January 2008
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Derby 27's theme was
dreams. And the "no text" rule is back. I'm glad to see people used the broad theme to experiment with different themes and styles. Here's a few that I liked. Click on the entry to see the full-size shirt and comments on Shirt.Woot.
The "Yo Mamma" Award
KLSWoot has a beautiful portrait of Freud with her entry "According to Freud". Tiny little Freudian themes make up his face. Great composition and colors.
The "End of the World as We Know It" Award
Newcomer YodaTheFrog has a smorgasborg entry reminiscent of FableFire's
"Creative Thought Process" called "Rapid Eye Movement". Lots of great little illustrations hidden in there. Love the subdued colors.
The "I thought my dreams were weird" Award
There were plenty of surreal entries this time. LanPartyZ's touching "Togetherness" and a first entry from Sleemo called "Variations on a Dream". Beautiful and unique pieces. Wonderful work.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
- Welcome SoothedByRainfall to the new buy now gallery!
- Each week's derby gallery now links to the original derby on Shirt.Woot so you can see which shirts you liked, ranking, and comments. The sorting for older derbies doesn't seem to work right all the time. Maybe that's why Woot doesn't really publicize the access to these old derbies.
- "Best of" Derby winners can now be sold. If you signed the extra 30-day contract with Woot, that is now expired and you can sell your shirts again.
Sunday, January 27, 2008Check out our new
buy now gallery to see the shirts that are available for sale right now!
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Failoan has been quietly plugging along since derby 18 and hasn't gotten much notice until now. Just goes to show that if you keep at it, somebody will notice eventually. Here's a few more things about him.
Shirt.Woot Stats? (first derby / shirts bought / shirts printed)
#18 (patterns) / 3 / 1. My first derby was the pattern one, so I've been participating for a few good weeks. Never really got a lot of votes though. Before my win, I've only bought three shirts. All random shirts -- I'm cheap! This is my one and only shirt printed -- the lovely little turtle that could.
What are you tools of choice?
I use
Illustrator and
Photoshop. Now that I bought a
tablet, I will try to use
Open Canvas too. I haven't use the tablet for any designs yet, so everything was done by my poor mouse.
What is your typical process for going about a design?
Read the topic and then walk around mindlessly till I find an idea. I usually end up daydreaming everywhere. After that I try to find pictures of the items I want in my design. Then comes the drawing, coloring, etc.
What design or art experience do you have outside the derby?
Hmm, I haven't really drawn anything since high school. Art class kind of forced it on me. That was about 3 years back.
Would you like to do art/design full-time? If so, what is your dream job?
I would love to draw full time. After trying out these competitions, I find drawing very enjoyable. My dream job is to eventually own a company, I guess? I haven't really thought about it.
Any plans to sell your designs outside woot?
If there's a good means and my designs are popular, definitely.
What advice do you have for new derby artists?
Try to submit early. Gathering those precious early votes is important. If you get into the new hotness or better yet the top 7, you get more exposure. Which in turn will lead to more votes. Other then that, the magical elf under my bed helps a lot, but I have to be sure to feed him candy canes, or else...
Friday, January 25, 2008This is a follow-up to the post from a couple days ago about
Zazzle buying GoodStorm. I've heard back from GoodStorm and they will be sending out checks for the full amount of whatever you have made so far in commissions without subtracting a $5 charge. You will still need to recreate your store on Zazzle if you want to work with them. I would recommend
SpreadShirt instead for both
quality and
price advantages.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Derby 26's theme was
graffiti. A pretty wide open topic with no text restrictions. Usually something this wide open leads to a large quantity of thrown together entries but I was pleasantly surprised to see a lot of interesting shirts. Here's a few of my favorites. Click on the entry to see the full-size shirt and comments on Shirt.Woot.
The "Saturday Evening Tag" Award
GarGrazz has a beautifully hand-drawn picture of a tagger self-portrait styled after the famous Norman Rockwell painting and named appropriately, "R0CKW311 08".
