2 Weeks and 2 Printings in Counting

Welcome, welcome to my poor ignored little blog space. They say that the key to having a successful blog is keeping active with it. Updating one's status often. I'm far too lazy for that. So, here we go, what's new?

Well, to start, I've had 2 tee shirt printings in as many weeks! Last week, Monday, March 12th, Ript Apparel printed my Dalek Barista shirt "Caffeinate!" I don't know if it's right to say how many I sold, so I'll just say I did very well that day. I also got rave reviews in the comments section which only helped to bolster my ego a few more notches. So, of course that was great as well.

Teefury.com has also accepted my Caffeinate shirt for sale but I haven't been informed of any sort of print date yet, so stay tuned for that.

Next came me finishing a very old design. Last August, I had this idea of combining the Hunger Games with the game Hungry Hungry Hippos. I did most of the work for it and then one day gave up on it. I say on it for a long time. Then, after digging through some old art file archives I pulled my design. I couldn't believe I had stopped! It looked great to me. So I finished it.

This is what I got. I subbed it to the fine folks at Woot! and awaited their response. By the way, they have gotten much quicker when it comes to reviewing submitted artwork. I received responses on everything I subbed in the past month in less than a week!

Anyway, Woot! loved my idea, but hated my shirt. They said that my composition is boxy and won't sell well. They also told me that my comic book style simply doesn't sell well at Woot! So I was bummed out. Then, I asked a fellow artist and good friend of  mine Wenceslao Almazan if he would like to combine forces and illustrate the idea all over again. He did, and this is what we got.

Wences shows real genius when it comes to illustrating with simplicity and conveying the message with ease.

So we sent this one off to Woot! and got a response 3 days later. They choose to print the design the day of the premier. Sales on Woot! are public knowledge, so I can tell you that on day 1, even though the website was down all night until 7AM, we sold 3607 shirts! As of right now we are in the 3800's for shirts sold. I'm thrilled. Wences and I get to make some good money on this idea, and we get more recognition for who we are as artists. By the way, on that note, please check out Wences' work at www.wenceslaoalmazan.com. Working on a tee shirt with him is like co-directing a movie with Stephen Spielberg.

In non-tee shirt news, I redesigned my business cards. I wanted something fresh, light hearted and sleek. In doing this, I get a new logo as you can see by the pic. I will be re-designing my website of course, but I don't feel like going through all that trouble just yet.

Also, I took an IQ test as a Christmas present. I always wanted to know what my IQ was because I'm a pompass son of a bitch. Gift Republic sells a great intelligence exam kit through ThinkGeek.com. Anyway, took the 2 hour exam and got a result of 138IQ! I told my mother I'm a terrific under achiever. Even the number 138 is an underachieving number as 140 would be genius, but 138 is 2 points below it. As you can tell, I think extremely highly of myself. I know it's a turn off for a lot of people, but it's just the way I am so deal with it.

Thanks for sticking with me and checking in! Maybe if I updated more often, I wouldn't have to take a whole 40 minutes out of my Saturday to write such an epic post.

I Haven't Blogged in FOREVER

Hello fans and friends. I haven't really been designing tee shirts so I haven't been blogging. All I can say is this is going to change in t-minus 28 minutes (when I'm done with my episode of Fringe.) as I've made a commitment to work in my studio every single weekend on SOMETHING.

I've got lots of ideas and some exciting shirts to come. I even have a shirt that has been sold and will print at at least 1 major online shirt dealer in the coming month, and possibly 2! I'll keep you folks up to date on all of that soon enough.

In the mean time, I have plenty of work to do, and of course Walter hasn't solved the mystery just yet. So, here are some pieces I have done since I've been away from you all.:

You'll see this one for sale soon!

2 New December Designs Available In Time For The Holidays!

Some News

Who do you talk to when you can't talk about some things? I just found out that all 4 of my Goodjoe entries lost to 2 friends of mine. On the one hand, I'm thrilled for my 2 friends. On the other hand, I'm extremely disappointed... and heart broken to be honest. I fought tooth and nail and promoted my heart out all week and a good chunk of my weekend to get as far as I did. According to the contest, I came in 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th places. In my opinion that's a fantastic spread. But, because 2nd place is a staff pick, I guess the staff didn't want anything from me. I just really can't go into a rant among my friends on facebook about how upset and disappointed I am. I figured here would be safe because nobody reads this stupid blog any way.

What is really getting to me is how much time I spend drawing and designing shirts only to get turned down by everyone. I've had 2 prints this year... only 2. And so many people I know who can't draw in the least get printed all the time by doing things like ripping off other people's work. It's insane. I'm just distraught.

In any case. I do have a design entry for Tshirtcontest.com's Slogan Tee contest tomorrow. Tshirtcontest is a site a friend of mine opened recently. Hopefully some website will want this tee someday.

