October 2007
Wednesday, October 31, 2007Since it's Halloween, it's a great time to go through the Halloween-themed derby 13 Loser Awards. Maybe it was just because I was on vacation or because we were told about this theme so far in advance, but this derby seemed a bit of a letdown. Well, mummies and scary pumpkins are hardly chipper, are they?
The play-them-bones Award
Even though the members of this band are essentially just silhouettes, Pyrin managed to infuse them with a lot of personality. Nice primary colors and layout.
The what-duct-tape-man's-son-would- wear Award
"No costume son? Come to my shop and I'll fix you right up." Cute idea with a straightforward and clean design.
The great-pumpkin-isn't-at-all-what- you-expected-Charlie-Brown Award
Even with a scary face, pumpkins tend to look silly. BeigeSabbath with his shirt "Pumpkin bully" does a nice job of making this pumpkin ominous. Hey, if you don't have arms, how else can you pick on other pumpkins except by shooting them with your heat vision?
The two-tribes Award
This shirt is pure nostalgia for me.
Wham UK and
Frankie Goes to Hollywood made the big black text on a white shirt cool for about 5 minutes back in the early 80s. Not sure why the 240x size was white-on-black while the 600x size was reversed though. I definitely prefer the white-on-black for accuracy's sake.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007This is my final flashback Best Loser Awards since I started blogging these for derby 5. Derby 4's theme was "maps". Woot came down really hard with the rejectorator axe and threw out anything that didn't specifically have a map on it. It seems the tougher the challenge, the better the entries and this was no exception. There were some truly great shirts in derby 4. Here's a few of them.
The silicon-implant Awards
"Path to my heart" (the brown one) is one of my all time favorites. Simple and chaotic at the same time. Haven't seen Anticon86 for some time in the derbies but I hope he puts this up for sale eventually.
Goelzjs had a somewhat similar design with his "US Grid". Amazing details on this one. Goelzjs has this posted in the
gallery but still not for sale yet.
The Pan-Am Award
"Escape" has a groovy 70s
Catch me if you can feel to it. Great layering and subdued colors offset the large size.
The buy-it-now Awards
I love to be able to point out the shirts that are actually available to purchase. We have a couple great shirts to choose from for derby 4. Check 'em out.
Monday, October 29, 2007
I'll be posting the derby 4 Loser Awards soon but wanted to quickly mention that both derby 4 and derby 5 shirts are now available for sale. Derby 5 was my very first Loser Awards. You can check it out
here by scrolling to almost the very bottom. Unfortunately, even from the
shirts listed here at BestLosers, there are none yet for sale. Hopefully, this is a wakeup call.
Update: Jack31081 has posted his "Enforced by Physics" shirt and it is for sale.
Monday, October 29, 2007Threadless has $10 t-shirts now. They're sold woot-off style one after the other. One shirt in one size until it sells out and another one pops up. Forever. Pretty cool idea. Check it out
here. The sizes tend toward the extremes (XS or XXL) so the customer base might be a little limited.
Sunday, October 28, 2007I just got back from vacation so I need to update this site. Here's what you'll see coming in the next week:
- Derby 4 loser awards. This is the final "catch up" loser award I'll be doing since I started doing them for derby 5.
- Derby 13 loser awards.
- Selling shirts with Goodstorm, part 2.
- A site redesign (that might take a bit longer actually).
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Jack31081 finally gets a definite, no-controversy, number-one place win. He very likely would have won with "GI Metro" in derby 4 but for some voting shennanigans before Woot came up with their fog-of-war solution. Thankfully, he still got "GI Metro" printed by Woot soon after that and now "Close encounters of the 2-D kind" as well. Both are still for sale.
I just wanted to also take a moment to thank Jack31081 and all the previous interviewees for really putting an effort into answering questions with humor and wisdom. They're making my job fun and easy.
Woot Stats? (first derby / years on woot / # bags of crap)
#2 / 0.22177 / 1. One bag, three craps...in every sense of the word.
What are you tools of choice?