Beautiful colors, great use of halftone dots, and of course a great idea. Would make an excellent poster.
The "Unbreak my shirt" Award
Prolific newcomer Andy47240 hits the right combo of style and subtlety with his last-minute entry, "Broken". I love the monochromatic look. I think this shirt would have had a great chance at the fog had it been entered earlier. Keep up the good work Andy.
The "PalmPilot" Award
Love the inside joke on "Graffiti pad redux" by Artulo. Nice icon work and great idea. I'm sure most people didn't get it (or have never even seen a Palm that didn't have a keyboard) otherwise he'd probably have a few more votes.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008The troubled direct-to-garment t-shirt company,
GoodStorm has been acquired by
Zazzle. Good news for GoodStorm employees and investors but not so good for the rest of us. Zazzle's fixed commission will be doubled for non-profits (one of GoodStorm's target audiences) but otherwise none of the low prices or profit sharing that made GoodStorm a unique company. If you have a shop with GoodStorm it will
not automatically be transferred to a Zazzle shop. It will be decommissioned on February 15th.
The question I have is what happens to unpaid commissions to shop owners that have sold shirts? Since you are being forced to create a brand new account with Zazzle, I'm assuming your commissions need to be cashed out. The partner agreement says you get your commissions minus $5 if you close your shop before you hit $100. Considering how little many of us made with GoodStorm's lousy order processing turnaround, that seems like adding insult to injury.
Here is a copy of
GoodStorm's announcement email.
Monday, January 21, 2008
Tgentry gets his first #1 win after several dailies and -- one of my all time favorites -- "Eating Healthy" printed in the best-of derby.
Shirt.Woot Stats? (first derby / shirts bought / shirts printed)
#1 (one) / 6 / 5. Sadly enough my first derby was the very first derby. I did a really terrible entry in Photoshop. Hopefully no one digs back that far to find it. I've bought 5 or 6, not including my own. My favorite is "If You Want to Destroy My Chainmail". I really wish I had designed that one. I don't think any of the shirts I've purchased were sellouts. I tend to gravitate to those for some reason. Technically I've had 5 shirts printed. I can be credited (or blamed) for: American Samurai (under a pseudonym), Lady of Spain, Dragontines Day (very sorry for how that one ended up), Eating Healthy, and now Watch it Grow.
What are your tools of choice?
Illustrator or
Photoshop using a
tablet. Sometimes I'll sketch out something quickly in pencil then scan it in. Pen and ink isn't a bad idea though, maybe I'll try that.
What is your typical process for going about a design?
First I scan the net and find a great idea to copy. Then I go
Threadless to ape a slick color palette. Then it's off to Google Images to find a lot of pictures to trace... and...wait. Did I type that out loud?
What design or art experience do you have outside the derby?
I'm the lead character designer and 3D modeler at a game company in the Seattle area. It's a very rewarding job and occasionally I get to dip into characters to put into shirt designs, although I'd like to do it a lot more.
Would you like to do art/design full-time? If so, what is your dream job?
I'm very fortunate to be working at my dream job. I wish I could spend more time on shirt designs for the derby, but I can usually only give it 2-3 hours a week what with work and family to attend to.
Any plans to sell your designs outside woot?
Not really. I don't have the time to set anything like that up and follow through with it.
What advice do you have for new derby artists?
I'd have to say my hardest lesson learned was that the things I'd really want to wear are not what most people would vote for. My favorite designs of mine usually didn't pass 50-100 votes. I think if you want to win in the derby, you have to create designs that will hit multiple demographics at once. You can't just do a shirt that only horse-loving soda drinkers would want, no matter how good it looks.
Also voters seem to gravitate away from shirts targeted towards a female audience. If I can use this as a soap box for a second, I'd like to say that it's really a shame that shirts aimed at women never seem to stand a chance in the derby or sell out in the weekday designs. I mean, we all have women in our lives that we could buy a shirt for. Vote for a 'girly' shirt once in a while.
