Help me with a design here...

[Brinbro]

Here's a design I'm working on and I'd like some input as to where to go with it or what to do with it. Some things I think I need to work on are probably the body at the bottom left (some people have a hard time telling if it's even a person crouched down) and also the bolts. Any input is nice though; I would like for it to be as far from a Threadless design as possible so whatever you guys think would help with that go ahead and post.

Edit: Oh I guess I should explain it; the bolts represent a struggle with religion while the swords are meant as a physical and mental struggle and pain.

[ten100switch]

the lightening would become obvious if you showed the tip of the lightening bolt i think, and yeah make the person under the swords look like a person

also no one will ever "get" your meaning without some relevent imagery and icons (religion, and physical/mental struggle/pain)

[mr fluffernutter]

Main things I noticed were:

- Person doesn't look like a person

- Swords are copy & pasted

- Lightning bolt looks extremely cartoony

I think it's just a bad mixture of styles, with the sketchy mass filled with blocky swords being zapped by cartoon lightning. I think if you work on the idea, and lower the amount of 'styles' in it, then I think it could be a decent shirt design.

[Mbrand]

Main things I noticed were:

- Person doesn't look like a person

- Swords are copy & pasted

- Lightning bolt looks extremely cartoony

I think it's just a bad mixture of styles, with the sketchy mass filled with blocky swords being zapped by cartoon lightning. I think if you work on the idea, and lower the amount of 'styles' in it, then I think it could be a decent shirt design.

agreed. I think You should do something more balanced.

And yeah at first glance I thought it was a spider or some bug or smthng, not a person. With a little more work you should be able to make it working.

[Brinbro]

I understand completely what you guys are saying. I would like to clarify that this is actually a design for a tattoo I'm probably going to ink on my torso and not a tee shirt design (I'd do it completely differently if I were designing it for a tee, which I will be some time in the future). I have a bunch of different poses I've been working on with the body but I really like the repetition of the swords (the copy and paste is intentional of course).

I'm really not sure about the lightning, the only thing that could probably balance it out would be doing the lightning in the style of the body.

Edit: I think it's easy for me to tell it's a body since I drew it so I have a hard time wondering how anyone else could see it as something besides that. I have to get past that somehow but at the same time realize that this is a design for myself so it isn't weighted the same as something I'd be marketing.

[ten100switch]

if it's a tattoo fuck it, are you happy with it? if so that's enough

[cultpop 0217]

i agree with the others about the figure (maybe something a bit more in the style of the lightning/swords) but i disagree with tenswitch. i think the message of struggle is fairly obvious (at least to anyone beyond their first year in art class) without being blatant. any kind of overt religeous iconography would be too telling, especially for a tattoo.

[ten100switch]

<------- No Art Classes Ever

[cultpop 0217]

<------- No Art Classes Ever

heh heh.

no diss man.

you're money baby.

[cheapmuthafukr]

no art classes here, but i think if you make the peoson look more like a person, and change the lightning bolt, it would definatly work.

good luck and keep us posted.

[lagoni]

i like it .. definantly something i would wear

[keska]

you could make the person red so it stands out.

[theswarm]

take it to your tattooist and fine tune it with his help because he knows how ink goes into skin and what sort of effects time, sun damage etc will have on it,also depends where on your body,how big etc

[englandmj7]

I think for a t-shirt the design would work great, but it depends how big you want it on your body. With the lightning bolt being that large in proportion the the rest of the picture I think it would look a little daft if it was any smaller than 16", which is absurdly huge for a tattoo of that nature (then again, I am a preppy fuck ).....my advice would be to shrink the lightning bolt. Hell, I think the swords and the dude would look best on their own anyway, but If you want to convey something then I guess you can't really take the lightning bolt out anyways.

[Brinbro]

i did some redesigning if you want to compare it to the original picture. I also designed two more poses that are a possibility although #1 is too much like Spider-Man.

I think the lightning works much better now and helps balance out the design and brings it all together.

[cmykhustla]

check out derekhess.com, if you haven't heard of him

[Brinbro]

Holy crap does he have a style similar to mine. Even when it comes to the coloring (which I haven't shown you guys). Interesting - thanks for the link.

[werdtoyourmoms]

looks like derek hess hasn't switched up his style since 1993?