more t-shirt designs!

My wife and I collaborated on these designs.  What that means are these were her ideas, her drawings, and I helped out a tiny bit (and she made me upload them to the site).

For the final t-shirt design we decided to lose the balloon as we wanted to make a clean and simple design that appealed to both men and women and felt the balloon 'babied' it up:

Please vote for this design by clicking this link to Deviant Art and then clicking "I'd wear this"

And then she drew this:

Which we turned into this design:

And this is what it looks like on the t-shirt:

And vote for this one too!  There's no limit to the amount of different t-shirts you can vote for...but I'd appreciate the votes for ours!  Make sure you use this link to Deviant Art and click "I'd wear this"

Thanks!

Deviant Art: Cute Monster T-shirt Contest

Click here to vote for my t-shirt design!  Click on "I'd Wear This" to vote.  My design will only be capable of winning if you vote!  You have to be a member of Deviant Art to vote - but it's well worth it!  So come on...what do you say?

A friend of mine told me about this contest that Deviant Art was holding (the deadline to enter ends tonight at midnight).  I did a bunch of quick roughs:

But I didn't like how any of them turned out so I kept trying and did a series of really terrible drawings that I won't post here...but then I drew this one...and while it's still kind of wonky...it demanded that I finish it:

and that led to finishing it in Adobe Illustrator.  I did the drawing as I wanted to finish it (the one on the left) and then because the rules of the contest strongly suggested that the illustrations be confined to 7 colors (which is easier for them to print) I changed my color palette to comply.

The color swatches at the top are all the colors in the drawing...my original finished piece had 13 colors, so I had to really pare it back to get it to seven.

And this is how it looks if it was on a t-shirt:

My friend, Leonard Dill,  also entered the contest - His illustration is almost as good as mine (and some would say it's better) - Click on his name and also vote for him!  Do your good deed for the day...or two good deeds...don't be lazy, it's totally worth it!  Here's his t-shirt design:

Random Background drawing

I was working on some layouts and came out with this...I liked enough to post here:

It's pretty rough - but I like how the colors came out.

resting on a tree

How can he be capable of sleeping in the middle of such a good book!?!?

I created this in Photoshop.  I might attempt an acrylic painting, but we'll see...

Originally I just drew the tree as I'm trying out a variety of styles to figure out what things in this world will look like.  I liked it enough to add the little panda napping after a good read.

Squaremania - evening lanterns

I was doodling this out a bit - and decided to finish it up a bit more...I started out with the dark blue background color - and played everything else off of that so it could, hopefully, have a nighttime feel.

it's still in rough form, but I thought it was kind of a cute idea.  I have to give credit to my wife as she's the one who suggested that I draw something like this.  "How about those square characters holding lanterns walking across the roof of a house".  So there you go.

IF: Suspense

I always liked the idea of a character thinking that the glasses and mustache would be a believable disguise.

This is part of a suspenseful scene as our little disguised hero builds up the courage to round the corner and face the room beyond.  Nobody would recognize him...or would they...!?!?

Microstock report for January 2012

Here's my latest microstock report:

This month I've decided to include lifetime totals for each of these stock sites.

I thought it would be informative to see what each of these sites has actually made.  It might help anyone looking to submit photos or illustrations to microstock to pick the right ones - or at least focus on the ones that pay the most.


Shutterstock leads the way this month and every month.  They've been the top money maker with licensing my illustrations from the beginning.  They were the easiest company to get approved on (you have to submit 10 images).  My wife and I have been submitting images for about 2 years now (we got our first sale/download on January 31st of 2009) and there have only been a handful of days (less than 5) where we didn't make at least one sale.  In the Spring of 2009, when we were at our freshest and we devoted hours a week to uploading, we were making almost $300 a month.  But now, sitting on a big portfolio of illustrations, and not uploading anything new - we still make at least $100.  And that's why I got into stock illustration in the first place.  I had drawings that were just sitting around on my computer collecting dust - so I brushed them off (colored some of them) and uploaded them and now they're making money.  Some make more than others...but it's nice that they all have a chance.  And by uploading to several sites we increase our chance of having that file make more money.  And our ultimate goal with Shutterstock is to reach the lifetime total goal of $10k because we get our final raise from 36 cents per download to 39 cents.  It's a small raise, but it adds up - and, as you can see, 2 years (or 24 months) of those small downloads have made about $5,500.

Dreamstime and www.istockphoto.com are the next two big companies.  Istock used to be my second best performer and, at one time, threatened to overtake Shutterstock - but last year they changed their royalty structure and they slipped below Dreamstime in the amount of money they bring in.  I hope it comes back around, but it doesn't look likely...Dreamstime is probably the company I upload to and focus on the most - but only because they have a monthly contest that I like to participate in.  I have yet to win, but all the images accepted into the contest sell for a higher price point which still makes it worth it.

The rest of the companies are hit and miss from month to month.  I still upload to them because the money adds up eventually.  And ya never know when a big sale could come.

Anyway - that's all I have this month.  Hopefully I'll never be this long winded in another microstock report...