Saturday, January 30, 2010

Another shirt derby entry- cold hearts can burn

I retooled an old entry and subbed it to shirt.woot.  Feel free to vote if you like it.

01/30 Heartterfly

Trying to squeak this one actually IN the date it's supposed to be targetted to. It's kinda of a techno-butterfly in a heart shape in an attempt to try to be organic, yet non-organic.

Weird. Mostly tablet-based (which explains some of the weird shapes), but also some pen tool (the sharper areas). I hope to sub this sometime soon.  Vote for this design on Shirt.woot here please!

Friday, January 29, 2010

01/29 Heartbeat v2

I feel cheap. Cheated. But I revised the design yesterday for today due to lack of votes. Hope this is better, but noting the sudden lack of comments on my daily posts, I'm not sure if anyone's still reading.

Thursday, January 28, 2010

01/28 Heartbeat

I was tormented by this song growing up.  And the fashion. The white sportcoat and pants with the colored t-shirt and loafers seen on Miami Vice. Almost as bad as the zippered black and red parachute attire.  Also my shirt.woot entry for the week. I may resub some other designs, but this is totally new.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

01/27 O Rly Wet!


Cuteness attack. I was sketching freely, and this came into existence on the page. Wonder if it's worth pursuing in more detail.  IE- fixing the boot issue, adding breast feathers, etc.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

01/26 Neil A, Alien!

I did it! I got an entry in to this week's derby! This is of course what really happened on the moon. Only if I had remembered to draw in the Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator...


Monday, January 25, 2010

01/25 Irish Fish

I have had several concept pieces for a St. Patrick's day shirt in the past. My favorite was a yin-yang design, but I had several others. This one I just finished. Wondering if people had critical comments on how it could be bettered. One idea would be to make the fish more unique. But other ideas are welcomed.


Here are the older ones that I liked, but didn't get any nibbles on over the months. Note, the zen one is NOT msce since it was an older design:


This last design is an animal of some sort I got when I overlapped the ireland shape over itself. I think it looks like a bear or a moth or something. Not sure what but it has possibilities. This is relatively new (tweaked it tonight).


01/24 Binary


This was a strange one. I was trying to find plays on words that haven't been done before, and I came up with this one as my iTunes was on random. It selected Binary Sunset from the Star Wars IV soundtrack, and I started mulling "binary" in my head. That turned to bi-nary, and this was what I came up with.  I haven't colored it since I'm still not terribly happy with the pockets or the 1.  But it's a decent concept I think, one that needs revisiting when I have a spare moment (maybe March :))  Possibly it would be something I could sub to GoodJoe since it's about tolerance.

Saturday, January 23, 2010

01/23 Madness at Bob Evans

Trying to keep my son entertained, so I was sketching with just red and blue crayons. Thought some came out cool. Wonder what it looks like in 3-D?


01/22 Demon


My first attempt at something hellish

Thursday, January 21, 2010

01/21 Know your drugs!

I really wanted to do a shirt with about 12-15 popularly abused drugs, drawn anthropomorphically according to their effects on the individual. I got about 3 done, and work decided to kick me in the pills.  Also we had a tragedy in the work family (not my personal one) so that's messed with my mind as well. So I was lucky enough to give the sketch some life as 3 pills, in the hope that eventually I'll get around to finishing it properly and perhaps subbing it to somewhere as a daily. Of course, it's been four weeks and I haven't heard back from woot regarding my last daily, so I'm not sure if that'll be the target. I wish at least I'd get a "go away it sucks" email so at least I'm not waiting around hoping...

In case you can't figure them out: Ambien, Ritalin, Vicodin.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

01/20- Pixar ripoff




I was TRYING to draw a bird looking cynical.  But what happened is that it just ended up looking like those birds from the Pixar short "for the birds".  Dang. Even when I freesketch, those iconic images can't get out of my head. Ah well, it's not much, but it's something for today.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

01/19 What if US lost Pearl Harbor?


An attempt to blend two of my favorite things- symbolism and really cool custom fonts.  I originally had the idea for this design this morning as a fake stamp, or possibly some contest where they want alternate realities. Mocked up the design and colored it, only to decide that it would not look very good on a shirt. Poster, yes.

01/18 Pigeon!


