This tutorial, will show you how to create a vintage style zombie T-shirt. I will also give you a few hints on how to start your online T-shirt business and create a profitable source of passive income. This should be really useful for every freelance designer out there! So, let’s start!

Introduction

Most people make their T-shirt designs in applications like Adobe Illustrator, by using templates and creating paths. However, if you want to do something more complicated, especially a design including human figure, it’s easier to start with Photoshop. Of course you can make a very complicated design using paths, but it’s just much easier and less time-consuming to do it in Photoshop. I’m going to show you here how do I usually do it and then share some of my thoughts about T-shirt business and passive income which should bring you some decent money! Here’s what we are going to create:

 
Document settings

Create a CMYK document – I won’t be printing it myself so it’s just CMYK, 300 dpi, no special settings. Before you create anything, think twice where you’re going to post it or how you’re going to print it, imagine how it’s going to look on an actual T-shirt (or G-strings, Dog T-shirt, Hamster T-shirt) or whatever product you choose. Mine is going to be posted on Spreadshirt so let’s use 2200×3000 pixels for your document.

Sketching

It’s good to start with a very rough sketch of what you want to actually draw, without creating any details yet, just an overall vision of your design. It’s useful especially with drawing humans (or zombies, vampires or…any humanoid creatures ) when you need to pay attention to anatomy. I’m using here graphic tablet but this can be also done with standard mouse. If you start with a neat, bold line at the beginning, at some point it may turn out that you need to erase it, because, for instance, the whole composition looks bad, which may cause frustration and you may end up breaking up random objects in your workplace… Of course, we don’t want that. You don’t have to be obsessive about the anatomy, most people who buy your art don’t even notice when there’s something wrong. Just make sure the character doesn’t look crippled. I didn’t even use any reference images here (like photos, anatomy books), I just made that pose in front of my mirror and drew myself.

So, now once you have your sketch, double-click on the layer and lower its opacity. Then, create a new layer on top of it and start drawing for real. I draw with hard round brush, with only size jitter on. Opacity jitter is turned off – most printers don’t like any opacity jitter, gradients etc. Besides, a detailed realistic illustration doesn’t really look good when you wear it, it’s tacky and you don’t want to look stupid. I wear my own T-shirts, so… I’ll just go for a simple, vintage look.

Adding clipart

It’s better to put each element of your design on a separate layer, of course you don’t always have to do this, but it’s much easier when you want to change something (move, erase or most importantly – change colors). There’s the moon and banners, time for the bats. You don’t have to draw everything yourself, especially when it doesn’t involve any creativity. It just takes a lot of your time and effort. So, I sugest to just paste a free clipart bat here (the bat should be on a transparent background), place it wherever you want to, hold Alt/Option key + Click on it with ‘Move Tool (V)’ selected and drag it. It’s the easiest way to duplicate things. Keep duplicating and modifying bats just by using the ‘Move Tool (V)’ and transform controls. All clipart and resources can be found using Google Graphics, it’s the easiest way. Make sure they’re all free to use (for commercial purposes, too)! I also used some free clipart and some elements of my previous designs for the background, by pasting and modifying them just the same way I did with the bats. It’ easy so I don’t think you’ll have any problems with it.

Finally, you can paste some irregular halftone pattern and place it around the shadows, for more ‘oldschool’ feeling. It’s best to use ‘Clone Stamp Tool (S)’ for that.

Coloring

The image is supposed to be visible on a dark background, so duplicate each layer (hold alt/option key + drag your layer down in the ‘layers’ palette) and fill it with white (using ‘Paint Bucket Tool (G)’). I’m not ready to commit coloristically yet. For the ornaments, bats and banners in the background I’ve added ‘Outer Glow’. Go to layer styles (double-click on a layer) and use the following settings:

Do it just once, then right-click on a layer to copy and paste layer style.
Now for the coloring part – I chose highly saturated colors (they won’t look so bright when printed!) and not many of them. In my case it’s just the matter of taste, but if you decide to print something on your own, remember that adding more colors = higher costs. Now if you don’t want the lightest colour to be white, Instead of colouring everything just create new adjustment layer ‘curves’ on top of it( don’t use layer fills!), double click on the ‘light’ sampler, choose the color you like and click with the sampler on the brightest place in the picture. Voila.

Now create a new layer on top of all layers (except the ‘curves’ layer), set it to ‘Multiply’ and paint all objects that are supposed to be red. Green is a complementary color for red and also the skin color of zombies, so paint your zombie with green (use the same brush settings as for the sketch). For the banners and the background motif, just click on their white fill layer, press Ctrl/CMD+Alt/Option+U and add colours using the ‘Colorize’ option.

Adding text

Now we’re going to add the text. The easiest way to make the text fit my banners is to type it on a path. To do this, make a new layer, choose pen tool and create a path (click where you want the path to start, then click where you want it to end – keep holding the mouse button (or tablet pen) and move it so that you can shape the path) then choose type tool and click on the path (once ‘T’ symbol appear) and you can type. Once you’ve typed anything interesting you can add some effects to the text, like outer glow (the way it’s described above). I added some black outer glow.

Final touch-ups

Create another layer just above the background layer and add some spatters with a custom brush. If you don’t have a spatter brush, create one yourself or google some – make sure they’re free to use for commercial purposes. Just save a brush on your computer and load it inside of Photoshop:

Then again make another layer on the very top and ‘damage’ the image a little bit with your custom grunge brush.

Final T-Shirt Design

Here’s my final T-shirt design:


You can also find it on my Spreadshirt page where I’m selling my designs. I’m really dissatisfied with Spreadshirt though. Their previews are always blurred, you can’t get better view on the design you want to buy and the shop layout is far from being user-friendly. I’m rather thinking of moving to Zazzle or RedBubble (they are both markets where you can sell your works). So, before you open your online T-shirt business, think about the things I listed above. They’re importaint from the buyer’s point of view. Selling T-shirts online will increase your passive income considerably and is basically easy. Actually, after a few this could bring you quite a lot money!
I hope this was helpful!