For San Francisco—Design Process

*This is not an official apparel for the San Francisco Giants. It is, however, a design inspired by the SF Giants.

In 2010, Giants took it home. People (San Francisco people) went wild and the streets were covered by a sea of orange and black. I was there to witness it all. Who knew, Giants might be able to make history again this year around. To support or local MLB team, Marvin (MKP) and I teamed up to pump out these Giants inspired shirts for the occasion. Here goes the design process:

For vector based design, the setup was simple:

Characters was done in Illustrator, then layout through Photoshop.

We wanted to revolve the design around the players as a time specific approach, marking the time and players that could possibly take home another World Series. So, first step was to pick out the major-est of the major players. With limited spacing for printing, I could only fit so many.

A list of 14 players were chosen as the inspiration of this shirt. They’re listed as follow: Madison Bumgarner, Matt Cain, Tim Lincecum, Sergio Romo, Bary Zito, Buster Posey, Bradon Belt, Brandon Crawford, Pablo Sandoval, Marco Scutaro, Gregor Blanco, Angel Pagan, and Hunter Pence.

Then, to distinguish each player, I pin pointed and emphasized the facial features:
I split each person’s face into 7 general parts for variation—eyebrows, nose, mouth, ears, facial hair, hair, and shape of the face.

Matt Cain’s a bit chubby and triangular nose, while Madison Bumgarner has frown-y brows.

Tim Lincecum has longer face and hair.

Another key thing to list out was lefty vs righty. Adding accessories such as bats, gloves, and hats would make the design more detailed and complex, but it’d backfire if we got the lefty/righty wrong.

Next, we chose the uniform. Home, of course.

A generic character, Zeeb character I call it, was made ready to adopt the various alterations. Color palette was set in place. And gadgets made for the detail touch.

BAM: By the time I finished, my canvas was covered by reference photos, failure attempts of weird looking zeebs, and just random shapes and forms that was never used.

For a closer look, here are a few of my favorite Zeeb characters inspired by the actual players of the SF Giants:

You see what I was talking about the frown-y brows?!

Players with distinctive facial hair are much easier to develop and have it resemble the actual person. Thank you, Sergio.

I don’t usually do, but I tweaked the nostril for Ryan. You’re welcome, Ryan.

Facial hair was difficult to design, especially one as wild as Zito’s.

My favorite Zeeb character: Brandon Crawford.

Posey just look like a very nice guy. But hey, he’s the only one with the catcher suit. Chyeah!

Long hair, long face, narrow mouth. check.

Matt Cain’s just a bit chubbier, just the way we like it.

Last, but certainly not least, Pablo Sandoval, the Panda, with three bats inspired by the 3 homeruns he did during the first game. Slaughtered the Tigers. Sorry, Tigers.