That all said, I'm no expert in the field of winning derbies. Like most people I lose a heck of a lot more than I win. But it's always fun.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Derby 25's theme was
citizenship. Woot was looking for shirts about civic duty and community involvement but staying away from any immigration topics. Also, no text in this derby again. Here's the ones that caught my eye. Click on the entry to see the full-size shirt and comments on Shirt.Woot.
The "the only man to ever enter Parliament with honorable intentions" Award
A vectorized clipart can be hard to make intriguing but BMcKay has done a nice job of it here. A picture of Guy Fawkes' target, the Houses of Parliament in England, is in the dark space of his picture. Great color choices.
The "Give blood or else" Award
FableFire's signature creepy/cute strikes again. Only she can create a white shirt covered in red blood along with a buried skull and still make it look adorable. All together now, "ewww...awww...".
The "Will work for t-shirts" Award
Large dark buildings on an almost-as-dark background almost overwhelm the light and hope on the bottom edge of this shirt by Patchitect. Great idea. A more effective rendering of what I was trying to accomplish with my "
home in the cold dark city" shirt, many derbies ago.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
MacMerc.com reviews the three major Direct-To-Garment shops,
CafePress,
Zazzle, and
SpreadShirt. SpreadShirt came out on top for both quality and price.
Read it or watch the video for a summary.
Thursday, January 17, 2008Last week I posted my first
printerview on SpreadShirt. Now that I'm looking to setup my own SpreadShirt store I see the costs I listed were wrong based on my misunderstanding of their FAQ. Here's the updated stats.
Printer Stats (cheapest shirt / cheapest dark shirt / shipping prices)
$8.90 (
$5.90 +
$3) / $11.90 ($5.90 + $6 for dark shirts) /
$4.99. Prices are for Direct-To-Garment printing. Plot printing starts at the $8.90 price for a single color and goes up from there.
So that means you can sell a shirt for $10 and still make a buck -- providing it's a light-colored shirt. And dark shirt costs are still more reasonable than CafePress. I'll be setting up my store in the next week or two and hopefully some of you will have some renewed hope in Direct-To-Garment printing and setup yours as well.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Derby 24's theme was
invention. Woot was looking for inventions both real and fantastic, inventors, and anything about inventing. New to this week's Loser Awards are links to the full-size Comp version of the shirt. Enjoy. Here's a few of the under-appreciated entries.
The "Klimt" Award
I haven't been such a fan of EdgarRMcHerly's earlier shirts but he is clearly improving both in themes and skill. Obviously, I'm not the only one who thinks so. With this entry, he scored well over a hundred votes and was in the fog for some time. "Would a Robot with a soul love his inventor?" has a great use of space and lots of flowery details. Amazing work.
The "MacGyver" Award
JadenKale has a nice clean simple design and great idea touting the many technical uses of the paperclip. Nice color choices.
The "Mr. Peabody" Awards
Several great monochromatic blueprint-style entries this week. Here are a couple of my favorites.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Riffmaster18 wins yet again after winning just a
few weeks ago. This is his 7th shirt printed. If not for JamesCho84's print in the Editor's Choice last week, he would have tied him for first. Keep up the competition guys -- we all win.
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
This is the first of a series of "printerviews" -- a way to get to know the ins and outs of one of the many print-to-order services first-hand from the people who have tried it out. Since a lot of us Wooters are pretty new at this, I'm starting this series with an interview with a pro -- Jeremy Kalgreen of
Amorphia-Apparel and
WearScience. You might have seen his shop as a side deal on Woot or seen some of his designs featured in many shops and blogs. Here's some questions and answers about him, his site, and
SpreadShirt.