Beware of Dog

Final Design Comp

Well folks, this will be another blog entry where I walk you through how I designed this shirt. I just completed this about an hour ago and am totally in love with it. I've submitted it to Woot! as a daily entry and have my fingers crossed on a printing.

There is no pop reference in this shirt, and really the concept kept changing. This design really came out of nowhere and is a perfect example of something that was created just because it was in me. Read on for the walk through. You may find the story behind this design entertaining!

Houston, We Have Liftoff!

Homepage

Well folks, the long anticipated event is here... the launch of APSketches.com, the official website about me and my art!

I designed my site to represent who I am as a person. I also designed it to function as a central hub for me and my art. Connected to my website is my twitter, my Facebook, my Tumblr, my blog, my new and official email address, alex@apsketches.com. I also have 3 store fronts that I will be populating with art in the oncoming weeks. A Redbubble store for tee shirts, a Society6 store for illustration prints, and an Etsy store for my more fine art things.

So please, take your time to visit my site, take a look around, visit my gallery and connect with me through social networking!

SCUM BAG ALERT!

Well ladies and gents, there is something that really makes my blood pressure rise, and it's stealing. There is a certain jerk on red bubble, located here http://www.redbubble.com/people/elicitre/portfolio, who is blatantly stealing the work of others and selling it as his own. I know many of the artists that have been ripped off here and I think this is shameless. I have reported him but encourage you all to report him too for being the scumbag he is.

"Too Hip for the Circus" Finished Design Comp. Click to enlarge.

Another week, another derby! This week's derby theme is "Hipster Animals." It's such a strange theme that I'm actually looking forward to all the submissions. That and because I live in a neighborhood full of hipsters. Read on to see my thought and design process on this shirt! 

"Bubble Hair" Final Design Comp. Click to Enlarge.

I haven't done a Shirt.Woot derby in a couple months. I just haven't had the time. So after much inspiration from a fellow artist and friend, I decided to be less detail oriented and more playful. This way I can pump a design out relatively quickly and not kill my entire Thursday night trying to design something.

This one, for instance, took a total of 3 hours. The derby theme is Household Chores. Originally, I thought I would go another week with no design because the topic sucked. But, I was quite happy to be inspired while sitting at work.

"Fine Dining on Metaluna" Finished!

"Fine Dining on Metluna" Final Design Comp

Another tee finished and sent out hopefully to find a home in print! I don't exactly have the time right now to do a full run-down on the process of this one. Though it's not that different from my usual process so it's probably not needed. The only thing I did do differently was doing all my inking work in Illustrator. I really love the quality of line Illustrator gives you. Very smooth and easy to recreate that retro feel.

Let me know what you think! In the mean time, It's off to hopefully find a home! Time to sell this shirt...

Fine Dining on Metaluna

"Fine Dining on Metaluna" original sketch. Click to enlarge.

I'm working on 3 projects at the moment. 1 is for an art show in Brooklyn in September. 1 is a tee-shirt that put's a twist on the Hunger Games series, and this one, which came to me Sunday morning in bed. This is the world famous space monster from the B-classic, and quite possibly original cult classic "This Island Earth." I decided to take advantage of the fact that this monster has lobster like claws and decided to present it as a lobster dinner. I got a lot to do to this though. I have to ink it, make edits from the critiques I've received and color it. This is just the idea. Hopefully Tee Fury, Qwertee or Ript Apparel would run with this design, though as usual, I'm probably gonna let Woot take the first crack at it. Woot however may err on the side of caution with this one since it will be close to a copyrighted character. I think it's still covered under parody though.

The Final Shirt for Thoughtsarizen - A Walk Through My Design Process

Final Tee Shirt Design. Click to Enlarge.

It's been a long while since I started doing work for rapper Thoughtsarizen. He spotted some work of mine on Deviantart which started a dialog between us. I quoted him a price and the rest is history. Since I started doing illustration work for him I have done 2 tee-shirts, 1 poster and 1 CD sleeve. I think this is a great final piece because I think it acts as a grand finale.

This is only a 3 color tee shirt design. I've had people ask me how I get the level of depth I can get in so few colors. I learned from Youtube videos from a good friend of mine, artist Tony Avina. Any way, this blog entry is all about this piece from start to finish. We will explore my thought process, why I decided to do certain things and what steps I took to achieve this final product. I'd love to answer and questions or if you have any tips on how I can do a certain process even easier, then by all means let me know! Thanks, and enjoy the walk-through.

Welcome to the New Blog Layout

I think we can all agree that this blog needed a new layout. So after much fussing, I went out and got one. I hate doing new blog templates because there is always so much to change to get it right. An usually that means going through lines and lines of code to figure out what's wrong with the current template in an attempt to fix it. This may not be a big deal for some people but I have very little web design knowledge and experience.

