T-Shirt Design Advice

[T3hPreacher]

As will soon be apparent, I have little experience creating t-shirts and having them made.

That said, I was wondering whether it was possible to transfer a design that's already on a shirt onto another shirt or group of shirts. I have set up a contest with the youth group I lead to design a t-shirt and the best one gets to be the group's logo. The plan we came up with was to get some white t-shirts, draw on them, and then pick the winner. Today I realized that there is practically no way to duplicate a design in that case. Am I correct in this, or is there a way to get a hi-res image to a print shop from a t-shirt?

Any advice would be helpful. I might have to tell them to use GIMP or something, but I'd rather not make it any more complicated o their end than it has to be.

 

[JPLC]

The resolution of printing on textile is pretty low. When you take a sharp picture of a drawing on a shirt, it wil do for reproduction.

Some sharpening and contrast could be needed before you deliver the artwork...

 

[T3hPreacher]

The resolution of printing on textile is pretty low. When you take a sharp picture of a drawing on a shirt, it wil do for reproduction.

Some sharpening and contrast could be needed before you deliver the artwork...

Cool. What megapixel res do I want? Thanks for your help!

 

[JPLC]

No problem!
The higher the better. I would say at least 10 megapixel.

My best advice for you would be: Find a company who prints on white shirts and aks them what they prefer. And beware of the quality! The cheapest mostly deliver the poorest quality.

Good luck!

 

[T3hPreacher]

Thank you so much!

 

[ktbubster]

you could also scan in the winning shirt with a scanner... most scanning beds should be big enough for the front of a shirt. This could guarantee that you get a flat image of the shirt and no angles or distortion from camera flashes or weird lighting.

also - why draw on the shirts themselves at all? Printing outside of certain confines of certain spaces that print shops have set up for basic ts tends to cost a bit more usually so you'll want to stay in the front of the shirt anyway... so why not just have the people draw on larger paper and then scan that in? Maybe get some sheets of 9 by 12 drawing paper and have them draw out their designs on that, then you can scan it in at super high resolution, and make it whatever size needed for the shirt.

Seems like a lot better - since kids will mess up probably to and then waste a whole tshirt... i guarantee that this will happen.

 

[T3hPreacher]

ktbuster--that's a great idea. I just texted the project manager to see if we can do that. I really appreciate the input of both of you.

 

[sypherod]

Making t-shirts is really easy, it's not complicated at all. I've created shirts a bunch of times and ktbubster has the right idea to not draw on the shirt if you're gonna make a lot of em. I use shirt transfer paper which is about $10 for 10 sheets.

Here's what you can do:

1 - Get the winning image onto a computer by either scanning (drawn on paper) or have it drawn on photoshop/gimp or any drawing app. (do touchups if needed)

2 - Go to any art store like Michaels or AC Moore and buy shirt transfer paper. Like this http://www.amazon.com/Printworks-T-...ATZ8/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1326601020&sr=8-2

3 - This step is important. Print the image backwards on the paper.

4 - Lastly iron the printed image on the shirt. Refer to the instructions included with the transfer paper.

And then you're done.