I sketch around on a
pad occasionally, but for legitimate design work, I'm still relegated entirely to the world of virtual pens and brushes. I've been using
Photoshop since version 4.0, so it's been my application of choice for a decade, although I'm finally getting the hang of
Illustrator.
What is your typical process for going about a design?
For themed designs, like the woot derbies, I'll typically jot down any words, design styles or ideas that come to mind, and then narrow the list, perhaps combining or rearranging some ideas. For instance, the design for Close Encounters wound up being a compilation of "moon silouhette", "constellation" and "space invaders". Once I have a picture in my head, I might scratch something out on paper or just dive right into Photoshop and Illustrator. I'll use the pencil tool to do a crude freehand version of each part of the overall design, and then "trace" over it using the pen tool, adjusting anchor points and curves to get the final shape I'm after. Once I've got all the "parts", I'll assemble them in various ways until I come to a final design I like.
What design or art experience do you have outside the derby?
I've no real education, art-wise, but I started in web design doing layouts while in high school, then moved on to print design, doing logos, business cards, letterheads, posters, brochures and the like. I also do the occasional t-shirt for friends, and even snagged a gig designing the official jersey for a cycling team.
Would you like to do art/design full-time? If so, what is your dream job?
Well, all my design work outside web design has been freelance, so I've never had much experience doing it full time; I'd certainly be willing to try. I've always considered myself an "idea man", so something in conceptual design would be right up my alley. Wait, what does "conceptual design" even mean?
Any plans to sell your designs outside woot?
I've got a GoodStorm shop up
here, and I'll be adding all my also-rans within a day or two of their rights being returned to me. Next on the list is "Speed Limit C", an entry that was unfortunately but justifiably rejected while in the fog.
What advice do you have for new derby artists?
Work within your limits. Not everyone is a whiz with a pad and pencil. Not everyone knows the ins and outs of Illustrator's filter set. We've seen some great shirts on woot that have been nothing more than simple shapes and text. If you can draw, don't feel the need to tweak everything in Illustrator; let your style show. If you can't draw, use Illustrator to full effect; the pen tool is basically black magic once you get the hang of it. When deciding on what to design, choose the idea you know you can execute well. It'll get you votes. And if you must remember one thing, it's that woot is designed for people on their computers at midnight. Deep down inside, there's a geek within all of us.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Derby 12's theme was "night". Lots of beautiful shirts this week -- unfortunately, lots of incredibly underrated shirts as well. I believe we're starting to hit a saturation point in terms of how many shirts you can expect a voter to go through. I think many shirts never get seen. I know I had trouble keeping up and I'm a shirt.woot groupie. According to
CWarrington's excellent stat site we had a total of 476 entries submitted. Whew! Well, here are a few of my favorites and very likely some you didn't notice.
The lamp-post-in-the-woods Award
Excellent work embedding this design into the background color. Gives me a
Narnia vibe but I assume that was unintentional.
The obvious-pun Award
Many shirts were milking the knight/night pun but this one did it without trying to be funny. Instead it imagines the knight as a protector of our dreams with beautiful results. Skillful work drawing the large white door of light without it looking jarring or out of place.
How-to-impress-your-date Award
Artist Killopo continues to amaze us with two more beautiful shirts in this derby. This one, "paint me a night sky" did make the top 10 but I can't resist thinking it was hurt by the limitations of the 240x thumbnail size.
The hurtling-through-space Award
GeekFactor12 managed to nicely execute one of the designs I gave up on -- a space scene with blueprint colors. This is exactly the iconic kind of shirt that I like to buy. Hopefully, she'll be selling this come -- say early 2008? -- when the 60 days are up.
The I-can-has-your-foot Award
Last time you couldn't get me off the cutesy shirts and this time I'm all serious. Is it me or the derbies? It's the derbies right? This takes a second to make out but it's a great idea and a familiar occurrence if you've had any insomniac kittens around your house.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
I know Pensketch is planning to start selling his "zombie day at the mall" starting Sunday. Hopefully, he won't be the only one. There are several great shirts in the
galleries already but Pensketch is the only one who has a store setup so far. So upload your shirts and setup your stores!
