Two new derby shirts

It's a white-ink only derby, and I have two entrants I got done today, after the kids have unwrapped all the presents and the dinner is done. Please give them a vote if you have them and like the concepts.

Cash Plummets

A new design, one that I like a lot. Though it isn't getting any voter love since the derby is now taken over by 4-5 designers that always win. Vote if you like it by clicking on the image to the right.

Thanks!

-Skek

Summary of 2009

A new derby, a wild week where I can't design. I do have a rough draft though, which is below. It's supposed to summarize the freefall of the financial market:

Shirts up for votes on GoodJoe!

Got two woot resubs at goodjoe:

This is flora as fauna.

Another one is snowed in snow monkey. Click either image to vote!

Collaborations!

The best part of being an amateur artist is that sometimes you get to work with some pretty damn creative folks. I'm currently working on a collaboration with Jasneko, an artist that has taken shirt.woot by storm in the last few months. I'm excited that we're working on something that is part techno steampunk, and part cartoon. Hopefully something to share soon...

I'iwi

Okay, if you know me, you know that I'm at heart a Bioacoustic neuroethologist. Yeah, a mouthful. I love sounds of living things (bio-acoustics), and figuring out the internal mechanisms of natural behavior (neuro-ethology). My favorite thing is hawaiian honeycreepers, since it's the best example of behavioral isolation in the world (Hawaii is 2500 miles from the nearest continent, making it the most isolated island chain in the world). Take that, Madagascar!

Anyways, I've been investigating the inter-island song diversity of the honeycreepers, and I decided for shirt.woot to design a shirt based on my love of the natural avifauna of Hawai'i. The i'iwi (Vestiaria coccinea) is only found on the islands, and is a gorgeous red bird with a very metallic song. Here's my shirt design based on that bird. If you love birds, PLEASE give it a vote if you're a wooter.

Chipmunk design- older derby

Forgot to point out some older designs for the Holiday derby. The one was based on the Chipmunk Song, but got overshadowed by a more realistic chipmunk design.

The second design was one that I really liked, but never took off. It suffered from a very bad half-toning job, which I fixed but never got around to resubbing. But heck, it's a great example of what NOT to do.

Honorable Mention at last!

I got it!!!

After, oh, 100 derbies, I finally got an honorable mention for 5-second rule, after I had received a best loser. I am attaching the design that finally won, and the design that was the first version to show what the original concept was. Mostly to show what happens when a design doesn't work, and gets jettisoned for a complete reboot. Success!

Winning design:

First version (jettisoned):

Throwaway design- Color Pedigree

Another day, another throwaway design. Mostly to try to see how many colors I could create through mixing six colors, and using an illustration I use in my bio class.

Vote by clicking on the design. Overall I'm not terribly satisfied by it- I could have done so much more with it, but I just wanted to sub it before I went to bed. Never a good idea.

Fire and Water- opposite personalities

New design- playing off that two brothers tend to be opposites of each other. One is an extrovert, and the other not so much. It's very colorful, and has been likened to the Firefox logo due to the color scheme. Perhaps if I had used a more reddish palate it would have looked different. Sigh.

vote if ya got em here,

-Tek

Slow Day

Nothing in the shirt.woot derby this week, so I have very little to add in the way of content. So I might as well talk about some old design I liked.

A long time ago, I had an idea for an art series- MechanArt. Mechanical-designed biology illustrations. I have been making them over the years (30+ now), and I've been able to make several into illustrations and shirt. This is the first one, which I always called "Rode Runner". It had a poem that went with it (a haiku actually), and entered both for the yearly poetry collection in my High school. They were supposed to go together, but they printed the poem but not the art that inspired it.

This design took me about a day, converting from an ink/pencil sketch years ago into the digital realm of line drawings. Came out nice too. The background is the only crappy part, one that I should have worked on harder to fit with the overall design.

Need for Speed

I decided to sub a design I did for the Deadly Sins Derby all those months ago for shirt.woot. It was a design I worked on for several days, only to realize I was scooped by another artist (another sloth with a jetpack). While mine was not as good, I decided to shelve it in the hope that eventually it would see the light of day. THe current derby of flight gave me that opportunity. While from a simpler time of me attempting a graphics tablet, it's cute for what it is.

Feel free to vote for it if you have a derby vote at woot here.

The Cheese Baron

A new entry. Please vote if you got em. It's based on a friend's rat who passed away.

Pair-a-dice Lost

Another pun entry. This one is funnier. Pair of Dice. Lost. Heh.

Vote here folks.

Brain Food- Pun Derby

Okay, this is my grossest entry ever, but I think technically and visually it's my finest work. The brains look really damn photorealistic, and the cartoon whale is very convincing. Aside from the major ook factor, I think it's a mighty fine design. Feel free to give it a vote if you like it.

