Morcegão Rashguard

Masaru Fight Co. are a UK based fightwear company that make fightwear and leisure wear for the grappling community. They recently began a custom rashguard design service and asked if I could test it out. I drew an evil looking vampire bat and tried various Illustrator elements, eg gradients and masking, to see if the printed version would stay faithful to my digital original.

Here's how I designed the bat artwork:

Monkey Style T-shirt

I've mentioned before that I regularly contribute to a BJJ magazine called Jiu Jitsu Style. In addition to this, I have designed a rashguard for them, and a t-shirt. This new creation is based firmly on my love of the old Chinese fable Journey to the West and the character Monkey King, or Sun Wu Kong, to give him his proper name.

Read on to see how I took the core sketch and built it up over a period of many steps to create the final product...

Review: Fineliner Pens

Summary
I review a wide range of differently branded fineliner pens and examine their useability, smoothness of ink flow, nib quality, ink quality and overall handling.

Caveat: This review represents my own personal opinion. I am not sponsored by any company. The comments I make relate directly to me own personal style of inking, yours might be different so I advise purchasing a couple of brands of pens and trying them out yourself to find the best one for you.

Introduction
Fineliner pens are typically identified as tiny width, fibre-tipped, technical drawing or sketching pens. The ink is invariably pigment based, lightfast and permanent. They are best used on smooth paper with little grain. There are dozens of brands each varying considerably in price and each with their own handling quirks. I decided to buy a whole bunch of these and test them out over a number of drawing projects.

Dragon Fly

I often write and shoot photos for a UK based magazine called Jiu Jitsu Style. I was also asked by them to create art for a rashguard that will be made by Tatami Fightwear and bear the Jiu Jitsu Style branding. The result is my 'Dragon Fly' creation: half dragon, half dragonfly!

Here's how this crazy chimera came about...

Tap Cancer Out T-shirt Design

Tap Cancer Out is a charity non-profit that is run by members of the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Community. The charity raises funds through the sale of merchandise and events for various established cancer charities. I designed this t-shirt alongside fightwear brand Scramble and proceeds from the sale of this tee will go towards Tap Cancer Out.

Here's how I put it together...

Kappa v Dragon Cover Art for Fight Soap

This was a very cool project that I had a lot of fun creating. Fight Soap are a US based soap brand that markets their products to the MMA and BJJ community. They have a huge following online and are very popular with a large group of grapplers and combat sports athletes. It was a no brainer to me when they asked me to design some new cover art for them. Here's how I put it all together...

Meerkatsu interviewed by The Shirt List

Top t-shirt art website The Shirt List agreed to write up a little interview with me and showcase some of my designs. The interview gave me a chance to present my designs and also discuss Brazilian Jiu Jitsu to a whole new audience. It's a light hearted read which I hope you'll find entertaining and enjoyable. Go check it out!

http://www.theshirtlist.com/interview-with-seymour-yang-aka-meerkatsu/

My thanks to Alan for taking the time to ask some very interesting questions and delving into the world of BJJ fightwear design.


:)