Today we thought we would give you a little glimpse into the process of getting from a drawing to a shirt-ready design. It’s a question we get from time to time. Since all of our designs pretty much start off as drawings/sketches, there’s a bit of work involved.

I couldn’t really explain our design process even if I tried because it’s always different for each of us. We do usually come up with a few loose ideas for themes/designs and divvy them up. As with any creative process, having some direction helps but sometimes ideas are just born spontaneously and you roll with them. Drawings are sketched out in pencil first and then inked. Solid black lines are a hell of a lot easier to work with on the computer than pencil lines, and are essential when creating an image for silkscreening. I’ll use one of our older designs, Siamese Geisha, as an example.

This is an inked drawing scanned in and ready to be digitally modified/edited. (Crywolf Tip: A cheap solution if you don’t have a scanner is to just take a photo of your drawing with a digital camera). Depending on the design, sometimes we draw them in sections and assemble them digitally. Doing so will allow you to play around with composition. In this case, I drew the geisha head fairly big and ended up having to draw the other parts on separate sheets of paper and scanning them in separately.

At this stage we do some adjustments in Photoshop and Illustrator, smoothing out the lines and maybe even erasing or adding to the drawing if something isn’t working to our liking and we end up with something that is usually pretty close to the final design. This part of the process usually takes longer than it took to do the actual drawing. We collaborate on our designs throughout different stages so what we start out with isn’t always what we end up with. That’s about it! Once a design is finalized it’s easy to play around with colour combinations and test out different options.

The above would have been a 10 colour silkscreen which we would have been insane to print, I was just playin! After colour is added, the file gets separated into layers and ready to print onto acetate. Then we coat the screen, expose the images (which is a whole other process) and then we print your favorite shirt in the world!

This morning we hit the road early (too early) for an Innovation Forum hosted by Enterprise Toronto. It was a full day of seminars based around developing innovative ideas into successful business ventures. The first speaker was W. Daniel Mothersill, President of National Angel Capital Organization and did a thorough presentation on specifics that investors/financiers want and are expecting when you pitch to them. Interesting information coming straight from the source and good to know for future ventures. It may not have been wholly relevant to our position and size in the business world or the type of financing we would be looking for but he definitely laid out some fundamentals that any structure of business can apply. The rest of the day seemed geared towards inventors and new technological developments and boring powerpoint presentations were making us restless, so we decided to split. We felt the relief that one naturally feels upon exiting a stuffy lecture hall. Junefest (whatever it was) was happening just outside but we were too early to catch it.

Us and our pals at the seminar. JK!

BTW, you should become our facebook friend!!!

Why? Because every evening for the rest of June we’ll be posting a little trivia question and the winner gets our special discount code for FREE SHIPPING for the rest of June. Yesterday’s question was to guess the creature:

Even though I insist that they are Furbies, these lil dudes are actually Honduran White Bats (Ectophylla Alba). Congrats to Shannon Stephens.

Questions will be of the same nature: fun, weird and probably useless trivia. Add us and play for your chance to W-I-N!

Have you had a chance to visit our new site? We gave it a slight makeover (from super cool to EVEN COOLER) and now there are a bunch of new features to check out:

• make a wish list
• create a customer account for return visits!
• pay direct with your credit card on our 100% secure site
• introducing paypal EXPRESS for a speedier checkout!
• a Quick Search function if you’re looking for something specific
• discount codes!

Speaking of discount codes, we are offering FREE SHIPPING for the month of June. All you have to do is join the mailing list to receive the special code. BTW – that’s what rules about being on the mailing list, you’ll get in on exclusive deals/discounts!

In the Fun Department, yesterday I decided to bike up to the Aurora Street Festival. On the way up I dropped off some custom buttons to our friend Connie. Check out her health/nutrition blog for some health tips and really amazing all-natural recipes!

I didn’t get hit by a car and the rain held off so all-in-all it was a good little trek. We’re definitely going to hire this guy for our next show:

He should really have a real monkey though! So, what did YOU get up this weekend?

A certain lil woofer (see below) had to go for a potty break and at the perfect moment because I needed a quick break from the computer too.

squinty

This is the cute hand-built, hand-painted bird house that my parents bought at the OOAK. I can see it from my window but so far, no action.

home tweet home

The size of the hole affects which type of birds can house in it. This one is for bluebirds, swallows and sparrows. I’ll try to blog about any tweeters that decide to move in!

