Light and Ryuk in Ukiyo-e style

So the shirt wil be on http://theyetee.com on July 15th. Super psyched! It will be available as a poster on TeeFury sometime soon, but I haven't gotten a date yet. Thanks for checking it out everyone!

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I'm pleased to announce that this design got picked up by one of the shirt-a-day sites. It will be for sale for 24 hours sometime this (or next) month! Thanks for this class, Yuko. I had this idea in my head, but didn't quite have the skill to pull it of. This class gave me just the confidence I needed.

Here's what it will look like on a t-shirt.

And on a poster.

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I'm a t-shirt designer for the pop culture shirt-a-day sites. I had an idea to do the characters from Death Note in ukiyo-e style, inspired by Jed Henry's Ukiyo-e Heroes project. I've done some pen inking and brush work in the past, but this class looked like a great opportunity to go further.

Here's my sketch so far. I tried a preliminary attempt at inking, but it didn't come out so great. I need to watch all the videos first, I think.

I tried a few more attempts at inking, and wasn't happy with the results, but I started to get more comfortable with the brush. I was tracing my sketch pretty tight throughout, and I finally heeded Yuko's advice and loosened it up, letting my brush make the decisions. I also broke out the fancy paper for my latest pass. I'm much happier with the results.

I did most of it with a sumi brush, and detailed areas like faces and hands with a smal watercolor brush. I touched up some areas at the end with a brush pen, just because it's more predictable. I think i've got six textures in there: Light's hair, Ryuk's hair, Ryuk's feathers, Ryuk's clothes/skin, Light's kimono, and the apple tree. I might redo Light's hair and touch up a few things in PS, but overall, I'm pretty hapy with it.

I also practiced my calligraphy. I'm not very good yet, but luckily, katakana is simple. The name of the show is Desu Nōto, an approximation of Death Note. I will add the characters to my drawing in PS.

Here's the final version, all colored and ready for screen printing. Can't wait to do more of these!