Flying Peacocks

When I first created my fighting flying peacocks last Christmas as a smartphone wallpaper design it received a lot of positive attention. I was originally inspired by a visit to the zoo where I saw a lone male peacock strutting around and upon further research, I learned that peacocks are pretty badass when it comes to defending their territory. So I decided to take the theme a little further and create peacock rashguard and spat designs. Here's how I put them together:-



Grappling Tights
My first task was to arrange my peacocks so that they would fit neatly down the length of each leg. With my previous Fire Rooster design, this would not have worked so well due to the leg panels being divided into several parts. I wanted my peacock design to run the entire length of the legs uninterrupted by stitching. Photo below are my very first rough notes on the design:

I wanted each leg to contain one peacock so that if the wearer was standing upright, the peacocks would look like they were facing each other and ready to fight. Once I established the basic shape and contents for each leg, I set about penciling up proper sketches then inking up in Illustrator.

It then occurred to me I should also design matching peacock rashguard top. I had already done all the hard work with the spats so it wasn't too hard to tweak the peacocks so that they could conform with the shape of the top.

In a slight departure from my usual workflow, I drew all the elements in CMYK. I felt it would give a more accurate depiction of the final colours (especially the greens) than working RGB. In the end I don't think it made any difference as most factories who print rashguards are used to working in a variety of formats.

The final products look pretty amazing I think:-

The Flying Peacocks are available from my store - www.meerkatsu.com from 16th April 2014.



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