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Finally getting to the derby 11 Loser Awards now that nobody even remembers them. Derby 11's theme was "Cryptozoology" so we're getting dragons and ligers and bears, oh my! Ok, maybe ligers and bears are real but I remember seeing a liger entry and there is a polar bear of sorts in this week's loser awards.
The vicious-streak-a-mile-wide Award
Nice
Holy Grail reference here in Jack31081's killer rabbit shirt. Clean bold lines and colors on this brown shirt.
That other-jackalope Award
Who would've thought we'd see so many rabbit-like entries? Before Pyrin entered her winning "Dramatic Jackalope", there was Briannyc128's "Lost Lope", looking for home. Great idea nicely executed. Love the little guy's name.
The mixed-vegetables Award
Great puns and a great bubbly cute look on this shirt. Maybe the artist should have gone the "Puffaluff" route and made this into a series of mythical veggies shirts? I'd be into it...
The gotta-throw-in-a-non-cutesy-shirt Award
Awesome red dragon very nicely drawn. You can clearly see that the increased derby payout is bringing in better artists and more time spent on design. Great work here and I hope to see more from this artist.
The I-don't-get-it-but-I-like-it Award
A polor bear with wings blowing feathers and an iconic fish with a key in it's belly. What can it all mean? Is it some internet meme I missed out on? Is it the random musings of artists driven to madness by bitter forum wars on Shirt.Woot? Or just nice shirts? Whatever it is, I like 'em.
Monday, October 15, 2007
I've seen a lot of great uploads this past week but only one from derby 3. Which is too bad since derby 3 had some really great shirts I'd love to buy. Hopefully, some of these artists will get these up soon.
Keep those uploads coming! Derby 3's theme was "heroes" and here are a few of my favorites.
The where-on-Craigslist-do-I-post-this Award
I'm not one for all text shirts usually but this really is clever and will get people walking up to you and pausing just to read your shirt. If you read the text carefully it almost feels like the next shirt here is an illustration for this ad...
The maybe-I-should-have-read-the- label Award
"Aquatic Repellent" shows us that a superhero's cool gadgets might take some time to perfect. Nice drawing skills here and subtle pastel colors. I like the
Shazam costume scheme on the superhero too.
Being-impervious-to-electric-shock- is-not-one-of-my-powers Award
Great iconic shirt that takes a second to figure out what it's all about. Ouch.
The couple-that-are-actually-for-sale Award
Imcompa and I have a couple from derby 3 that are actually available for sale. Imcompa is even selling his with zero profit so the shirt starts at only 5.95!
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Or however puffaluffs make it big. Puffaluff creator DiscoDancing has put together a blog about/by the puffaluffs. Check it out at
Puffaluffs.com.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Pyrin is relatively new here. Her first shirt, "Pope on a Pirate Ship" made a splash (sorry!) in derby 8. She also did well in the last derby with "Urban Canopy" and now wins it big with "Dramatic Jackalope". Here's some more about her.
Woot Stats? (first derby / years on woot / # bags of crap)
#8 / n00b / 0. I've only been on Woot a month. I don't think there's even been a bag o' crap sale in the past month, has there?
What are you tools of choice?
Whatever I think will give me the desired effect easiest. I do use a
tablet, usually with
Flash and
Illustrator, sometimes
Photoshop. I'm doing pen and ink for the next one, I think. You name it, basically, hah.
What is your typical process for going about a design?
I usually go with the first thing that pops into my head (which is what they always tell you never to do in art school, probably for good reason). Again, what I use depends on what look I'm going for, but for the most part I do a pencil sketch, scan it in, scribble over it in Flash, then port it over to Illustrator to adjust the colors.
What design or art experience do you have outside the derby?
I have a degree in Illustration and Graphic Design, and took an elective screenprinting course once upon a time.
Would you like to do art/design full-time? If so, what is your dream job?
