Shirt.Woot

I think that's part of why this week is so exciting. There is a LOT of creative entries that have been submitted by different artists. I love looking at the varied concepts and learning from others. Plus, with the new stuff coming out to determine winners, I think you'll see this creative trend continue. 'Tis a good time to Woot!

Tifereth4 wrote:the submissions for the past few months have been repetitive and lack any design depth. i no longer acknowledge shirtwoot as a legitimate source for tshirt designs

I have a question about shirt designs in general: does the design have to be vector stuff? Or is raster art acceptable as well?

And, if so, what's the minimum size for pixels in raster art? I know you guys said 8×8 for the gold shimmer ink, but what about other spot colors?

KizulEmeraldfire wrote:I have a question about shirt designs in general: does the design have to be vector stuff? Or is raster art acceptable as well?

And, if so, what's the minimum size for pixels in raster art? I know you guys said 8×8 for the gold shimmer ink, but what about other spot colors?

You can indeed use raster art, just make sure the original raster art work is the correct size for the tshirt print, and not for the derby design images. So basically make sure your raster document is 16" x 20" and 300dpi.

I believe the general rule of thumb is to aim to keep all lines above about 5 pixels for it to be printable. This is because the women's/kid's prints are scaled down. If you have lines of 1-2 pixels, they will be scaled down to nothingness and will not print.

Even more importantly, be careful how small you make areas that contain no ink. I believe these areas tend to shrink slightly in the printing process and super small details disappear. Unstealthiest Ninja 3 is a really good example of this. The women's/kid's print quite regularly loses one of the pupils on the unstealthy ninja.


Also, its probably worth having a read of some of these threads, they have some really useful information in them

Info on halftones and dots per inch (lpi vs dpi)

What Software Should You Use To Create Shirt Designs?

Design Tips: I Have Become Halftone, Destroyer of Shirts...

Tips for New Designers

KizulEmeraldfire wrote:I have a question about shirt designs in general: does the design have to be vector stuff? Or is raster art acceptable as well?

And, if so, what's the minimum size for pixels in raster art? I know you guys said 8×8 for the gold shimmer ink, but what about other spot colors?

just to add my $0.02 to what lilsquiggle posted: raster art is ok. max pixels is for 16"x20" design at 300 dpi. i think the derby upload page says halftones must be 30 lpi or larger (meaning using dots that are larger), but i'm not sure about the minimum brush size; i'd guess mabe keep it larger than 1 point (about 4 pixels)?

also, you can read these links stolen ... uh, "fair used" from tgentry's sig:

shirt.woot faq
derby guidelines and templates
tgentry's tips for new designers
ongoing design tips/shirt links

Hmm, I see. Curses! A lot of the detail in my current design will end up being reduced, then!

I'll have to figure out a way to fatten it up a bit, I suppose. :p

Edit: Hm… As a bit of an aside, what's the best format to export raster art for these shirts? And are layers acceptable, or should it all be merged together (with a transparent background, or a separate layer that's the same color as the shirt the design goes on)?

Additionally, I don't suppose I could just up the DPI to 600 or something in order to make my one- or two-pixel-thick lines show up when it's printed? :D

KizulEmeraldfire wrote:Hmm, I see. Curses! A lot of the detail in my current design will end up being reduced, then!

I'll have to figure out a way to fatten it up a bit, I suppose. :p

Edit: Hm… As a bit of an aside, what's the best format to export raster art for these shirts? And are layers acceptable, or should it all be merged together (with a transparent background, or a separate layer that's the same color as the shirt the design goes on)?

Additionally, I don't suppose I could just up the DPI to 600 or something in order to make my one- or two-pixel-thick lines show up when it's printed? :D

If your artwork is already rasterized, increasing the DPI won't make it magically have more pixels. It will just appear to get smaller. The way the raster programs work is they merely create a document with DPI x width(in inches) x height (in inches). So what this means is if you double the DPI, it simply makes the canvas twice the size in both directions. However as raster artwork is created as pixels, not lines/vectors, it doesn't know how to increase each pixel neatly. Your image would simply take up a quarter of the new canvas.

