Hawaiian Shirt Project—Introduction to Digital Media
INTRODUCTION
The purpose of this project is to illustrate a themed pattern (of our creation) and to apply it to a Hawaiian shirt. To give the product a more realistic feel, we added buttons and a tag stitched to the collar.
Final product. If you want to see how this was done, keep reading!
MATERIALS
To create this project I used Adobe Illustrator.
CREATIVE PROCESS
For the pattern I was inspired by the under the sea cartoon theme in SpongeBob SquarePants. I wanted to keep with a summery tropical feel so I used a bright coral blue as the background, and went with a warm and sunny yellow and orange for the pattern. I slightly offset the outline of the flowers from the background swatches to create some visual interest.
WORKFLOW
I started off by placing this Hawaiian shirt into Adobe Illustrator and using the trace tool to render and outline that I could work off of to create my own.
I then traced the individual sections of the shirt, first with a see through layer as you see on the lower collar, and then followed it up by making the layers opaque, as you see on the upper collar, shoulder, and sleeve.
I applied the pattern using the appearance panel, making sure I had multiple iterations of the same pattern slights shifted, so that the pattern would shift along the edges of where the shirt would have been stitched or folded over.
I then added dimension by adding in shadow, as you can see on the right side of the shirt. I made a copy of the shapes on the collar, shifted it slightly to the right and down (for the outer collar cast shadow) and then reducing the opacity and adding a "Gaussian Blur" to achieve a diffused effect. I made sure the layer was situated below that of the actual collar but above the breast of the shirt.
I added a layer to the back of the shirt and used the appearance panel to make it a screen and drop the opacity to 60%.
I also created a fill and added Opacity: 50% Multiply to the collar to deepen the shadow.
A vital part of this project was organizing the layers. as you can see here each individual piece is layered in the way to should appear stacked in the final product.
I drew the pattern with the paint brush tool with the stroke and fill the same colour, and drew over it slightly askew with a deeper orang stroke and no fill, to get this organic floral shape. I then drew a dot in the middle.
I ended up going with a 3x3 and Hex by Column, and that created my pattern.
Final pattern
For the button i used the ellipse tool and filled it with a radial gradient, and used the same method i did for the collar to add a shadow to make it three dimensional, however i did not use Gaussian Blend. To create the holes I used the shape builder tool as to remove the space in between as opposed to just creating another white circle, and of course added shadow. For the thread i drew multiple lines and reduced them in size each time, and then layered them, making sure the lightest colour was on top in order to create depth. I then copied the thread to create a bunch of them for a sown in button look.
Final button
Tag background. I tried to bevel the sides to make it look more organic with the curvature tool.
I really wanted the type to look beachy and have a surfer vibe, and went with yellow to tie in with the flowers, and red to complement the blue in the shirt.
To create the thread I used a dashed stroke , and gave it a darker outline and a lighter fill for dimension, and added shadow with a high level of Gaussian Blend.
Final tag
Once I had the tag, button, and pattern, I proceeded to add them to the shirt.
FINAL WORK
Conclusion
I learnt a lot throughout this project. I learnt how to make a pattern, give dimension to two dimensional objects, create realistic stitching, and create layers and shadow. For future this project has taught me the importance of keeping track of your layers, and how important pre planning your process is. If I were to do it again I would add some small fish to the floral coral pattern to give the shirt some more excitement. Ultimately I think I've come up with a very on trend shirt that would sell out in a minute.
