially I was going to take what I drew for him in the neon arcade piece but in a different style. But when I started working on it, I thought the neon looked so good and would also suit a dark colour shirt which is what he needs tbh. I was going to print the design on a navy blue shirt since he doesn't have many of those and I think the colour suits him. This was the piece I did for him back in 2021 for New Years':
So I was thinking of something simple on the front - just a logo on the left side of the chest area just like his rooster shirt, but obviously it'd be DDR related.
I did some research and found some references for neon arcade machines, that I think could work for the logo rather than just the plain DDR logo which didn't really go well with the neon style I was thinking of.
I found some vectors and I really liked the neon arcade sign I did last time so I thought it'd be cool to do something like that but with a DDR machine instead.
This was the sketch I came up with:
I found some really cool neon fonts online that I could use especially for the Japanese words and they looked so good! I added a gradient to the words too - orange and blue since they're our favourite colours and they contrast as well. I drew the frame around it like a neon LED light and it was looking pretty good so far!
Drawing the machine was a bit more challenging than I thought because of the angle and perspective I wanted it to be in. It took a while to adjust it to look right and even then I wasn't very sure, but I guess it looked alright.
I decided to change the glow of the LED frame to orange since it looked mostly blue and it turned out a lot better.
So that was the front done! Here's the timelapse:
https://youtube.com/shorts/LSQZrjA1Q6Q
For the back of the shirt, I was basically going to take the middle of the arcade piece I drew last time but make it simpler, and of course add some words so it would be similar to the rooster shirt.
These were my references:
And this was the sketch:
I reused the fonts from the front of the shirt for the words here as well, since I loved the colours and gradients. For the bottom words I changed my mind on the frame and just went with the DDR arrows on each side instead and I thought it looked pretty good.
The machine on this one also gave me some trouble. The perspective on the lines didn't look right either even when I traced my old drawing and needed some adjustments.
I wasn't really sure if Seany's silhouette would look good in neon but after I outlined it I guess it looked okay. I wasn't going to add the little details on the machine since it would be too much and would look too cluttered.
And this was the final piece!
Here's the 30 second timelapse:
https://youtube.com/shorts/lr3Aleb8gls?feature=share
I found a custom shirt printer online and after reading the reviews it seemed like a quality printer so I tried it, sending them my designs and a mock-up of how I wanted it to be printed.
I wasn't sure if the logo on the front would be too big, so I let the staff know and we discussed the dimensions. Thankfully he was very accommodating and understanding since it was my first time printing a shirt.
About a week later, the shirt arrived and it was perfect! Other than a little stitching mistake on the shoulder where there was a hole. The printing of the design was perfect though, which was what I was worried about. I wasn't sure if the colours would turn out exactly so I was concerned, but thankfully it was fine!
The sizing was also perfect, and the back looked so good! I wasn't sure how big the design could be printed on the shirt but the back does have a lot of real estate and I'm glad he used as much as he could for my design.
This shirt also matches his newest tattoo that I also designed, which is him playing ddr but from the front! He’d been thinking of getting a ddr tattoo for the longest time and after some sketching I thought it looked pretty cool! 😊
I'm so relieved the shirt turned out as I intended. The glow around the logo was a little rough after printing so I do regret that bit, but Sean really loved it so I'm glad.
If you're interested, I do draw on stream sometimes and you can even claim free artwork if you get enough channel points! We also play lots of interactive games so come hang out with us on my Twitch channel!
Thanks so much for reading!
To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!
