# How to print amazing colorful cartoon illustrations like this?



## yodaBaggins (Mar 18, 2017)

Hello great people! Iam a designer, who's new to tshirt printing. Please help me out.

Currently for my client, I draw in Illustrator an image (for a t-shirt) like this:
https://www.flylanddesigns.com/wp-content/uploads/Merton-Boat-T-Shirt-Back-mockup.jpg
or
https://www.flylanddesigns.com/wp-content/uploads/Tequila-Kiss-mockup.jpg
, but I dont know how to finish it, to make sure all is printable.
The author of the links above the designer (Brian Allen) uses manga studio, which is not even vector.

*0|*Can I just export as a big-big full colour tiff, and is there a way of printing on t-shirts that prints raster images? How images like above are printed?

*1|* Can I use in my illustration any cmyk colors, gradients etc? Is there a way of printing that allows you to print any complex images?

*2|* Or Should I use only pantone solid spot colors? I yes how should I pick them? Just to replace each f my color to the alike one? After it there will be 18-30 colours. Is that normal?

*3|* Should I separete colours if I go with 1st option(regular cmyk colours)? 

*4|* If I will use 20-30 pantone colors,when I separatie do I need to have 20-30 output files or how its usually done?

*5|* about gradients. for 4 cmyk I just need to use halftone, but for pantone? Is there a way to print without halftones?

The t-shirt is for the present, not for a mass production and probably the client wont need to save cents.

Please share you knowledges, I'll be very gratefull!

THANK YOU SO MUCH for you time!


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## tazman19 (May 14, 2009)

can you post your actual design


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## Reymond (Oct 26, 2016)




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## voodoostitchcraf (Mar 13, 2017)

I would suggest not screen printing that if it's not for a quantity production. A DTG (Direct to Garment) printer could probably do that for you.


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## tazman19 (May 14, 2009)

Reymond said:


>


if you contact the artist he will sell you a licensing agreement with the files you need to print his art.


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## Reymond (Oct 26, 2016)

Hello great people! Iam a designer, who's new to tshirt printing. Please help me out.


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## seacookie (Apr 29, 2015)

what is happening here? -.-


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## pmzirkle (Oct 5, 2014)

Sublimate the design on a white performance tee


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## yodaBaggins (Mar 18, 2017)

MY QUESTION IN A NUTSHELL:
What's the method of color choosing in illustrator I should chose if I use more than 4 colours?
Can I chose any pantone solid I like, so in separete mode there wiill be 20-30 colours? Or I should chose 4 pantone colourss and then mix them with each other, like cmyk mixing???


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## kimura-mma (Jul 26, 2008)

It really depends on the print process.

If you are only doing a few shirts, look into Direct to Garment. The DTG process can print raster art in CMYK. There will be no color separation needed.

If you are printing on white polyester shirts, look into Sublimation. Similar to DTG, there will be no color separation needed.

If you absolutely need to screen print, then you need to color separate.

Some screen print shops can screen print 4 color process. With this process, you can keep your art as CMYK and the printer will output film and burn 4 screens using cyan, magenta, yellow and black.

Other screen print shops use a simulated process. This uses spot colors and halftones to create as many colors as you need. But the amount of screens is limited to the number of stations the print press has. Most big shops will have a 10 or 12 station press; so let's assume you need to keep your art to 10 colors or less. So when color separating, you need to assign no more than 10 spot colors; but you can use halftones and color mixing to achieve additional colors and shades.

My advice would to find a print shop first and show them the art you are looking to print. Then get their advice and spec sheet on how to set up the art file to achieve the result you want.


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## yodaBaggins (Mar 18, 2017)

*KIMURA-MMA!!!
You are golden man! God bless you! *I was looking info about this for a while, its hard to google, when you dont know what to look.
Now I understand alot! Thank you so much! I wish you had emotions like me right now! And even better!!! Thaaaaaaaaaank you again!!!!!)


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## yodaBaggins (Mar 18, 2017)

wow! how happy am I


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