Sunday, January 10, 2010

Destroyer Hockey

Just got a sample hocket t-shirt mailed to me from a company called Destroyer Promotions. They had hired me over the past couple of years to do some custom artwork featuring a couple of hockey stars for the Stockton Thunder that they were looking to print in house. Last years assignment depicted Mike Lalonde, a scoring machine for the California based team. After an introductory email from the client and a follow up phone call, I got the puck sliding with that project by submitting 3 rough sketches as follows...

They client approved the first sketch. Next, I did a quick color rough and placement of final font selection, etc. for approval. That process went smoothly- so final art with separate color channels were created for the client. A month later, the client sent a sample t-shirt. Over all the quality of the print job was clean, but it was missing all of the shading that I put into the face and uniform- leaving the reproduction very flat- as seen here.


Fast forward to this year. Fortunately, the client enjoyed the finished product and their team promotion was a success resulting in another request for more art from Mudge Studios. This assignment was to feature a player nmaed Garet Hunt of the Stockton Thunder. This year the team had a couple of specific directions in which they want to take this project. A concise email described two scenarios. One with Garet in the penalty box and another with him shedding his gloves as he skates forward like a tornado. I submitted the following sketches...


The Client loved sketch #2 and I was given the green light to move forward and complete the project in a week. During that time, Destroyer had hired a new screen printing expert and better results in maintaining tonal detail were assured with a higher mesh count in the screens they were going to use this time around.  I just got a sample back...


This t-shirt popped much better than last years. The time spent on shading was well worth the time. Overall, the experience of working with Destroyer was a fine one. I've talked to a few people over there and they seem to be running a class act. Who knows, maybe next year I'll get to draw another hockey player?

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