Some of you may have clicked my sig and already seen what this is about. I made a tee (in a very, very short time period) for a minecraft design contest on Threadless, mainly to subsidize making short films. I'm pretty happy with it, but I doubt it's going to win. If it doesn't win, or get accepted for print, I'm going to retool it and submit it elsewhere. Here's the design. My questions are: 1. Should it be more detailed or more simplistic? 2. If it needs to be more detailed, how? I had a few more questions in mind but I've completely forgotten them. I was thinking of adding vines and trees, adding more nuanced colors for potential gradients, maybe even detailing the inside of the cave. But the argument could be made that it only looks interesting because of its simplicity (hence me even submitting it), which is what I've gotten so. Anyway, I'll take any suggestions you're willing to give, and certainly any upvotes you're willing to go out of your way for. Thanks.
It's minecraft, the point is simplicity. I would go for a slight decrease in the number of blocks. Once it ends up on a shirt which isn't going to be completely flat I think reducing the block count by a few would make it look much more minecrafty.
Yeah I hear ya. Do you mean less blocks overall, as in scale it down, or as in remove the whole 1-block border + line extension effect?
Remove the green blocks and everything, I say just a creeper face, and maybe a shade of green that you could use to color the sides of the blocks (Darker) to give the feel that its going inside. Remove the lines and use shades for the stairs. Also, remove the lines from the sword.
It doesn't have a classic creeper face... as the stairs block the view, which to me makes the mouth look like an O face. And the outside lines seem a bit distracting. Othewrise, I like the simple shading, the simple torch effect, and that model... is so sexy.
Background looks good to me. The guy in the foreground brings in too much complexity. I suggest removing the black squares from the sword and just keeping it pixelated (unless you tried that and it looked weird) The light is the only thing that's not square... is it possible to "pixelate" the torchlight like you have done with the sword? That is all. Loves you. And now I will be gone, like a whisper in the wind
This is quite polarizing like my other design, which doesn't help me any since there isn't a clear route to go with it in that case (which left the other one dead in the water lol). In any case, thanks for the input, and here's my response lol. I really like the sword, but that was the point of contention between the two looks. Some people I showed the design to, who said "make it simpler" said the sword was far too detailed for the rest of the tee, and those who wanted more detail, cited the sword as being as detailed as they would've liked it. Specifically, I went for what vanilla MC is like, except for the pixellation of Steve, but I could either add more detail or not. That's where my main issue lies, which direction. As for making it just a simple creeper face, the issue I had with that was it became a simple rehash of an already famous shirt with me just adding Steve on it. Though with the stairs still in, even in edited form, it might work. I do particularly like the line effect on the outline of the creeper though, so I don't know if I'll end up going this way. As said above, the creeper face has been done before. The stairs were meant to finish off the look of the creeper face while differentiating it from the normal, simple tees that have done his face to death before. It literally makes the creeper face, but if you apply logic to it, which you shouldn't since it's meant to be an implied design, he is making an ":O" face. I will say that I thought the EXACT same thing when I was making it, but then I realized nobody (I guess apart from you and me at that moment) thinks that way. I can understand the outside lines causing too much noise, even if I love them lol (they're probably my favorite part of the entire thing) but if I end up going the simpler route I may have to redo them or remove them as you and Cheeze say. Chuck actually suggested/made the circular torch effect, which I like, but it does clash with the blocky nature of the rest. I like it, but it may have to go too. I could manage to make a pixelated effect somehow I think, especially if I get to use more colors. As for the sword itself, yeah I can remove the black lines. It was the first model I vectored, so I kept the lines in, in case I wanted to go in a more detailed direction, but at this point I keep seeing that it contrasts quite a bit with the rest of the piece, just like the torch does. Could you expand on the complexity of the character please? Was that just referring to the sword or his model overall, because I'm not sure how I can simplify it without just making him 2D, unless that's what you meant.
i was referring to the sword and thats it, just the black lines are what i would remove. otherwise awesome
Okay cool thanks. Any thoughts on the colors for it? I originally had it black and white before I changed it to the gray/white it currently is.
remove the lines on the white part of the sword, just like the 'L' shape on the top of it. Also, hard to tell that there is green blocks behind the stairs, maybe add a little green around it?
I thought you could just increase the size of the blocks but I don't think there's any way to do that without it looking worse. You had it right from the start.