Shirt Production Opportunity

[TeamJackal37]

I'm interesting on the stickers, and the shirt too

[questionful]

Update on the AO logo: I've been procrastinating. Turns out the vectorizing was a lot harder than I initially estimated. Fortunately I have nothing to do tomorrow and will be dedicating the whole day to this. After a lot of messing around with Adobe Illustrator, I've figured out how I'm going to do this, and this way it will be congruous and precise. I know the angle of the slant, and I know the dimensions of the letters. Sorry this has taken so long, but I promise I will finish tomorrow.

Emert, I would be interested in stickers too. What can you tell us regarding the size, price, how many colors, etc. if we were to do a lion logo sticker for example?

[In My Sights]

What file output are you needing for your vectorized work? I just ask because I work for a screenprinter and do his vectorizing. What all do you have left to vectorize?

[questionful]

What file output are you needing for your vectorized work? I just ask because I work for a screenprinter and do his vectorizing. What all do you have left to vectorize?

Um, I really don't know much about what I'm doing. I needed a higher resolution version of this to work with:

So I decided to try to trace over it on Adobe Illustrator 6, which happens to be on my computer.
As a professional, I'm sure you know. . . TOOOOONS (that's an understatement. I didn't even know what the pen tool did when I started doing this) more about this than I, got any tips for me? I don't know how to explain what I'm doing, I'd have to show you on my monitor, but basically I'm entering in the points with coordinates so I can standardize the angles and dimensions of everything. The one thing that isn't going to be theoretically precise are the curves. But they should look identical.

Now that we have you here and you probably know a lot about this, would a .pdf with a layer for each color be something we could send to screenprinting place?
It's like this but I think four times big.

http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z304/Qful/sample_03.jpg

And here's a close-up on the halftone:

http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z304/Qful/halftoneSample_01.png

[ThePixelGuru]

Yeah, that's what always stopped me from vectorizing the AO logo - the low res just isn't clear enough to get a good vector image out of. In the end I think I faked one using the Impact font and some Photoshopping.

questionful, how did you vectorize stuff in Illustrator? I haven't managed to find that feature yet. I mean, I can trace images, but that's hardly easy or fast.

[questionful]

Yeah, that's what always stopped me from vectorizing the AO logo - the low res just isn't clear enough to get a good vector image out of. In the end I think I faked one using the Impact font and some Photoshopping.

questionful, how did you vectorize stuff in Illustrator? I haven't managed to find that feature yet. I mean, I can trace images, but that's hardly easy or fast.

Well how I do it is take the pen tool, select the points and type in exact coordinates.

[In My Sights]

My input is in red!

Um, I really don't know much about what I'm doing. I needed a higher resolution version of this to work with:


This is the chest logo correct? Are you going to keep the drop shadow for this or just keep it a two color? I don't think that trying to do the drop shadow will be a good idea on a black shirt. Just because, when you print a light color on a dark fabric, you normally need a white backing layer to keep the color true (i.e. just a lot more work for the printer and more cost for printing; plus it is just the chest logo and the back is where you have the main focal point). But if this logo is all you need, let me know what file output you are looking for. I'm sure I can knock this out for you in just a litle bit.

So I decided to try to trace over it on Adobe Illustrator 6, which happens to be on my computer.
As a professional, I'm sure you know. . . TOOOOONS (that's an understatement. I didn't even know what the pen tool did when I started doing this) more about this than I, got any tips for me? I don't know how to explain what I'm doing, I'd have to show you on my monitor, but basically I'm entering in the points with coordinates so I can standardize the angles and dimensions of everything. The one thing that isn't going to be theoretically precise are the curves. But they should look identical.

Sadly I don't use Illustrator and haven't in over 10 years. In the shop I work at, we use Corel Draw for all or vector art. Mainly because even the owner can vectorize images with it. But for complex images like the lions logo, I would just use the pen tool and just begin outlining the image by clicking on all the corners (bends in the line). Corel will create a node (anchor point for the next line to start from) and continue around the image. After I have the rough image outlined I would convert what lines I needed to curves and begin to adjust the straight lines to fit the image below them. From there I would begin doing the same thing to build the inner details.

Now that we have you here and you probably know a lot about this, would a .pdf with a layer for each color be something we could send to screenprinting place?