It's a day late. Sorry. A pencil sketch using several different pencil densities (2B, 4B, 6B).  Yes, I see this animal every day. I do research on how these guys learn about the environment (spatial memory) as a biological model for dementia and aging.  So I do homing work, and some behavoral work in the lab in a small arena. It's a living. I will say that pigeons (Columba livia) are a LOT more messy than my original bird species of study- the white-crowned sparrow (Zonotrichia leucophrys).  Poo from a songbird is much more preferable to deal with than the poo generated by pigeons.  Ick.

Sunday, January 17, 2010

01/17 Catmare

I'll comment more on this once I get it colorized and add the cat being pinched between the mouse's fingers...


Here's the final version":

Jan 16th- Bluebird at the Luau

A retooling of an idea I had of a tourist bluebird- you know, the ones that migrate south for the winter. What if one flew west instead and went to Hawai'i?  Would have to dress the part and all.  Part of a larger concept, but this is what I had done last night.


Saturday, January 16, 2010

01/15- Nightmare finished

Okay, it's a bit of a cop-out, but I burned out yesterday after spending 3 hours on this design and then saw it die in the voters' eyes.  Click on the image to Vote. I actually like the accents- wish I could have done more tweaking, but seeing that it's going to end up in the middle of the pack, maybe that's a good thing.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

01/14 Nightmare tentacles.

Warning: Draft sketch- not yet even close to being completed. This is meant for the Nightmare shirt.woot derby.

the idea is a monster coming out of a dream, with a scared boy/man in the foreground. The tentacles are green colors with yellow accents, and the man silhouette will be negative space on the shirt. Pillow will need to be positive space.   But overall I like the concept, but am not sure if there's something like it out there. Getting tired, so this is it for now, but the coloring and plussing is about 1/3 done.Hope to post the finished version tomorrow.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

01/13 Hell hath no fury


What if you were a hard-working devil. And you were dating an angel. And she found a succubus-sized bra under the bed?  Would she forgive you? Or get medieval on you?  This is a concept I had, but never quite could get the imagery to fit precisely the concept of the phrase.  Should the woman scorned be a devil?  An angel?  I did both, but still not sure if I have the concept quite right enough to sub it anywhere



Tuesday, January 12, 2010

01/12 Eye Creature


Okay, today was a busy day. Revisions to a text I'm editing, then a meeting 20 miles away. Didn't even see much of my kids. So today's MSCE isn't polished or finished, but was something I scrawled on a piece of paper in the middle of my day. Kinda going for the creepy floating eye monster vibe. Dunno if it's totally original, but it's what I got for today. Maybe more ambitious stuff tomorrow.

Monday, January 11, 2010

Crazy '80s

This isn't something new. I'll say that right now as an excuse.  But back in the '80s, I fancied myself to be quite the artiste and designer. Needless to say, thankfully it wasn't in clothing, since this is... well...  let's just say I was watching too much Tron.  I think this was circa 1986.  Ugh.  But in my defense, there was an awful LOT of turquoise being worn by the general public then.


Here's another one, only slighly less fugly, mostly because I never colored it.


01/11 Playing with the tablet.


This was an experiment with me working with my tablet over an outline I had drawn many years ago.  I have this really nice 9x12 tablet, but I just haven't gotten enough practice with it so that I can make it do what I can do on paper with pencil and ink. The source image is lost in time but if I remember, it was based on a French Vogue advertisement. It was a woman in a fancy gown leaning on a column, which I kinda simplified as a block.

While I'm not a fan of Photoshop, i do like how I can sketch easily on it, whereas I'm not that good with the tablet on Illustrator as of yet (I still am a fan of the mouse/pen tool).  Illustrator has a nasty habit of appending lines to previous lines, or replacing them altogether, if they are too close, and I haven't figured out how to stop it aside from hitting 'escape' or clicking elsewhere in the image.  What I did here was I broke the image down in to little squares, using different types of filler textures, which I remember from a graphic arts exercise I took a long time ago.  Some are plain silly (the smiley faces and the weird words that popped into my head in several areas.  But it's new.  I have another version of this same sketch I'm working on for tomorrow's post (the same outline, but with a single line instead of the textures).  Hope you like this one, though.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

01/10 Ant


I was experimenting with simple shapes, when I came across this image.  It reminds me of the head of an ant. Thought about tweaking it for perhaps a design for threadless, on a black t-shirt.  Kinda emerging from the neckline like this:


What do people think of this? Is it doable or even likeable?

