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Creating T-Shirt Designs for Threadless Using Aviary

By Meowza Katz on November 03, 2009 | 3 comments

Have you ever had the perfect idea for a t-shirt and wanted to see it in print? Do you ever find yourself perusing the t-shirt designs at your local clothing establishment thinking to yourself, "People get paid to design these???" Or are you just plain sick of being naked?

Whatever the case, you can satisfy any one of these problems by creating your own t-shirt designs and submitting them to threadless.com, where you can win up to $2500+ in cash and prizes, not to mention seeing your very own t-shirt design in print!

First, launch Raven, Aviary's Vector Editor, to draw your t-shirt design.

Then, it's all a matter of creating your brilliant idea using Raven's powerful vector drawing tools.


New to Raven? Here's a tutorial on the basic functions of Raven to help you get started creating vector art.

Here's the super hilarious design I drew for my shirt.

(Click to view layered file)

In the event your image is chosen for print on threadless, you'll need to provide them with your vector file. So, you'll want to export your design to .eps format.
To export the vector file of your image, select File > Export to EPS from Raven and click Save to generate an .eps for your design.
Once complete, simply press the Download button, name your file (remember to save the file with the .eps extension!), and save it to your computer!

Now that you have your design all created and ready to go, you'll need to prepare the submission files for threadless.
You will need to prepare two presentation images for submission; one low resolution preview of your design, and a 100px x 70px thumbnail.

Creating your submission files in Aviary is simple!
First, open the Threadless tee template in Raven, the Vector Editor.
Then, select which color t-shirt you want your design to appear on from the Layers Panel by enabling the "eye" icon next to the t-shirt color of your choice.


Next, you'll need to import your design into the template.
Select File > Import file, and select Aviary Library. From here, you can select your t-shirt design and import it directly into the template.


Then, you'll want to export a bitmap version of this image which you can upload to threadless.
Select, File > Export Bitmap and press "generate image" to save the bitmap image to your computer.


Finally, you'll need to generate a thumbnail of your image as well. You can do this by opening your t-shirt design file in Phoenix, and using the Image > Resize Image function to fit the 100px x 70px size specifics.

Then, it's all a matter of uploading your design to threadless using their handy submission form.
Then sit back, wait for the money to roll in, and do it all over again!

Go on and create some t-shirt designs yourself!
Fame and fortune await you!

Be sure to read through all the documentation provided on threadless.com prior to submitting your designs.

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raven

Convert Bitmaps to Vectors with Raven

By Michael Galpert on August 17, 2009 | 4 comments

Aviary's Vector Editor, Raven, now includes the awesome feature of bitmap tracing. Allowing you to quickly convert bitmap pictures into vectors!

Simply import an image then choose the Object dropdown menu and select Trace Bitmap



Select what type of vector layers you would like:


Bam!


What are you waiting for, go convert your pics into vector art!

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raven

Aviary releases Raven: First online vector editor

By Michael Galpert on February 09, 2009 | 32 comments

We are excited to announce that we have released Raven, the very first web-based vector editor, into the wild. Raven, Aviary's online vector editor, is the first and only tool of its kind to be available online.

Here's an example of the complex vector art capable of being created in it:

Octo Tea created by Mpeutz

It's not just limited to complex vector art though: It enables anyone to create the following right in their favorite browser for free.

* Logos
* Clip Art
* Complex vector art
* T-shirt & clothing design
* Large print-ready graphics

Here's a video of Raven in action as recorded by Mpeutz:


Aviary vector icons from mpeutz on Vimeo.

You can even view the layered file for Mpeutz's icon creation with out having to be signed into Aviary.

Here are some examples of raven files created by the community:

Logo Example

Aviary Logo created by MPeutz
view layered file

Simple Clip Art Example:

Snow Tree created by MPeutz
view layered file

A complete list of features included in this release of Raven here, along with the upcoming feature set.

If you are keeping score at home, Aviary's public beta family now includes 4 web applications that enable creativity directly from your browser.

* Phoenix, Aviary's online image editor
* Peacock, Aviary's online visual laboratory
* Toucan, Aviary's online color swatch application
* Raven, Aviary's online vector editor

============================================================== Aviary is a suite of powerful creative applications that you can use right in your web browser. Its easy to start creating, sharing, and collaborating with our community of artists. Sign up now for free!

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Video of Raven in action

By Mike Peutz on December 07, 2008 | 7 comments

Here's a video demonstration of Aviary icons being made in Raven, Aviary's vector editor, currently in alpha release to Aviary Pro members.

<a href='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RJktlKv0HI' class='author' target='_blank' rel='nofollow'><b>flash video</b></a>



End result:

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raven

Vector editing in your browser - video sneak peek

By Avi Muchnick on February 27, 2008 | 63 comments

After lots of hard work, we're finally getting ready to release another one of our Flash-based applications, our vector editor Raven. The obvious analogy would be to desktop software like Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw or Inkscape.


From a commercial standpoint, we're really excited to release Raven into the wild because vectors are infinitely scalable and are used in everything from logo design to t-shirts to clip art. In other words, whereas Phoenix is not ideal for native high resolution design, Raven is very well suited for it.

Many of you have asked about how vectors will integrate with other tools: so we'll confirm here that the code base will be ported to all tools in the suite that can make use of it.

- Phoenix: We'll add a Pen-tool for use in the creation of reusable vector paths for making editable shapes and selections.
- Horus and Owl, our font and desktop layout editors, will also make use of this engine to edit vectors directly.

Raven will be a phenomenal way of driving graphic design services through Aviary's market place. Can you imagine a website where an artist can be hired to design a logo, chat with the client, share revisions (and even edit live in front of the client), manage their work flow and finally provide the final source files right to the client who doesn't need any special software to open it, all from within a single interface?

Another situation where the technology would be useful is for online clothing design communities whose members will no longer need to purchase and/or troubleshoot install expensive desktop software in order to jump in and design clothing!

To be one of the first to get access to Raven, sign up at http://a.viary.com/ for an invitation. If you are already in the system, no need to resign up. Just drop us a note in the forums and we'll add it to your account as soon as we release it.

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Get Bezier!

By Avi Muchnick on October 22, 2007 | 21 comments



I wanted to showcase some of our talented Artist in Residence's work for our upcoming marketing campaign. This is the artwork and some rough text layout for the part of the campaign for Raven, our vector editor.

This particular ad is inspired by and parodies Marcos Chin's stunning work for Lava Life.

Our artist is Brent Koby, otherwise known affectionately to Worth1000 users as Meowza.

We are creating an ad for almost every tool on our list.

All Brent's artwork created for the campaign will be purchasable on mounted posters through our market once we launch (with or without ad text). We created everything to be stand-alone beautiful on their own.

Another example of an ad was already displayed on our blog (the artwork will also be used in our upcoming book).



PS. I've been told by some people they want this blog to focus on the tool development alone, but I have to disagree. Our marketing is just as important as the tools they help promote. It doesn't matter how great our tools work - without an attractive message drawing people in, nobody will ever want to try them in the first place. If you agree and would like to see more artwork for our upcoming campaigns, let me know in the comments below.

Update! Even our error messages were done by Brent. For instance, here is a nice easter egg for those of you who encounter any errors on our site.

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