Printer Stats (cheapest shirt / cheapest dark shirt / shipping prices)
$8.90 (
$5.90 +
$3) / $11.90 ($5.90 + $6 for dark shirts) /
$4.99. Prices are for Direct-To-Garment printing. Plot printing starts at the $8.90 price for a single color and goes up from there.
How'd you get into t-shirt designing?
Quite by accident. Once upon a time, for reasons I don’t clearly remember, I decided I didn't want to wear any clothing with any messages on it that I didn't put there myself. I’m not one of those zealous ‘Adbusters’ anti-capitalist types, it just seemed like a fun project. So for giggles I started printing single copy silk-screened shirts for my own personal use. Well, despite the fact I found it fun, I was bloody terrible at it and eventually decided to try out one of these on-line custom shirt websites I had been hearing about. Originally the plan was just to upload some images and make a single copy of each shirt for myself then forget about it, so I just took some of my existing silkscreen designs and vectorized and uploaded them.
A few days before placing my order I ended up having some car problems that left me unwilling to blow any cash splurging on custom shirts. Since I had already put the effort into uploading my designs it seemed like a shame to abandon the project altogether, so I set my shop to public. In the back of my head I figured I might sell a shirt every once in a blue moon and that would be totally flattering in itself. I couldn't imagine selling more then one or two a month, and I certainly didn't imagine it would become a real source of income. As it turns out even before I made a ‘real’ shop front there seemed to be a bit of interest in my designs, so I decided “What the hell, I might as well try and make it look like a real store” but I still didn't think I’d get more then $20-30 a month.
Well I was wrong, and now between direct sales through the website and my licensing deals, t-shirts are my primary source of income.
Have you done any t-shirt competitions?
Actually I did once, in the Spreadshirt Derby I submitted my "I Regret Nothing" design. I don't think I got the most votes, but someone at the top of the food chain liked the design enough that I got the cash and the design made it to the printers anyways. It was right when I was starting out, and it certainly felt good to get such positive feedback (and the extra cash!) early on. However in the future I'll be a lot more careful about what I'd enter into a contest like that. I'm a lot less willing to sign away any rights on my designs since there is so much potential money in licensing your stuff out to a third party. In this particular case I've had a number of offers from people wanting to license "I Regret Nothing" but have had to turn them down, since I gave exclusive rights to Spreadshirt as a part of the contest. That's not to say I'd never do another, I'd just be careful about what I'm willing to swap for some fast cash.
How long have you had your shop?
I opened
Amorphia-Apparel February 2006. And then my new baby
WearScience just went live in late October if I recall correctly.
Could you give me a ball-park number of how many shirts you sell?
I sell somewhere around 1,600 a month, but the bulk of that comes from my third party licensing. So only a fraction of those are direct sales through my websites. On the other hand I make significantly more per shirt direct, so it's still an important source of income.
How did you arrange third party licensing? Did people contact you when they saw your shirts or did you do something to shop them around?
I actually just received an e-mail out of the blue from a representative of Chaser Merchandise asking if I'd be interested in making a deal. I honestly have no idea how he happened across my website in the first place, and naturally I assumed it was just someone blowing smoke, but I after hearing that the offer was non-exclusive and allowed me to retain the rights on my work I figured I really had nothing to lose.
Is there an example of where else your shirts could be bought or seen to see what that looks like?
Well the big seller, Moon Militia, is only in the brick and mortar Urban Outfitter stores. But here an example of one they have at
Nordstrom's that is available on-line.
How long did it take for things to start to take off after you started the shop?
I'd say a good two months after I opened before I started getting picked up by various blogs and the word began to spread. It started a sort of domino effect and things just sort of played out on their own since then.
Any advice to people opening up print-to-order shops?
Well my goal was to try and make a shirt shop I felt proud of, and that I felt represented my personal tastes. So I say forget about trying to pander to your audience, trying to jump onto whatever bandwagon seems like a sure way to make a quick buck. Instead make shirts you personally would wear, and then the rest is just trying to find more people like you. So basically you don't need to reinvent the wheel, but at least develop your own style instead of looking at what other people have been successful at and trying to ape that.
