Interview with the 3rd place winner of Derby 181
Lagbert has been participating in the derbies for over a year and has just got his first print. Here's more about him.
Shirt.Woot Stats? (first derby / shirts bought / shirts printed)
118 (Visual Puns) / 54 / 1. My first design was a
"Murder of Crows". Although it didn't do very well, the few votes I did get made me want to keep on trying.
What are your tools of choice?
Traditional Media:
- Pentel Technica-X - hands down the best mechanical pencil available
- Black pencil lead
- Blue pencil lead
- Copic 0.2
- Micron 005
- Tracing paper
Digital Media (Hardware):
- PC
- Medium Wacom Bamboo Fun Tablet
- Mouse
- Digital Camera
- Flat Bed Scanner
Digital Media (Software):
- Gimp (gimp.org) - For halftone work, image clean up, and making composition images
- Inkscape (inkscape.org) - For vector work
- Open Canvas (portalgraphics.net) - For digital inking. I use the old freeware version that's still floating around the internet.
What is your typical process for going about a design?
I usually start by brain storming ideas. I make the ones I like into quick little thumbnail sketches. From there I'll take the idea I think has the most potential and do a more formal pencil illustration. The pencil work gets traced in pen. The pen tracing is then photographed or scanned. I clean up the digital file in gimp. From there, I usually open the file in Inkscape and manually convert it to vectors. If the design uses halftones, when I'm done with the vector work, I export each color at 300 dpi and use gimp to process the halftones.
What design or art experience do you have outside the derby?
I've always enjoyed drawing and design, but I don't have any formal training unless you count Commander Mark on PBS. I'm also an avid photographer.
Which artists or designers inspire you?
Woot artists and lesser know contemporary artists are my primary source of inspiration, but if forced to choose someone famous or historic, I'd have to go with Frank Lloyd Wright and Charles and Ray Eames - I'm a big fan of furniture design. I like the way form, function, and engineering are fused into useful objects. Eames' LCW is a perfect example of this fusion.
Would you like to do art/design full-time? If so, what is your dream job?
I'd love it if I could do photography full-time.
Any plans to ever sell your designs using a print-to-order shop like SpreadShirt or CafePress?
I definitely plan on selling some of my older more popular designs outside of woot, but I'm not a big fan of print-to-order shops, so I'm working an alternative solution.
What advice do you have for new derby artists?
Don't get discouraged - You'll never know what will take off. Design and draw whenever you can and become proficient in your tools.
Do you have a website or portfolio you'd like people to see?
Right now my
profile on shirtwhat.com is the closest thing I have to a portfolio.
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