Yeah, actually, anybody want to hire me? I've been looking for a grunt design job or something for the past few months, but no such luck yet. Anybody? ...Bueller? Ideally I would love to do character design for video games or movies, though.
Any plans to sell your designs outside woot?
Maybe. I've been looking into my options. I'm a big fan of the screenprinting technique, though, so I'm on the fence about Goodstorm and the like.
What advice do you have for new derby artists?
Draw something you would wear. It's pretty much impossible to gauge how the votes will swing -- so don't try to buy them. Do something you like, and are satisfied with, and if you're lucky other people will like it, too. If not, then at least you have a piece of art that you're proud of.
Thursday, October 11, 2007First, what is
GoodStorm? GoodStorm is a print-to-order t-shirt shop. That means you can upload your designs just like you do for Shirt.Woot and sell your shirts in your own GoodStorm store. Other places you can get this done include
SpreadShirt and
CafePress. GoodStorm's advantage is price. Which means you can sell your shirt for a reasonable price and still make some money. Here's a comparison between the 3 companies:
| GoodStorm | SpreadShirt | CafePress |
| White t-shirt base price | 5.95 + 30%* | 8.90 + 3.00+** | 8.99 |
| Black t-shirt | 7.35 + 30% | 8.90 + 3.00 | 18.99 |
| Black shirt + $2 profit total | 10.20*** | 13.90 | 20.99 |
* You choose your profit on GoodStorm but whatever you decide, GoodStorm gets 30%.
** SpreadShirt charges more for the complexity of the shirt printing. It starts at $3.00 and goes up from there. For derby shirts we would do a single digital transfer which would be just $3.00.
*** I used a markup of $2.85 to get a $2.00 profit at GoodStorm.
To give you an example of what this means in real-life, I setup my store with a markup of $4 per shirt. Since GoodStorm keeps 30%, that means my profit on each shirt is $2.80. The 5.95 base price for a white lightweight shirt plus my markup allows me to have a list price of $9.95.
When I ordered a couple of my shirts for myself, I was able to upgrade to a heavyweight shirt for one and upgrade to a black shirt for the other for a buck and change for each. With shipping ($5.95 for the first shirt + $1 for each additional shirt), my total charge was
under $30. Since that's the same as buying a couple of 2nd-day shirts on Woot, that feels pretty cheap.
Next time, I'll step through creating an account and uploading your shirt design.
P.S. Even more details: GoodStorm charges a bit more for shipping. Here's the links: GS:5.95, SS:4.99, CP:5.00.
Monday, October 08, 2007
The derby galleries are now up and running! Please start
uploading your images from any and all derbies but especially from derby 1 and 2 since they are past their 60 day limit and can now be sold. Derby 2's theme was "heat" and here are a few shirts that not only demonstrate that theme admirably well but also are for sale right NOW.
The You-can-never-have-too-much- lighter-fluid Award
Jack31081's simple message and clean lines won him a good share of the votes in derby 2. It is very much the iconic style I like but, being a vegetarian, I'm unlikely to wear it. Since it is 100% cotton I might eat it though.
The Yes-it's-really-that-hot Award
You can't really complain about the heat until you look like this guy. PenSketch's sweating skeleton has a great color combination and cool cartoony style.
The You-won't-need-an-umbrella Award
10-day forecast not far enough in advance for you? How about 8 billion years? This shirt shows you how your weekends are going to be shaping up for a long time. It might get a little toasty.
Disclaimer: this is my shirt. I am definitely biased.
Don't forget to come back and check on the galleries as more and more shirts get uploaded.
Saturday, October 06, 2007
Joining the ranks of two-time-in-a-row winners is Riffmaster18. He came in second last week with his "Summer to Fall" and first this week with "Urban Meltdown". Here's a little bit about him.
Woot Stats? (first derby / years on woot / # bags of crap)
4th / .5 / 0. No Bags of Crap from Woot yet. But just got a new puppy so too many to count.
What are you tools of choice?
Sometimes I sketch something out first, but many times I'll just start drawing with my
Wacom tablet and see what happens. That goes for the abstract stuff or even the cartoons.
