You know the drill: click the respective links to read Parts One, Two, Three, and Four of this hard-hitting investigatory serial.
By this point, the Bonanziers had their line art. The next step? Infuse that bad boy with some colors, of course! Preferably less than five — you gotta keep those production costs in check.
Had we designed Octopus Tree a year ago, we most certainly would have stuck with a single color design since, at that time, we printed all FanBon designs ourselves. With the newfangled advent of “outsourcing,” though, we were able to expand our chromatic palette by a considerable degree and let someone else worry about the grunt work. The only thing standing between us and a fantastic shirt design was the fact that we never really had to worry about color theory before.
As I recall, we decided upon the scheme for Octopus Tree within a single afternoon after fiddling around in Photoshop and Inkscape on a trial and error basis for a while — the three of us hunched in front of our laptops, occasionally glancing at another’s “progress” (usually to say, “No, that’s not it”). Some of the earlier drafts had less chromatic variety than others:
I like to think that Picasso would have approved of the one on the left — even though my only reason for thinking this is that it is blue. Click for bigger pic.
We decided that this was probably not the best route to take. Soon after, we decided to proceed more naturalistically, producing a few images with lots of green and brown:
These didn’t seem quite right, either. I forget who tried it originally, but at one point, we ended up with an octopus tree colored yellow. For whatever reason, it clicked, and we were one step closer to our final destination, though we didn’t know it:
At some point — I don’t remember precisely when — someone must have mentioned Dr. Seuss’s truffula trees. It either informed our final decision or explained why it seemed so appropriate in retrospect:
BEHOLD. KEEP BEHOLDING. FOREVER.
There’s a certain logic to it, really. With a concept as fantastical as an entity that is both octopus and tree, why not use some outlandish hues? Why not, indeed.
That’s the end of today’s installment! Stay tuned for the next one: Let’s All Go To The Printer’s!
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