Oh noes, he's blogging

Been a lot going on, isn't that always the way.
So I've mainly been teaching myself to use illustrator and learning and trying to come up with ideas.

I've also been trying to find another outlet that isn't Cafe Press as I don't entirely like them. So I am now in the process of wholesale moving everything to Skreened.

The main reasons for this are they use ethically sourced products and environmentally friendly inks.

They also have a much bigger print area than anything else around so with luck I can really maximise design potential.

So be keeping an eye out as I am going to be moving everything across there in the next view weeks.

Old designs will still be available over at Cafepress but I am not putting anything new on there.

Thanks for reading.

BP

FInally a new design.

Well it's taken me a while of fighting many IT issues but I finally sat down and got a new design going.
After a few shennanigans with Cafepress I've discovered that there are certain fan sites that are allowed. One of which is Twilight.
So for all the little and not so little Twi Hards out there, I put together Imprinted although I have a lot to learn about font effects still!

Inactivity on my part

Well you may have noticed, those of you who swing by and see what I have written, that I have been inactive for a while.

This was down to a few things, firstly CafePress rejected several of my designs at once which put me off a bit. I'm new to the design game and not trained at all so although some of the designs may look simple they have taken me a while to get together. This in itself does not worry me as it is part of the learning curve and I am improving no end each day, but still to feel that time was ultimately wasted as most people won't see the work. That's a little frustrating.

Secondly, there was a lot to do in the home life. Sadly that stuff that gets in the way of what you would like to be doing instead, like decorating the bathroom. So things dried up.

Thirdly and most importantly, my Mac died taking with it my only copy of illustrator and photoshop so there was pretty much an instant embargo right there. This was even worse than you would think, the computer is the centre of our house as we don't watch TV (alien concept I know but that is a different story). SO without a computer life is pretty naff.

But that worldwide garage sale ebay came up trumps with a cheap little Macbook, which has got me up and running again with the benefit I can take it to work and get on with stuff in my dinner hour. Woot!

So first job is a piece of freelance design (unpaid) for a local amateur dramatics club. Portfolio stuff.

I reckon when I get the hang of illustrator and photoshop I am going to start doing cheap freelance work. Business cards for people who use Vistaprint and that kind of thing.

See if I can set up a little sideline.

So thanks for hanging in there, there'll be new stuff happening shortly.

Stuff Doing

Well life has been busy lately so not too much happening but am going to get back on it after my summer holiday.

Still learning a lot of stuff about the packages I use and doing a little bit of freelance work that has taken up my time too.

Sadly things keep getting knocked back for being to close to copyright. It's a really hard line to walk somedays. I don't want to cross a line but I've got ideas that people will like. Thankfully I have a raft of ideas that are original so won't cause me any issues.

Upsetting really though because you put work into something and it gets rejected, then you look around and think well why was mine knocked back when someone else is clearly doing this, I mean there are blatent images on some people's designs that are far more of an issue than mine.

The latest annoyance is my Team Severus T which I would mind less if Cafepress hadn't been advertising a Republicans for Voldermort sticker.

It's tricky when you can't even use a word from a book though. In a lot of cases almost anything you can come up with could be rejected on one copyright ground or another depending on who objects to it.

Oh well onward and upward etc. Keep checking for new designs.

Team Severus: Here be spoilers for HP6 & 7

Amongst other things, the girlfriend is a Harry Potter nut. Couple this with an inexplicable love of Alan Rickman and the films are quite good for her.

As a proper grown up I have managed to read only the first book, which I only did so when I draw comparisons between other grown up fiction and it, I knew what I was talking about.

Imagine her upset in book 6 when Snape turns out to be a nasty bugger and kills that Gandalf impersonator at the top of the tower. This was not befitting behaviour for 'Our Alan'.

Oh she was not pleased.

But then came The Deathly Hallows and all is redeemed when we find out why he does it and everything is good again. Happiness reigns and faith in Snape is restored.

This 'I always knew he was good' philosophy gave me the idea for Team Severus.

I also found time to play around with a couple of shading effects on this one which I am particularly happy with!

Cheers

Blackpig

Things have been busy...

So I have not posted about my last two designs yet. This was my first targeted idea.

The girlfriend is an avid knitter so something along these lines was going to happen sooner or later and I liked the idea of a knitted world. A whole category devoted to knitting and finally branched out into other products!

World of Woolcraft is the idea I had. A ball of wool is roughly spherical, as is this globe we live on. The two seem made for one another. It is one of the most in depth things I have done yet and there were some huge leaps forward in learning my way around illustrator. Of course typically, right after I finished this I watched a tutorial video that showed me how I could have done something so much quicker and easier! Dammit.

Virgin Wool is the first upload of a series of sketches I have done over the years, these are roughly inspired by a combination of Gary Larson and the Beano. Simple line drawings that hopefully look good and are quite amusing. I remember many years ago hearing the phrase Virgin Wool. I was instantly struck by the funniness of this phrase. The only thing I could think of was butt ugly sheep. Of course the reality is less humorous. Virgin Wool is merely wool that has not previously been used in manufacture or spinning. As we all know, stuff that has been used and torn down for re-manufacture is called Shoddy.

Cheers
Blackpig

Not too long ago in a room quite close by intergalactic standards...

... a man drew a T Shirt.

I have to say I am quite chuffed with this one as well. 

Urgent Recall Notice has no great development behind it, it was literally a flash of inspiration whilst reading a news article about product recalls and their affects on industry. It's bad enough if you have to take every car you've made in the last five years and stick a cover on the hole in the footwell but imagine if your scope of engineering was set a little bigger?

If only our Darth had got this memo, maybe things would have gone a little differently at Yavin IV.

I took a couple of design liberties with this one. All in the text, so to set the record straight for all my fellow nerds out there, Genosian Industries didn't build the Death Star, they only designed it. It was built by the Imperial Department of Military Research but that sounded less snappy. Although there was a Hutt model, this wasn't built by the Genosians or the Imperium but by the Hutt family.

Happy? Good.

It is actually designated model number DS-1 which I thought was ace when I found out.

Cheers

Black Pig

Chuck No More

Well the Chuck Norris beard design got bounced by Cafe Press for sailing a little close to Intellectual property violation!

Get me I'm a rebel.

I'll be retooling the design to see if I can get away with it in future, but there are plenty more designs on the way.

Cheers

Black Pig

Big Damn T Shirts

Well no geek T collection would be complete without a Firefly T Shirt, so I started with three.

Those pesky kids

We've already established I am a film geek, and there is no greater set of films to get geeky over than that trilogy released a long time ago in a cinema far far away. You know, before merchandising.

The Bodfather

Well this design took some cursing and swearing I can tell you.

So the designs then.

If you've had a look already you will be aware there are already several designs up on the shop. I thought I would go into a few of them here to give you an idea of the process.

Finally Flying (the intro)

Well after much deliberation, procrastination and other long nouns ending in ion which basically mean I have been lazy. The Black Pig shop is finally up and running.