What is your typical process for going about a design?
I brainstorm about ideas, then I start working on my best one. By the time I'm done, it in NO way resembles my original idea. Sometimes that works, sometimes it's a Blinged-Out Cabbage.
What design or art experience do you have outside the derby?
I do layout design for a marketing company, but my passion has always been in cartoons - in design, I have what I learned on the job, a class here and there, but no degree.
Would you like to do art/design full-time? If so, what is your dream job?
Yes, I'd like that very much...and I do, which is convenient. However, the dream would probably be doing illustration - maybe a few years down the line.
Any plans to sell your designs outside woot?
Nothing definite, but when woot loses rights to older designs I'm considering doing short runs and starting an online store. We'll see.
What advice do you have for new derby artists?
Don't give up after a few derbies. There's no real way to know what people want this week. It's like anything else in life - you fail a lot, people give you no end of crap when you succeed, but you keep on keepin' on.
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Derby 10's theme was city life. An excellent idea made even better by the additional rule of "no words allowed". There were dozens of shirts this week that might have won previous derbies. Obviously there is a lot more competition for the new
increased prize payment.
The GPS-says-I-should-be-able-drive- through-here Award
Hillarious new shirt from consistent winner Goelzjs instantly went into the fog and looked to be another winner for him. Unfortunately, it didn't stay on top but Goelzjs will still get the "home version of the game" from Best Losers today. Clean simple lines make a cool looking city that would have been a nice shirt as-is but there is the added tiny joke of the falling car making it that much sweeter.
The Big-enough-to-swat-a-biplane- edition Award
"Sunday Papers" shows us that Kong was really just looking for a nice place to relax and read. KidGrenouille has drawn a beautiful shirt here with lots of great details and nice colors. Surprisingly, not enough other people thought this was a must-have shirt as the votes didn't get past the low 100s.
The Van-Gogh-as-seen-from-space Award
Although it wasn't fair to ThatPoshGirl to have her original version of this shirt pulled so late, it did get her to make an even better shirt. Just like the weekly themes and rules force us all to think more creatively than an open-ended themeless derby might, her rejection got her to make this inspired design mixing satellite images and classic art. Her late entry made an amazing bid to get up the charts but it was just too late. More than most cases, it would make sense for Woot to contact her and get this shirt printed up during the week.
Wednesday, October 03, 2007I'm close to having a working upload system so you can upload your derby entry thumbnails to this site. It will be moderated so you will not immediately see your uploads but I will be refreshing the pages frequently. The image specifications will be very strict to keep the bandwith under control: 240x240 jpegs under 100mb in size. So that means if you were relying on Shirt.Woot to do your resizing for you, you'll have to do a bit more work. More details soon!
Tuesday, October 02, 2007It was the summer of 2007. We were grooving to Sean Kingston's "Beautiful Girls" on the radio and enjoying "Superbad" at the movie theater. Meanwhile, Woot started a new site, Shirt.Woot, and along with it, a weekly Derby contest. It all feels like yesterday, doesn't it? Well, actually it's been over 60 days since Derby #1 closed. And that means if you didn't win (
"Cube One") and didn't get printed since then (
"See-Sawlitude"), you own your design and can sell it yourself!
In the next few days, I'll be telling you more about how you can post your derby 1 shirt designs here at this site and link it to the print-to-order site of your choice. Meanwhile, here's the Best Loser awards I could scrape together from images left in the Shirt.Woot's forum for Derby 1.
The polyglot award
A simple idea beautifully executed. Even though it has many colors and styles of text, it all blends well without looking busy or messy.
The first-of-many-monkeys award
Before monkey shirts were all the rage, this monkey stood alone. Really alone. Poor guy. Cute idea nicely implemented.
BTW, if anyone has actually saved the entire site of derby entries from derby 1, please zip it up and email it to me at the address in the sidebar on the right.
The actually-already-available-for-purchase award
Kudos to Pensketch for actually being ready for the 60 days to be up and having his shirt from derby 1 available for purchase. And in different colors!
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