I Have Neglected You...

Hello out there in blogger land. I have neglected my sketchbook blog and my blogging audience, but I promise, it's only been because I've been very busy! So, let's take a look!

Thoughtsarizen Commissioned Poster

This illustration was commissioned by West Coast rapper Thoughtsarizen. Max (Thoughts) wanted me to create this piece for posters and postcards etc. The concept behind it was to do something in the style of Grand Theft Auto. It was fun to "paint" instead of draw, but was also a challenge. This piece has taken me away from everyone the most while I was out.

I came home late one Friday night 2 weeks ago and had this idea for the Corporate Guerrillas tee. I stayed up deep into the night to sketch this out.

Below is the final design. I tried a bunch of new techniques when putting this one together. Over all, I'm pretty pleased with the design. It may be to violent to sell anywhere, but I haven't created something for no reason in a long time. This is currently up for voting on Designed By Humans.com. I will add a vote tag on the right panel later.

OFFICIAL "CLOUD TOYS" T-SHIRT GIVEAWAY!!!

Here's the deal folks, it's time we got this shirt printed! So, to stimulate votes and to get this shirt in production, I am starting this contest! Here is how it works:

Cloud Toys - Giving it Another Shot

Well, I'm sending "Cloud Toys" over to Qwerty.com to give it another shot at getting printed, after my rejection from Tilteed. I was quite sad to not see it print at Tilteed. I had a ton of comments, a lot of friend requests for this shirt, and I assumed I had good votes. I guess it just wasn't their cup of tea.

Qwerty Final Design Comp

Derby #202 - Anthropomorphic Food

Original pencil sketch (Digital)

I was in Myrtle Beach all week this past week. I took some time to doodle in this fantastic beach house I was staying in and came up with a concept for the Anthropomorphic Food derby for Woot. I haven't wooted in a while so I was enjoying finishing this piece. This one wasn't designed out of necessity to have a derby entry. Rather it was designed out of pure joy. It's this reason I'm really happy with it. Please review the sketch, finished piece and half-tone closeups that follow to get a peak into my design process that went into this 4 color piece. Oh, and of course, please swing by my link in the right hand panel and vote!

Also, in new news, APSketches finally has a facebook fan page! Click the facebook link to the left and become a fan of APSketches today! I will have contests and tee give aways as well as shameless self promotion. Every new fan counts towards my ego, so sign up today!

Commissioned Work - 1 of 3

In the wake of my Woot printing, I was contacted by a rapper from the west coast. He liked my work and wanted to know if I could do some illustration work for him. We settled on not 1 but 3 illustrations! Well, this post is all about the first of those 3 pieces.

Original Concept Presented to Client

This piece started as a simple enough concept. Upon hearing his lyrics, I heard him rap about things like "smoking blunts for breakfast." So in honor of his praise of marijuana, we decided to do an Alice in Wonderland themed design.

One of the unifying themes of the work I'm doing for the rapper, is the Asian themed dragon. It's part of his logo and symbolic.

This shirt is being DTG printed which is totally different from what I usually do. There are no limits on numbers of colors in DTG as it is full digital. This has allowed me to have some cool textures and lighting.

The following are a series of progress shots so you can see the design process that took place. More than 20 hours of work went into this piece.

I'm Gonna Be Busy!

Upon my shirt going on sale on Woot, I've received a ton of good comments as well as a job offer! An underground rapper of the West Coast contacted me and inquired about doing some merch design for him. Long story short, I developed 3 concepts and to my surprise, instead of buying 1, he bought all 3! Over the next few weeks I will be busy working away on these illustrations and bringing them to life.

Announcement

Hey readers, just a brief announcement. Firstly, my giant octopus tee has sold 1200 shirts as of this moment. It's thrilling to know that at minimum, there will be at least 1 tee in all 50 states of the union. Very cool! It's safe until early may. The reckoning will be May 9th, so as long as we can push this tee into the top 20, we will be on sale for some time.

Also, I am planning on making a youtube channel to link with this sketchbook. I think it's a little selfish of me to just use this site as a sketchbook. I plan on making a series of how to videos for those who ask me what my process is. I'd like to show starting artists how to go from doodle to finished tee and every step in between.

The first video I'm planning right now is going to be "Anatomy of  a T-Shirt Design" in which I will feature this octopus tee and show how the design started, how it got to become a digital file, and all the layers and processes in between.

Finally, I am thinking about doing a signup newsletter where by I can notify my readers who sign up for it when I have a new video, contest or tee for sale/voting.

Let me know what you fine folks think of these ideas. I think it's time I make this site more usable. I would love to make this an interactive site where people can see how I choose to do things and where we all can learn off each other. I'd love to collaborate with other artists through here, and give away a few t-shirts in the process. More to come in the near future!