Guest Post- Heidi Black and WeLoveFine Marvel Villians Design Contest

Hopefully each of us has a friend that we love like a sibling.  A friend to turn to when we need a shoulder to cry on, a friend to lean on when we're weary, a friend to drive us to Norris Hall when our car breaks down right before the start of a new semester.  For me, that friend is Heidi Black (link), and when the opportunity arises, I always try to pay her back.  Right now, I have just such an opportunity.


Heidi's participating in WeLoveFine's Marvel Villains Design Contest with two breathtaking entries- Kid Loki and Mystique.  To help Heidi promote this contest, and hopefully gain some votes, I asked her to write a guest post about her process in creating one of these shirts.  If you appreciate this blog, show a Heidi a little love and help her win this competition by voting daily.  I'll be putting banners at the top of every post from here on in to nag you guys gently remind yall to vote.

When I saw that welovefine was having a t-shirt contest for marvel villains, I knew that I had to do kid Loki.  I can't claim to be a long time reader (Heidi's journey into mainstream), but when I found out about kid Loki (different link), I started reading Thor and Journey into Mystery, and I'll admit, I”m hooked.  But what to do?

I played with a few other designs, including a very tiny loki putting fingerpaint all over a shirt, but eventually sketched out this:

I decided that even though kid Loki is far less villainous than his older counterparts, I really liked this idea, especially with his very Grinch-like smile.  I made some edits in photoshop, then printed it out and inked it by hand. 

I ink much better with a brush than I do digitally, just because of the speed a brush allows me.  While I do make mistakes frequently, with a black and white image they can be fixed with white gouache or with photoshop later.  

Because this was going to be on a tshirt, with the image being as large as 13x19” at 300 dpi, I had to scan the image at a fairly high resolution, and I chose to threshold the black and white image (something I rarely do, but would be necessary for a t-shirt image).  Next came the coloring.  For the coloring, I used a set of brushes I have custom-made in Corel Painter.  I started by blocking in the colors, alternating between a green background (what I will eventually use for the shirt color) and a purple background to check for gaps in my coloring.  From the suggestions of Becca and Sarah, I also changed the text. 

I generally color with strong core shadows, as it gives greater three-dimensionality to an object.  I did wind up eventually making the gold slightly brighter.  

Again, upon Sarah's suggestion, I added an abstract shape behind Loki to pull him forward.  (villainous_06.jpg)

I then finished up by placing the design on the shirt, and it was ready to go! 

The contest has finally opened voting over at welovefine, and this entry can be found here:  https://www.welovefine.com/vote.php?id_contest=17&id_submit=5086  Another entry I did can also be found on the site, https://www.welovefine.com/vote.php?id_contest=17&id_submit=4558 .  There are an incredible amount of entries, and many are quite excellent, so be sure to check them out and rate your favorites highly!

Editor's Note:  Your favorites should always be Heidi's two designs, and those should always be rated '5'.  Just for the record.  And for those of you curious as to how Heidi goes about digitally painting, if she wins the contest, she's promised to do a tutorial for us.  SO GET TO VOTING!