Skate Deck FINAL

Here is the final design of my skate deck:


I've decided to cancel my initial smoky T-Rex skeleton design and instead I did a sabertooth tiger skull and claw with fiery effect. The texture is sand and the shape you can see is the negative silhouette of a sabertooth jaw.

The style I used was inspired by graffiti and tattoos, highly stylized with curvy lines and contrasting colours as demonstrated by the cool colours of the sabertooth skull+claw and the warm colours of the fire effect.

PROGRESS

Reference pics for sabertooth tiger skull:



Texture is sand:



In Adobe Illustrator I made the outline of the skate deck. Next I took the fourth reference pic, traced the skull and modified/stylized it. Afterward, I added the claws and flame/fire effect. I decided beforehand that since I am using a flame effect, the colours would be warm thus I should contrast it and utilize cool colours for the skull and claw hence the blue. The flame effect surrounding the sabertooth skull as you can see is designed to look like the silhouette of the sabertooth tiger head, with the ears and the furs on the sides. I am pretty much done with Illustrator so I imported my design into Photoshop to add colour effects and textures. Estimated time using Illustrator about 2 hours.


In Adobe Photoshop, I enhanced the colours with dodge/burn tools, filters, blur, etc. As mentioned before, I wanted the style to be similar to tattoos and graffiti so using a good contrast of colours help my design pop and gave it a good sense of energy and movement, very suitable for a skate deck which is an object used for a high level of movement. Next I added the sand texture as a negative silhouette of a sabertooth jaw. I placed one jaw each at the top and bottom to help balance my composition. I gave the jaw black "scratch" marks as to give it a sense that it was carved into the deck rather than pasted on. Afterward, I added my initials DSN using the Stamp Act font at size of 112 pts regular. Estimated time using Photoshop about 3 hours.

Total cost:

Skate Deck: Walmart $19.99 + tax
Print cost: $30.00