Speaking of tweeters, our LTD edition To Kill a Rockin’ Bird tee for guys and gals is available only until the end of April. Grab yours while you still can!

In other crywolf news: our secret collaboration project is currently underway! It’s gonna be rad. It’ll be ready for the Toronto Clothing Show (May 1st, 2nd, 3rd). Check out the EVENTS section on our site for more details.

After much humming and hawing and having one hell of a time deciding, we are happy to announce the winner of our shirt-naming contest! And the winner is…………

LEOR BOSHI

with his shirt name:

To Kill a Rockin’ Bird

Contest Winner Leor Boshi

Insert applause here. Let us reiterate how tough it was to choose a winner with all y’alls creative and pretty hilarious submissions. Because we had so many favorites, we ended up choosing the winner with a raffle of both of our top fives. Honorable mention goes out to Boourns with Detroit Squawk City who took second place.

This shirt is now on sale for GUYS and GIRLS and this special design is only available for the month of April so what the birdturd are you waiting for! Get yours TODAY!

ZAT VAS FUN. Thanks for the submissions!!!!!! No doubt there will be more contests in the future. Keep on rocking (flocking?) in the free world.

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In celebration of Springtime happiness, we came up with a super Ltd Edition tee that will be available ONLY for the month of April. Even more exciting is that we’ve decided to host a contest/giveaway for it! Here’s the deal:

We want YOU to come up with a name for our design!

You’ll have from today until March 31st to submit your name idea. Winner will not be chosen at random, the best name will win! Winning doesn’t just mean that you’ve earned bragging rights for naming a Crywolf LTD Edition shirt but you’ll also get the very first print of this rad design and an honorable mention on the shirt’s description page.

Rules:

1. Leave a comment on this blog post with your name idea.

2. You can submit as many names as you want.

3. Judging will be conducted in a fair but totally subjective manner aka Rose and I will decide together which name we like best. Factors that will affect our decision may include (but not be limited to) how original/funny/witty/creative the name is. The design is based on a pretty famous tune, so the more creative you can get, the better. Winner will be contacted by e-mail on March 31st.

Let the contest begin:

name me!

mush loving on stephs socks

mush in a bag

The end.

Well it was our first time at the Artisan’s Craft Fair. Apparently it’s been on the go for 17 years. We set up our table and rack in a crammed tiny space of 8 ft.

crywolf table

Somehow we managed to make it work (as Tim Gunn would say). All of the people around us were cramped up and the front area was widely spaced. There was ambient lighting and xmas tunes playing in the background.

exquiste corpse a la crywolf

There were some moments of boredom-induced delirium. This is our rendition of the exquisite corpse.

That entertained us for about 5 minutes. It was wet outside but not fridgidly cold like yesterday.

1 thumb up

Here are some candids of us right before take down. Don’t mind our stressed out looks

That wraps up our last show of the season. For now, we will be brewing and stewing getting ready for our next line coming out. This will be virtually the last run of the Fall 2008 Shirts so get them while you can, they will become history soon!

Just a little reminder about our upcoming holiday shows!

Come out to one or both! They should be fun and why not holiday shop indie?

Our Customer Gallery should be up by the end of the day! If you have any pictures of yourself or friends wearing crywolf, send them on over and we’ll put them up. Send photos to: crywolfclothing@gmail.com

We also updated our MEDIA section with 2 new reviews! You can see them here and here.

Take advantage of our 25% off shirts sale and FREE SHIPPING for the month of December! Be sure to get your orders in by Dec 15th to ensure shipping by Christmas.

That’s all for now. We have some big plans for our Spring line which will be in production soon enough. I think I’m going to go mentally prepare for winter now.

Our button sets are finally here!They are cute and packaged and ready to go.Check them out HERE!

Seven brand spankin’ new sets to choose from!

Zombie (Blind Assortment! Collect them all!)Endangered SpeciesSushiFruity TootySweet ToothWild WestBirthday!..ONLY 5 BUX
enjoy.

?Stephanie & Rose
ps, stay tuned for our ltd edition Halloween shirt!