Hawaiian Shirt - Intro to Digital Media
Introduction
The four main components of this project was the outline of the shirt, the pattern, the button and the Aloha style label. The goal of this project was to create a Hawaiian shirt demonstrating our skills using the pen tool and width tool, creating a variety of strokes and patterns, layering objects, using various opacities and blend modes, creating clipping masks, using gradients and using text. All together this would demonstrate understanding of creating 3D hilite and shadows as well as texture. The final layout is the Hawaiian shirt with the pattern, button and label samples below along with the name of the shirt and the creator.
Materials
Adobe Illustrator 2021
Creative Process
When I thought about the typical Hawaiian shirt and the hibiscus flower that is commonly features I explored ideas of what other organic plant could replace this. Eventually I thought to the strawberry flower and decided on doing a strawberry shape. Instead of just doing a strawberry, I decided to make it more dynamic by also including one sliced in half. After looking at how I could design that and realizing a heart-shape makes for a great inner-strawberry look, I also added little hearts around the design to make my pattern more detailed. I wanted to make the shirt stick to the colour palette of the strawberry so I used shades of pink and decided to make the buttons yellow in order for them to stand out.
Longitudal section through a strawberry beside a whole strawberry.. [Photography]. Retrieved from Encyclopædia Britannica ImageQuest.
https://quest-eb-com.gbcprx01.georgebrown.ca/search/118_837104/1/118_837104/cite
https://quest-eb-com.gbcprx01.georgebrown.ca/search/118_837104/1/118_837104/cite
Strawberry plant with fruit and flowers. [Photograph]. Retrieved from Encyclopædia Britannica ImageQuest.
https://quest-eb-com.gbcprx01.georgebrown.ca/search/132_1333836/1/132_1333836/cite
https://quest-eb-com.gbcprx01.georgebrown.ca/search/132_1333836/1/132_1333836/cite
Production Methods/Workflow & Tools
The first step was use this shirt as a template to trace out every piece or component that makes up the shirt--the sleeves, the colour, the shirt body panels, etc. Using general shapes of the shirt I ensured that the edges matched and that the lines were met where necessary and adjusted accordingly. Once this process was complete, I could hide the template layer so I could only work on my tracing.
Here is the Layers panel to give an idea of the various pieces/components of the shirt I had to make.
I then worked on my pattern. I first came up with a simple outline for what I wanted my design to be.
Once I had my outline finalized and made sure the line work was clean, I coloured the strawberry using gradients where necessary to add more detail and dynamic to the design. Using the pattern tool I then made this design into a pattern.
Before adding the pattern to the shirt, I chose a base colour. I applied the pattern to each piece/component of the shirt and then by rotating the pattern in specific areas like the sleeves, I made it look more realistic to an actual shirt so that the pattern did not match up exactly.
I then added shadow by drawing in black and then using the appearance panel to create a shadow-like affect. Here you can see the highlighted areas where I added shadow to my shirt to enhance the 3D aspect and to show the depth between what fabric is on top.
Next I created a button that I then duplicated and arranged for the shirt. I first drew a circle and included a gradient to give the 3D button appearance. I drew four more circles within and then subtracted them using the shape builder to convey the holes of a button. Final details were adding thread by drawing lines and duplicating the circle of the button to create shadows adding to its 3D appearance.
After drawing a rectangle for the label, my first step was coming up with the design I wanted to feature on it. To stay within the Aloha label theme, I wanted to use the hibiscus flower as well as an illustration of a bomb that coincides with the label name--Strawbaby Blast. I did this by first creating an outline and then filling it in with colour making sure to keep the design simple.
I then added text and thread to the label by using the text tool and the pen tool. For the design and the text, I used the appearance panel to create transparency so that the texture on the label could be seen. The texture was created by adding grain to the rectangle backdrop of the label.
This is the label with all parts put together: the text, design, stitching and texture of the label.
In the end, this is the layers panel with each component of the Hawaiian shirt making process.
Final Work
Conclusion
This project seemed a bit daunting at first but once I got into it, I was able to enjoy the process more. The initial outline of the shirt using the pen tool was challenging mainly because it was time consuming as I had to make sure all corners were closed so that when I inserted colour or the pattern, it would interact correctly with each part of the shirt. Another challenge was thinking about how I would make the design of the pattern dynamic. At first I thought of just have one whole strawberry but to challenge myself, I decided to include a strawberry cut in half as well. If I were to redo this assignment, I would incorporate the strawberry flower and perhaps even stems of the plant to further add complexity. I also think that by adding that strawberry flower, it would nicely connect back to original Hawaiian shirts and the hibiscus flower they usually feature.
