May might seem like a long ways off right now, but I'm gearing up for Crypticon! Odd Mon will have an exhibitor's booth this year, and I'm hoping the foot traffic is much improved from their artist alley. Although I love Crypticon as an attendee, the year OM sold in their artist alley was pretty slow for overall sales. The room location was tucked away down towards the end of a hallway, and it needed more signage - I feel like people would have gone if they just knew it was there!
Crypticon's merch is going to be a small capsule collection inspired by some of my favorite Jfashion brands and horror movies. The piece I'm currently working on is inspired by the film "Ringu" (Or The Ring - which one do you prefer?)
Gathering Reference & Inspiration
First I always start with pulling a BUNCH (this isn't even all of it) of reference images from the internet.
And if you can't find it on the internet or in a book - take your own reference photos! I had trouble finding a stock photo of the exact hand position I wanted, so I snapped several pictures on my phone. (You can see parts of my office and Wacom in the background. Plus Frankenhooker!)
Thumbnails
Super messy thumbnails to get the basic parts of the composition out of my head and onto paper:
Initial Sketch
Since I know the piece will be centered around a gnarly looking hand, that's the part I started drawing first. Plus, hands (and feet) are the hardest for me so I felt like this was the biggest hurdle to get over in making the drawing "work." (Turns out I was wrong, and you'll see down the line it was the text layout)
Linework
After scanning my hand sketch into the computer, I placed the drawing into Illustrator to do the linework.
I started with the lines on the left, decided I didn't like the rounded style of them and scrapped it. The one on the right is getting closer to how it was in my head.
Colors
At this point I'll pick colors that are in the ballpark of what I want it to be on the final piece, but the point of this step is really just to get the fills and shadows blocked in. 
These look too muted for my taste...let's get a little color inspiration from the Fresh Prince...
Type & Layout
Typography is something I really struggle with, you can see just a few of the various iterations I went through with the text. Still not completely happy with any of these layouts, but I think we're starting to get somewhere with #1 or #4.
Nope, not there yet...still more typographical layouts...
Final Layout
If you made it this far, thank you for reading! This is the final layout I landed on after multiple text tweaks and revisions. Next up is the physical printing of the design onto a shirt or bag! Check back soon for that post to get a peek at what the final product will look like for Crypticon.