Now that all my projects are done, I have some time to share insight into my process for each of them. I’ll start with the skate deck, since that was probably the simplest of our projects. Here are some sketches developing initial ideas for the skateboard.
Since a custom skate deck’s primary function would be to express one’s individuality and interests, I started with some capoeira-related imagery: crossed berimbaus and au um mao. I spent a fair amount of time searching through Google Image Search and Flickr for photos of great capoeira scenes that would draw a connection between the dramatic acrobatics of capoeira and skateboarding tricks, but unfortunately most of the most dramatic capoeira movements seem to be associated with a high degree of motion blur.
A few examples of capoeira images I was considering using: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.
Next I had the idea to disrupt a common contemporary design theme: patterns. Pull apart some plaid, have it decay from a rigid grid to organic, messy, intertwined threads. I also toyed with the idea of having artwork that interacted with its environment in a place where it might commonly be found – at its owner’s side, for instance.
Finally, I played with the idea of a fractal skateboard-within-a-skateboard. Aesthetically, this didn’t do a whole lot for me.
After playing with various crops of capoeira photos and not finding anything particularly pleasing, I decided to explore the plaid option. In Illustrator, I first built a single unit of plaid to use as a pattern:
Using Illustrator’s built-in pattern feature left some unsightly gaps when trying to fill a shape. So I heaved a sigh, grabbed a cup of tea, and started to build it out and make friends with Pathfinder and Direct Selection.
Good times, right? Then I realize that for maximum flexibility, each of those coloured areas should not actually be a shape, but a line. That’s how I’d get the nice curls and such that would work with the design I’m striving for. OOPS. All wasn’t lost – I did finagle ways to quickly change all of those shapes to lines with varying stroke.
Next step was to separate each major crossing into a separate layer, so I could work my way down layer by layer, fine tuning each set of lines as I moved down through the design. Before trying to play with different curls, I tried a few ways of disrupting the plaid using simple scaling, applying varying levels of vertical scaling to each set of lines. On the first try, I managed to make the lines descend into a kind of ordered chaos – subsequent attempts that I attempted merely left the plaid with a disproportionate stretch.
I liked the first attempt so much I went with it. Et voila, the output.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a picture of the final board with the sticker applied. In retrospect, I’m not sure that having the artwork printed onto a thick sticker was the best option, as the thickness of the sticker backing didn’t smoothly adhere to the contours of the skateboard. It would have been interesting to print something onto thinner paper, and then use some kind of wheatpaste-type treatment to get it to adhere smoothly. But I guess at that size of output, you’re pretty married to inkjet or other water-smearable types of transfer, which poses its own issues. Colour laser plotters, anyone?
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