Bad Luck Kitty

Another teeshirt design, this concept came about after I was thinking about the Chinese good luck cats, and how it would be funny for a passive aggressive version of these that rather than waving in good luck was instead waving a middle finger. The plaque that the cat is holding usually has positive/good luck charm in Chinese characters, and thanks to the wonder of Google Translate I was able to get the Chinese characters for "whatever" which I then put in place of the usual good luck characters. To tie in with the passive aggressive nature of the cat I also made the tag on its collar a dead fish and changed the expression from its usual gentle smile to a nonchalant frown.   

I'm particularly proud of this design as I limited my colour palette to just four colours, this way making it more appropriate for screen printing - a technique which gives more vibrant colours and saturation of inks as opposed to DTG or "Direct To Garment" printing. Using a black background layer (representing the teeshirt material) I first created block colours and shapes for the constituent parts of the image. Then, using various degrees of opacity on the eraser I started to shade each layer, giving certain areas shadows in the negative space which helped to make it appear 3D. Subsequently, by picking out the raised areas and using varying opacity whites on the brush tool I was not only able to create highlights, but it also added the effect of a lustre which then enhanced the look of the cat to give the iconic bright gold colour.