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My First AI-Assisted T-Shirt Design

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I’m sure there are bloggers out there who will tell you that AI art for designing t-shirts is a churn and burn operation that can net you big profits. I’m here to tell you that if you care at all about the quality of your shirt designs, the process is anything but hands-off. I’m still getting the hang of it, but this one design was pretty time consuming to produce. It’s fun as heck though, so I thought I’d write up how I did it.

The goal I set was simply to create a cool beer shirt, possibly using a quote or a witty slogan.

The Prompts in Midjourney

“logo for a beer, slogan text, stout glass, simple, black and white, vector emblem”
“eye logo, arcs of light, simple, black and white, vector emblem, mysterious, cryptic”
“logo for a beer, stout glass, simple, black and white, vector emblem”

Process

Obviously, the design itself is unusable as-is. I like the layout and the balance of the elements. It took about a dozen prompts and re-prompts to land on something I liked. I fell in love with the image of the glass and the 7-8 variants Midjourney generated. The fluffy foam came in all sorts of interesting shapes. I chose this one because of how nicely it flowed into the edge of the glass.

I ended up choosing a quote to use based on the real estate available and I think it would be tough to try to generate a design to fit the number of words you need to make fit. Luckily, I have 185 to choose from. In this case, I chose a quote from Paracelsus, “A little bit of beer is divine medicine.”

I have a template set up in Corel Vector for standard Amazon Merch shirt dimensions, so it was just a matter of opening that and dropping the layout into the template to start building up the elements.

I used Convertio Image Converter to convert the upconverted beer glass PNG I downloaded from Midjourney to SVG. Not sure how that site is free, but it’s REALLY good.

Once I laid out the text and chose the fonts (mostly freebies from Creative Market) I was happy with, I started to search Deposit Photos for beer ingredient imagery that felt had the same level of detail and black/white balance as the layout. I settled on this vector graphic of barley, hops, and hop leaves.

I followed the layout of the lines very closely to what Midjourney generated, but ultimately I know they wouldn’t have the character and quality I wanted from them without A LOT of work tweaking the paths. I grouped them in Corel Vector and switched the group off to see it without and I was MUCH happier with the balance of the design. No lines.

After that, it was all path tweaking, nudging, and duplicating the little effects. The stars are Corel polygons (a neat tool). All told, it was probably 10 hours of work.

You can buy this shirt (and my others) from Thirsty Bastards, Amazon, or Etsy.

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Inktober Day 1

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No prompt save for the Spirit of October.

My sketch probably captured the soul of this better, but that’s how it goes!

Jake Parker – Minimum Viable Story

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I’m putting this here so I don’t lose it, but also because Google Keep doesn’t let me embed a video.

This is an approach I’d already come to myself, but Jake makes some amazing points. I’ve been baby-stepping my way up the complexity ladder and getting my “sea legs” under me for a while. I also think that this can be achieved with a longer story if it is broken up into scenes.

Notes

Idea Capture – Spark of an idea. First impressions of what this could be.
Validation – Something presentable: character designs, concept art, something that captures the essence of the idea. Plus brief synopsis.
Development – Start plotting. Nail down conflict and resolution. Story beats. Character arcs. World-building purely based on the needs of the story. Write your story. Some concept art. Designs.
Creation – Start knocking out finished pages. Save some world-building for this step so it remains fresh. Finished story by end of this stage.
Shipping – Get your finished story out there.
Post Mortem – Evaluate how things went. How will you improve for the next one?

Rinse and repeat for bigger, more involved stories.

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The Art Monster

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I Finished the Art Table!

I’m calling her Rolling Art Monster and she is a thing of beauty! I can’t even begin to guess what she weighs, but she’s a very functional beast. She’s so heavy, the black caster wheels leave a mark on the floor whenever I move it.

After a year, the home office is finally complete: standing desk, Art Monster, all the books, all the supplies which have laid dormant and unused, even the art I’ve bought that hasn’t seen light in years – all in my tiny little office.

Frequently Asked Questions About The Rolling Art Monster

Why is she so big?
I wanted to be able to use these old wood flat files I inherited from my father. I think I remember that he saved them from being discarded from a building downtown many decades ago. Each drawer is one unit and they interlock with each other. All the weight of the stack is supported in each frame and I continued that in stacking it all up. But yeah, she takes up some serious square footage.

Are you going to stain her? Why is she so many shades of wood?
No. I like her the way she is. I did varnish the work surfaces and shelves with several coats of satin polyurethane to make them usable and avoid splinters.

The drawing surface is something I found on Amazon. The angle of the board is adjustable and I worked the base of it into the top so it sits flush with the other surfaces when it is laying flat.

Are you going to put cabinet doors on her?
No, I don’t have the space in my office for them to swing open.

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Inktober FAIL (but not really)

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Did I FAIL to create 31 drawings in October? Yes.

Am I beating myself up about it? I’m not.

  • Day 1 – RING
  • Day 2 – MINDLESS
  • Day 3 – BAIT (and switch)
  • Day 4 – FREEZE
  • Drawlloween Day 6 – BLACK DOG
  • Day 18 – MISFIT
  • Day 28 – RIDE
  • Elithien’s Mystical Inktober Day 14 – NECROMANCER
  • Day 15 – No prompt
  • Day 12 – DRAGON
  • Elithien’s Mystical Inktober Day 28 – WITCH’S HAT

It’s tough to draw every day and my hat is off to everyone who pulled it off. I learned a lot about just letting go and doing something in my sketchbook for the sake of doing it and had a lot of fun. I definitely got out of my comfort zone, which is what I really wanted to get out of it.

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Two Remastered Episodes of Minute Man on HCK

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I have posted two colored and remastered pages from my 1999 superhero spoof Minute Man on the Hard Cheap Knock website. You can see them both here.

Episode 2, intended for Issue 7, is being seen for the very first time.

All colors were done on a Samsung Android tablet using the S Pen and Autodesk Sketchbook Pro. I learned a lot about working this way – mostly that I still need Photoshop.