Happy Animals line is completed

Finally after a few months from the day I started this line of designs I had the time to add the last 4 and complete a set of twelve (12) original designs. The Happy Animals line is a collection of 12 simple designs of farm and zoo animals originally created to decorate kid's clothing but later expanded so they can decorate even adult apparel. Since originally the designs were created to decorate kids clothing he main emphasis here was the vibrant colors. The representation of the animals on the other hand is very cartoony and simple and attention was given into their cute and goofy expressions. I recommend a set of the 12 different tiles that can decorate a kid's bathroom or serve as coasters.

Crime Time Spots!

Watch the first two episodes of Crime Time series created by Future Thought and directed by Emmy Award winner animation guru, Nassos Vakalis! We hope you like the episodes and give us a thumbs up or digg us!
Crime Time: Electro-Phobia Crime Time: The Bank Robbery

I LOVE LA and other USA locations

A number of new designs went up today covering the old reliable I LOVE... t-shirt slogan. I must admit I have hold too long away from this one but I think it is time to visit it again! So what 's new and different with our designs? Well we are introducing a new type face for the acronyms of our locations. This is a similar text used for our new Teeteaser.com signature. It works very well because it emphasizes the negative space of the letters making them pop out in the color tees. I also stayed away form the heart symbol, maybe I will return to this sometime later but for the moment it felt better to spell the word "I love..." Last but not least we have added the crown. The crown is a very fashionable symbol of our days and it is used in many t-shirt lines we like. Our crown was first drawn on paper and later was digitally treated with my exclusive method of turning a hand drawing to a old print or crosshatch. Maybe one day I will post the Photoshop tutorial for this trick. So far you can choose from:

I LOVE LA I LOVE SF I LOVE AZ If the line becomes popular Iwill add more locations.

Name Branding and Signature

From now on all our apparel will have our brand name and domain URL "teeteeaser.com" and Nassos's signature printed on the upper back of the garment . Certain t-shirts that might have another design ( artwork ) for their back or apparel that the back is used for the main design will have the URL and signature print either incorporated into the main design or in another location. We have taken this step because we want to emphasize our commitment to create a recognizable and strong brand. We believe that our greatest asset is Nassos's work and by having it signed we adding the value and the attention it deserves.
On that note don't forget that you can still get a free drawing from Nassos's collection of Teeteaser drawings ( including GirlvsGirls and Girls in Uniforms! ) with every purchase or permanent link placement. To get your free drawing signed by EMMY award winning artist Nassos Vakalis click here.

Teeteaser Coat of Arms

In the European tradition a coat of arms is a design belonging to a particular person (or group of people) and used by them in a wide variety of ways in order to identify them amongst other groups. This is a unique design and it is different from a flag or a shield because a coat of arms is inheritable property, and generally descend to male lineal descendent's of the original arms grantee. Used primarily to establish identity in medieval battlefields these designs were placed on the cloth tunic worn over the knight's armor in order to identify the knight and to protect his armor from the heat. Following this early European tradition and trying to make things a bit more simple (or simplistic) we establishing our own coat of arms and we hope our customers and friends could wear this over their body in order to identify them selfs in the battle field of life as part of the "teeteaser" clan.

Flowers of Blood

I created these two designs inspired from the work of Jackson Pollock. Jackson Pollock was an influential American painter and a major force in the abstract impressionistic movement. Since Pollock's work has always polarized critics and has been the focus of many important critical debates, in the same manner, we hope our own work and the mix of the flower theme with the blood stain will also create its own controversy within the t-shirt community. If you find the subject a bit too gory then bookmark the links and you can visit the site again during Halloween! The t-shirts will make excellent gifts. If you like to entertain yourself using the Pollock style of action painting there is an excellent web site where you can paint on screen using your mouse. The outcome is paint splattering. You will find this extremely entertaining and relaxing! http://www.jacksonpollock.org/

Some design tips and ideas

During the past year I have created two squidoo lences ( squidoo is a blogg style community sharing the knowledge of it's individual members ) explaining in detail some of the techniques I use while creating my t-shirt designs. You can visit the following pages for more information about these tutorials and my designs:

• How I make my t-shirt designs.
• Thick and thin lines in Photoshop

These are good methods to start creating clean looking, professional desings and don't forget that these methods can apply to any kind of digital artwork created via Adobe Photoshop, not just t-shirt designs.

Beethoven

I always wanted to make a portrait of Beethoven using just notes to describe the dark and light areas of his face. I tried to see if there was any way that Photoshop could do this automatically, without me having to place each note by hand. I could not find anything that could work this way. I end up using After Effects to achieve what I wanted. After Effects is a compositing program but it has a set of nifty effects , like the Photoshop filters, and one of them, particle playground, was what I needed for my design. I first created nine notes and other musical symbols. Then I created a layer that is a set of many particles, each particle will be a note or musical symbol. In order to arrange the notes and musical symbols in the likeness of Beethoven I used a grayscale public domain picture of Beethoven as a guidance. The filter reads the grayscale values of the image and it randomly places one of the nine notes or symbols in every particle position adjusting the size of the note or symbol according to the grayscale value. White pixels create small notes and black pixels create large notes, with gray values creating the in-between sizes. The image on left is the grayscale image of Beethoven and the image on the right is the output of the effect: If you click on the image it will take you to the various products.

New Japanese Style Design

Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai was distinguished for the variety of his styles, his extraordinary technical excellence, and his observant delineation of contemporary life. His landscapes reveal a startling imagination and a dramatic sense of composition. One of his most famous pieces of his woodcut work is the "Behind the Great Wave at Kanagawa". You can see the original piece at this image:

Since Hokusai’s work dates to the 19th century his images don’t carry a copyright. Hokusai’s work has inspired many artist in many styles including animation. It is said that the waves in Disney’s Pinocchio’s wale sequence have been inspired from this same piece or artwork! In this case I have used his basic layout and replaced the foam with little skulls. I created 3 different skull brushes in photoshop and I used them in a scattering mode. I used the original piece as an under layer to follow as close as possible the foam formations. I also tried to keep close to the original colors and tones but I also added a grain to make the image look old. The skulls as well as the pirate ship in the back were an inspiration from the 2007 summer movie “Pirates of the Caribbean-At word’s end”. When I exit the theater I felt the two pieces could work well together.

Click on the picture to see the design in various products.

A Big Thumbs Up to Katrina!

The Teeteaser team is very proud to announce that its main blog writer and big supporter of Teeteaser's work, Katrina, is being honored today by the Blogger Team. Her personal t-shirt blog "T-shirts Around the Internet" just became the "Blog of Note" at the Blogger! This is huge Katrina! Congrats! We are proud and lucky to have you in our team... Love, The Teeteaser Team
www.teeteaser.com