Voting page

Penguin design does well, forget to pimp it!

I had a really good voting count (186, good for 40th place!) for a design I made after my pumpkin one below, but I forgot to pimp it here. One of my cuter ones, sparked mostly due to some drama on shirt.woot when a popular designer got rejected for a kitten in a pumpkin, replaced it with a tiger cub in a pumpkin and rocketed up to 4th place. People were not happy, but at least it didn't get printed. Of courses, since it was one of the "Favored" designers, it'll probably get an HM, but I'm holding out the miniscule hope that my pingu will get tabbed as well. What do you think?

Voting Page with comments.

Punkin Sunset

Ever have a sketch you thought you'd never translate well to digital? That was this design. But surprisingly, it turned out AMAZING.

If you have a woot vote, please give it support!

Deep Guano Cavern

I think I forgot this design I submitted last week. Don't think it was going anywhere votewise, so I didn't link it up. But I did do some work on it since the contest submission, in the hopes I could sub it somewhere else. Thought it would get the pre-Halloween vote. Alas.

Here's the entry page

It's up! Please support Run Little Neuron Run here!

Design for Cameesa's MS challenge.

I decided to enter Cameesa's challenge for MS. It's a rather nice design, combining the source of Multiple Sclerosis (loss of insulation on neurons), the neuron signal (action potential) and the urban environment of the race (city). I expect it to be accepted, and when I do, I'll link the support page. If you know someone who has MS, for only $10 (which is refundable if you change your mind), you could put your name down for one of these.

I got a Best Loser

Duck soup, while not getting an award where it counts (an Honorable mention on woot), nevertheless was nominated as a Best Loser on Thatrobert's website here.
YEAH!

Duck soup

Another silly shirt.woot design. This one based on my love of the Marx Brothers.

Here's the voting link

Next derby- Harvest

Here's a silly concept for the harvest derby- from water to wine- evolution of cannonball. A bored pilgrim decides to take a plunge into a vat of grapes. Comments needed.

It's called "Relax, pilgrim!"

Just found an EXCELLENT website for converting sketches to illustrator. I've been learning this on my own, but this is a nice summary of the pencil sketch to finished illustration. Also, I'm posting this just so I can remember it later :)

GoMediaZine From Sketch to Vector Illustration

Well, guess the entry for shirtfight did get entered, scored a 1.8 with 9 votes, so it died a quiet death. Ah well, maybe I should have really tried. Maybe next time. However, I am working on another silly shirt.woot design, if I can just get it submitted

Two designs up at shirt.woot

Well, this week's theme at shirt.woot is Japan, and I have two designs in. The first is my favorite- Sunset over Fuji.

The other is a silly pig design called Hello Piggy! as a takeoff of Hello Kitty.

If you have votes, please give em to support my designs!

Hope submitted to Threadless

One of my better designs has been submitted at Threadless, where I assume it will do well. I also wasted about 30 minutes making a real nice flash presentation...



When the above link goes live, I'd appreciate any votes!

First submission at Shirt Fight

Don't know if it's accepted as of yet, but I just subbed my first design there. It's an old one from the shirt.woot derby for "slogans" but I really liked it. Here are some comps, to give you a flavor.

Even frozen hearts can burn

This week's derby is "blue", so I did blue ice. I got this from my time in chemistry class- methane ice is a snowball that can burn! So cool. I added a heart and made it a pocket size to sell the concept further. If you have a shirt woot vote, give it a +1 if you like it! Feel free to comment too...

Vote here!

Flora as Fauna

Well, I have been working on a design with a blue jay robbing a squirrel, but that's not altogether done. But I needed something for the derby opening, so I whipped something up real quick. The design is to the right. If you have a shirt.woot vote, please click the link below!

Flora as Fauna

-Tek

Derby #110- Flora

Okay, this week the theme is plants, and since I was trying to give myself a challenge, I wanted to get people to give me weird ideas to have to cater to. A job, an item of clothing, and a shirt color. Of course, most people picked RED for the shirt (ugh, nobody votes for red), but some interesting jobs. It was a tie between a mime and a bank robber, though nuclear plant safety officer was funny. I went with bank robber. So I'm gonna do a bird robbing a squirrel "bank" of its acorns.

I guess the other bird concept would be a penguin mime...

What's this Blogging Crap?

Okay, I figured I didn't update the website enough. So here goes. Blogging. So why Skektek shirt? I've always been a fan of The Dark Crystal, and since I am a faculty scientist in Biology, I thought the particular Skeksis that was the scientist/biologist would be an excellent name. I picked this name for my woot account, and since I started doing t-shirt design contests under that account, things kinda went from there. Hopefully this will be in addition to the regular website that has my designs from each derby and contest I enter.

In case you want the website, here it is: LINKY