Saturday, January 9, 2010

01/09 Snow Cannon!


One of the sillier sketches I came up with today.  What would happen in the war on snowball fights if a kid could build a snow cannon?  Instead of making lots of little snowballs, just spend time to use one big one.  To quote Iron Man: "I prefer the weapon you only have to fire once. That's how Dad did it, that's how America does it... and it's worked out pretty well so far."  Don't know if I'd go so far as call it the Jericho, but it's still pretty silly. If I were to actually sub this as a daily, I'd prolly want to fix the outlines of the design- they're too sharp as they are.

Friday, January 8, 2010

01/08 Sissyphuscat


Okay, I worked on this before I just gave up on tweaking. Need to step away from it and think about where this is going. It's supposed to be funnier, but I'm not sold on the color scheme. This is why I like black and white- pantone colors confuse me! :)

01/07 WiiFit Like an Egyptian

Knocked out early by pharmaceuticals, so didn't get a chance to post this last night- it's my derby submission WiiFit like an Egyptian. I also have another that I'll post in the derby (it's a surprise!)

-Tek

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

01/06 To The Shark Tank




I have friends who are lolyers.  Good lolyers, good friends. Plus I tend to do a lot of fish designs. This started as a random doodle- just me, a piece of paper, and my Pentel Kerry Mechanical pencil.  That pencil holds double significance to me. First, it's the drafting pencil my dad always used, so I also love it. is compact, but unfolds by pulling the sides apart, and clicking the lid/eraser part on top of the pencil part. Lovely design.  Second, it happens to be my wife's name, which is pretty cool.  So here's my design for the day, and I really like it.  Cheers- Tek

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

01/05 Genetics!


Sometimes art isn't just goofiness, sometimes it's for work. I'm helping revise a textbook, and this is a figure I created to show how genes influence traits.  More standard illustration than anything else, but I still think it's pretty cool.

Monday, January 4, 2010

01/04 Zomgasaurus!


Okay, I got the graphics tablet working, so I started doodling.  And out this comes.  A Zomgasaurus.  I have a coworker who had a boyfriend that said ZOMG all the time. Seriously, all the freaking time. He never stopped saying it. It was the "y'now" or "uhm" of this dude's vocabulary.  Got overdone. So I thought if he was around in the Cretaceous period, he would be some freaky dinodude who said Zomg all the time. And rapidly would go extinct.  So for my daily art, I give you... this.  I took the extra effort to put it on a Tee template (navy) just to see what it is. Hmm. Maybe I'll sub it as a daily to woot since it's random enough for them to possibly love it.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

01 03 2010: Sea Monster


Okay, this was an exercise in anger. I spent a lot of time getting this beastie to look right, and I saved it for dinner. I come back, and most of the detail is gone, the design has been masked to the page, and most of the work I spent doing for two hours was gone. Grr!  At least, I finally got my Intuos to work in Illustrator, so I slapped some nifty touches on here.  The other element, of a mermaid being scared, should be something I work on later. Hope you like it.

Saturday, January 2, 2010

01/02 Sketch- Vacant Vampire Victorian



Wasn't sure how this was going to end up.  The concept was a victorian mansion (or at least a boarded up house) that was dark on the left side, and lighted by lightining on the right side.  I had a dream about this concept, and woke up to sketch it down. Wasn't the best job, but hey, I was half asleep and it's my son's 7th birthday (so I didn't get it all the way done).  The shirt was going to be a darker colored shirt, but light enough that the black pencil marks would be black, adn the window accents, man, open door, and rightside roof and slats would be white/light gray, with accented smoke coming out of the chimney.  I also was going to put a wolf in the lower left side, but that didn't come and I wanted to post this now.

01/01 Sketch- RoboKringle




With a bit of thought, I figured I'd try to sketch something meaningful each day for this year (until summer when I leave internet-civilization). Most of these sketches will be rough, with updated entities added to each post as I work on them (with backdated links for new posts). I'm not a professional artist, though one could argue that since I got money from Woot from a derby 2nd place, I may be a "semi"professional one. So here goes. This was my sketch for yesterday- RoboKringle. It was a robot, that after I drew the parts, thought it would look good as an Xmas design to save up for a contest in 10-11 months. Sketch captured using a Canon SD870IS (so much better than my SCSI MicroTek x6L.