"Heat" T-Shirt Design for Sulphur Youth SoccerTeam

The idea for this comes straight out of the joy I found in the "MADBALLS." When I was asked to design the print for my son's soccer team, I knew I'd be doing a typical mean face on a ball with flames. I mean, come on! Their name is "Sulphur Heat" for cryin' out loud. I sat down and sketched out a few faces, but this one was the most child-friendly.

Once I got the sketch down, I did another drawing on bristol in blue-line pencil (which is why you don't see it right here). I popped out a new brush tipped graphic pen that I'd been experimenting with and fire off some quick inks. I hit it with a 30-50% Prisma art marker for depth. Normally I'd rebuild my graphics in vector, just to get a really clean look, but for this I decided to go with a simple live trace in illustrator.

Once I got it in Illustrator I added some quick typographical elements for the team name. I used the nifty vector eraser tool to knock out the areas where I wanted the garment color to show through. All-in-all it was a really simple and fun project. It's nice to work on things like this from time-to-time. I think the kids are gonna love it...make 'em feel tough.