Any comments on print quality?
I think in the print-on-demand world nothing matches the quality of plot printing. I have shirts I've washed over 50 times, and the design still looks as good as the day I got it in the mail. I just can't say the same about the other POD printing methods I've experimented with. Of course the trade off is that you have to design around the size and color limitations of the format, but that is a deal I'm willing to make.
Any other kudos or complaints about SpreadShirt?
I think Spreadshirt is wonderful. It was actually quite shocking to me, especially at first, to find out that there really was a company like this online that wasn't trying to screw you over. They are totally on the level, no tricks, no fine print, wonderful flexibility, great service -- the whole bag.
Friday, January 04, 2008
Vishneda wins his 2nd derby and first #1 win. Nice to see another IT (that's Information Technology, not "it") guy win. Here's more about him.
Shirt.Woot Stats? (first derby / shirts bought / shirts printed)
#4 (maps) / 9 / 2. I started in Derby #4. My first idea was a map of the United States with Texas removed. Between my wife and I we've bought nine shirts. All are derby entries except "Nobody's Perfect". The other shirt I've had printed is "Sugar BSOD".
What are your tools of choice?
I used
Inkscape to develop the "Tag" design. I built the shirt detail image using
GIMP and Jack31081's awesome
t-shirt template. In more recent derbies I have been using
Adobe Illustrator to do everything.
What is your typical process for going about a design?
I brainstorm on the train to and from work. I text ideas from my cellphone to my computer at home. Later, after the kids go to bed, I sift through the ideas and pick one or two to try. I draw (or sometimes, type) all my designs on a MacBook Pro at the kitchen table.
What design or art experience do you have outside the derby?
Absolutely zero. I'm a technical manager at an investment bank. I had no clue about vector graphics, spot colors, etc. I learned how to do this stuff for the sole purpose of participating in the derby.
Would you like to do art/design full-time? If so, what is your dream job?
It's a lot of fun for me right now doing this as a hobby. I love the opportunity to be creative and make people laugh. I think going professional would suck the life right out of it. Plus, I probably lack the artistic talent to design anything more than a corporate logo. All that said, I'd love to manage a business helping artists create and distribute their designs.
Any plans to sell your designs outside woot?
Definitely. I don't expect to make major waves, but for each design that fails there are certain people who come back to me saying "I'd love to buy that if you print it later". I've printed and sold a few designs on Goodstorm and Spreadshirt. There was a lot of demand for "Tag" after the original derby. I almost screen printed it to sell by myself, but I'm probably fortunate that I held back.
What advice do you have for new derby artists?
If you aren't having fun, you aren't doing it right. There are some phenomenal artists and designers who regularly participate in the derby. All of them lose more often than they win. They have to contend with harsh critics, poorly timed rejections, and losing out to non-artists like me. So if you aren't having fun you will burn out quickly.
Thursday, January 03, 2008Here are the Top 5 shirts of 2007 from the Big Do-Over Derby. If you didn't already read it, check out yesterday's
Top 5 Forgotten Shirts of 2007. Here they are, listed in order of obscurity (fewest votes):
Sunday Papers
Path to My Heart
Male Pattern Baldness
Future City Traffic
Eating Healthy
Wednesday, January 02, 2008Even though Woot did an excellent job of including many of my favorite shirts in the
Big Do-Over Derby, there are a few notable exceptions. After this derby closes tomorrow, I'll follow up with my Top 5 from the Do-Over instead of the regular weekly Best Loser Awards. Meanwhile, here are my favorites that got missed, listed most recent first. Click on the shirt to see the blog entry where this shirt won a Best Loser Award.
Matched Pair
Powered by Cheese
Paint Me a Night Sky
Ninja Groove
Audio Invaders
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