You can... I mean my boss would take it if he had to. But he would preffer a vector image file (he would probably charge the customer a $50 drawing fee and have me build a vector image file of it). When I first started out for him, I provided all my color seperations in a Photoshop file built on various layers. But after getting into the shop and seeing it first hand; providing an image that they can break apart is huge. Because they will be printing the color seperations on velum as black, that will be used to burn the screens. The issue my boss had with printing my Photoshop images was that my... lets say yellow layers, would print out as a stippled grayscale on his velum. But the yellow needed to be a solid layer for the screen. He would then have to dink around with the image and try to convert it to a black so it would print properly. So the issue I see with a .PDF is that the image is not in a format that can be manipulated by the printer.

It's like this but I think four times big.

http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z304/Qful/sample_03.jpg

And here's a close-up on the halftone:
http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z...eSample_01.png

As for your halftone, the way I build halftones is part of my vectorizing the image, I create that piece as a seperate layer (treating it as I would any other color) and when we print to the velum, we control the toning by printing it off in various shades of gray at 300 x 300 DPI to control the toning. Sometimes it takes a little work if you have a couple of different halftones together. But for a single halftone it is fairly easy.

With that being said, the text that you are halftoning is really supposed to be a white highlight on the "blueish" text. Are you sure you want that halftoned?

I hope all this is understood. But let me know on the chest logo file format if you would like some help.

** EDIT ** I just realized I missed the entire second page of this thread. I got answers to most of my questions. The file types I work in are .CDR

And Questionful, .PDF files are not vector images. Vector images are more in the relm of clipart. PM me, I would like to get you my email address so I can see what you have done for the back image.

[xtreme paintball]

This thread has been stagnant for a while.

Is the project still alive?

I'm very interested.

[dark blade]

shirts are gonna be awesome... i want one for sure!

but then again I want an automags.org jersey just like the old yellow one i saw tiger wearing once.

Anyone know if those are floating around anywhere? or if anyone here can make them?

[ThePixelGuru]

And Questionful, .PDF files are not vector images. Vector images are more in the relm of clipart.

That's not true, I've saved vector images as PDF files before. And vector images don't have to be clip art, you can do shading and full color throughout.

[questionful]

I think he meant that a PDF is not necessarily a vector image.

Anyway, I did what I could with the lion logo, hopefully it's in a format the printers can use. But I gave up on the AO logo, it was too tedious and I have ADD. In My Sights mentioned he might be able to do it, but I never heard back from him. If anyone here can vectorize a very low-res image (the AO logo), I'm sure all the people who want to buy this shirt would appreciate you helping out with it. I think it would be really cool if most of the work for this shirt were done by AO'ers themselves.

[bjyourk]

Just want to thank everyone who is spending their time(and possibly money) to get this done. I had no idea it was this involved but I'm sure they'll look great. Did anyone sign up to spit out some stickers?

[matteusz]

My concern with the lettering would be that it would make fewer people buy the shirt - for instance, I know I won't wear something that says "gangster" on the back, but the people who want a "gangster" theme would probably buy the shirt without it. I think the more stuff you put on it the more potential customers you'll lose. You can sell an AGD shirt here, on MCB, SpecOps, etc - you put an AO logo on it, you can only sell it here. Take it a step further and put some "gangster/thug" theme on it, and you can only sell it to the gangster/thug wannabes here. See what I mean?

EDIT: The rest of that sounds good, though. Print a sample of that on a black shirt, and if it's ≤$20 shipped I'd buy it and I'm sure a lot more of us would, too.

Couldn't have been said better. Count me down for two in Xl if you do this. It couldn't be simpler to put together or easier to sell.

[matteusz]

I think he meant that a PDF is not necessarily a vector image.

Anyway, I did what I could with the lion logo, hopefully it's in a format the printers can use. But I gave up on the AO logo, it was too tedious and I have ADD. In My Sights mentioned he might be able to do it, but I never heard back from him. If anyone here can vectorize a very low-res image (the AO logo), I'm sure all the people who want to buy this shirt would appreciate you helping out with it. I think it would be really cool if most of the work for this shirt were done by AO'ers themselves.

Any sign shop should be willing to do the vector image for you for 50$. If you aren't planning on making enough money for that to be a worth while investment then I doubt this will ever become more than a pipe dream.

[questionful]

I'm done with this, I'm unqualified. I did what I could, it might be useful it might not. I just hope we get this shirt made, it's a great idea and much interest has been showed.


EDIT: I found this, it might be useful to someone