As for formats for export, it depends what you are exporting them for. Make sure you keep a file with all the layers, as if your design does go to print, you will need to submit the file with a layer for each ink colour. However the images submitted for the derby should not have layers and should be a .gif, .jpg or .png.

Personally, Im a big fan of .png as it tends to be less lossy compression. However you cant control the amount of compression applied to your image and as such may sometimes end up over the 500kb limit. Thats when I then turn to the .jpg format as I can choose the .jpg quality it saves as and such control the file size. (The lower the quality, the higher the compression, the smaller the file)

I have kind of a blossomish question about e-mailing your designs to the woot team... Are you only supposed to e-mail the design if they ask for it? And if not, does it matter what subject you put in the headline / will they be able to match up your submission?

lilsquiggle wrote:If your artwork is already rasterized, increasing the DPI won't make it magically have more pixels. It will just appear to get smaller. The way the raster programs work is they merely create a document with DPI x width(in inches) x height (in inches). So what this means is if you double the DPI, it simply makes the canvas twice the size in both directions. However as raster artwork is created as pixels, not lines/vectors, it doesn't know how to increase each pixel neatly. Your image would simply take up a quarter of the new canvas.

Ah — so I doubling the DPI and the pixel size (by proxy from increasing the DPI) wouldn't work. Phooey.

lilsquiggle wrote:As for formats for export, it depends what you are exporting them for. Make sure you keep a file with all the layers, as if your design does go to print, you will need to submit the file with a layer for each ink colour. However the images submitted for the derby should not have layers and should be a .gif, .jpg or .png.

I always opt for PNG myself — I hate the artefacting that JPEG adds. :x It looks terrible in my opinion. D:

shadownumber wrote:I have kind of a blossomish question about e-mailing your designs to the woot team... Are you only supposed to e-mail the design if they ask for it? And if not, does it matter what subject you put in the headline / will they be able to match up your submission?

I've been wondering this as well. What should we put in the subject line and the e-mail body? What info should we include?

KizulEmeraldfire wrote:I've been wondering this as well. What should we put in the subject line and the e-mail body? What info should we include?

I always just put "title - username" in the subject and then repeat this in the body. You are *supposed* to e-mail your print ready files upon time of submission. I recall tgentry saying that you won't be murdered in your sleep as long as they are in by Monday (assuming you subbed on Friday), but this was not stated without a healthy amount of grumble and doomsaying.

rasabi wrote:I always just put "title - username" in the subject and then repeat this in the body. You are *supposed* to e-mail your print ready files upon time of submission. I recall tgentry saying that you won't be murdered in your sleep as long as they are in by Monday (assuming you subbed on Friday), but this was not stated without a healthy amount of grumble and doomsaying.

XD Im so glad I just read that. I had a total derp brain when I submitted and completely forgot to email the print file. Just did it now. I am such a silly head!

lilsquiggle wrote:XD Im so glad I just read that. I had a total derp brain when I submitted and completely forgot to email the print file. Just did it now. I am such a silly head!

Hmmm... ok, just got a failed delivery notice. I can only assume that that is because my print ready file is too large... anyone got any suggestions? Can I submit as a TIFF or a TARGA which both save layers information?

EDIT: Ok, just tried saving as both a TIFF and as a TARGA. Both are larger than my PSD file. :/ Not really sure what to do right now...

lilsquiggle wrote:Hmmm... ok, just got a failed delivery notice. I can only assume that that is because my print ready file is too large... anyone got any suggestions? Can I submit as a TIFF or a TARGA which both save layers information?

EDIT: Ok, just tried saving as both a TIFF and as a TARGA. Both are larger than my PSD file. :/ Not really sure what to do right now...

Did you Zip the PSD? You'd be amazed at how much that can be compressed.

kevlar51 wrote:Did you Zip the PSD? You'd be amazed at how much that can be compressed.

Good call, that appears to have worked. Thank you