Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. A discipline unlike any other. It takes grit, heart and hard work to be worthy of calling yourself a BJJ practitioner. This ancient martial art is known for its submission grappling, locks and holds. To gain the upper hand on opponents, practitioners have to be agile, nimble and swift.
When practicing Jiu-Jitsu, skin protection is strongly encouraged. Submission grappling eventually ends up on the ground. So, to protect their skin from rubbing on the mats (and themselves), many BJJ practitioners use a traditional kimono garb known as a “Gi.”
As the sport evolved, a new form of Jiu-Jitsu emerged known as “No Gi BJJ.” This new way of grappling encouraged practitioners to grapple without the use of a Gi, and instead go in bare bones. This sounds great and all, but I personally don’t like holding onto another sweaty human being for a long duration of time.
And thus the Rash Guard was born…
Death before dishonor rashguard
Planning
Combat sports and martial arts are a huge hobby of mine. I myself am a Muay Thai practitioner and I immensely enjoy the structure it brings to my life. This discipline has taught me to be patient, reserved, composed and structured. Being consistent is key to success in this type of sport and thus, it is important to take care of the one tool you need the most. Your body.
Muay Thai has short shorts and mongkols. BJJ has Rash Guards and Gis. No questions asked on why I wanted to pursue in making this mock rash guard. I just simply love MMA.
A lot of the rash guards you see today have a lot of lavish patterns, huge prints, or have graphics in just about every spot on the shirt. With this in mind, I wanted to make a huge design that covers both the front torso and back.
Composition
I decided to go with an octopus because quite frankly, they are bad ass. They are also extremely flexible creatures and so I thought it would go great with the Jiu-Jitsu theme. To achieve this, I went with Photoshop as my primary tool of creation.
To start, I downloaded a few stock images of an octopus and some tentacles. Once I was content with the placement, I applied a black and white filter followed by a gradient map.
I then added a half tone filter. This helped tie it all in, as I wanted to go with a gritty looking design. After messing with a few parameters, I was able to achieve the look I wanted.
Finally, I duplicated the octopus with a dark gray one, and placed it on top. This helped keep the contrast with the gray sleeves.
Final Rendition
To make this rash guard stand out further, I decided to add the same colorways to the cuffs, shoulders and neckline. This kept it looking uniform, consistent and easy on the eye. The use of neutral dark colors for the background really helped bring it all out.
Although it looked great with just the octopus, I wanted to add something to the chest area to really give it that rash guard look. Death before dishonor was the perfect motto for this in mind. After simple text modifications in illustrator, I placed it all in to bring it home.
Now if I can find someone to actually make these…