Bad news everyone

Dear James We are contacting you in accordance with Redbubble policy and as a result of us having received a complaint from Bravado International Group Merchandising Services, Inc., the claimed exclusive merchandise licensee in relation to the following content.
http://www.redbubble.com/people/photosmagoria/works/7916946-daft-punk

http://www.redbubble.com/people/photosmagoria/works/6424459-daft-punk-tron-legacy-version

http://www.redbubble.com/people/photosmagoria/works/4646301-daft-punk
As you will be aware from our policy, Redbubble requires a certain amount of information before it acts on such a complaint, including that:
-          the relevant content is specifically named;

-          the complaint come from the owner of the respective rights (or someone authorised to act on their behalf); and -          they have a good faith belief that the use of the relevant content is not authorised by the owner, its agent or the law.
On the basis of that information and in accordance with our agreement and policy with you, we've removed the above mentioned content from Redbubble.

So yeah, no more Daft Punk stuff. Too bad as it was really popular, but there you go. The old Guy Manuel De Homem Christo & Thomas Bangalter ones are still up, but the ones that used word typography are gone.

Stuff like this really depresses me; yeah I made a little bit of money from my Daft Punk stuff, but that wasn't the point, and it's not even why it was removed. They would've taken it down even if I'd had my profit margin at 0%. I don't make this stuff for the money, it's just a bonus. I make this stuff because it's stuff that I'd want to wear, but nobody makes. I wanted a Daft Punk t-shirt, I couldn't find one, so I made one that I thought people would like. I'm a Daft Punk fan and I wanted to express that through what I wear, plus I wanted other fans to have something that doesn't seem to be available. It was fan made for fans, but despite that it's gone and now fans have gone back to having nothing. And that depresses me more than anything.

Quick correction

I noticed a mistake on the Nami t-shirt I did a while back; I omitted a detail which I've corrected.

I missed her tattoo, so I put one in. I missed it because in the image of Nami that I originally used as a template, she doesn't have a tattoo, but instead she has the words one piece there instead. I got rid of the words and forgot the tattoo. Oh well, think there's only been 2 sales of it so far so better late than never. Means I have one of the incorrect ones, although I'm not too bothered about it.

While I'm here as well, RB has started offering zip up hoodies.

I only have the one zip up hoodie at the minute, so I'll definitely be getting one of these at some point.

I'll be doing the IP covers for the strawhat series soon.

EDIT: Did the IP covers.

Luffy

Zoro

Nami

Usopp

Sanji

Tony Tony Choppaaaaaaa

Robin

Franky

Brook

GORDON'S ALIVE

...where...where am I

...what's going on?...

Oh right, my blog
I've been on an unplanned, indefinite hiatus for no apparent reason whatsoever but that's finished now
I shall get back to making tees very soon
Very soon indeed





Maybe not very soon

MY TEES

So the two t-shirts I ordered arrived today, earlier than expected as well which is nice.

Sorry about the terrible picture, I had to use my phone. I'll take some proper photos tomorrow probably since i'm busy all day today.

Customs can suck it

So I ordered 2 of my own t-shirts a while back. Paid for them on the 7th, & they were shipped on the 11th. According to RB, delivery normally takes between 5 - 10 days (the tees are made in the US, so that's fair enough), so I was expecting the tees to turn up around about now. Been checking the mail for the last few days only for nothing to turn up. So I went and checked the RB website again and apparently:


It's important to note that in some countries, you may need to allow an additional 4 - 5 days for your local customs, including garments and iPhone/iPod cases to the United Kingdom.


What
Why
Why is this a thing
How can it take an extra 4 or 5 days to process some t-shirts through customs
God damn it if I have to pay a customs charge as well i'll be absolutely fuming


So at the very worst they'll get here next Thursday, and if that's the case then the wait between placing the order to the receipt of the items could potentially be as long as 19 days for anyone in the UK. That's something i'll have to keep in mind for the future. Annoying I guess, but it's good to know for future reference I suppose.


Also, I'm working on a new set of tees, got two of them done already and am starting on the third. Don't know whether they'll be up by the weekend or not since i've got some things I need to do over the next few days so I won't have as much time to dedicate to it, but hopefully they'll get done & uploaded soon.

Two new tees

I think this might have been the quickest i've ever made a tee. Got the idea for it at the weekend, started it on Tuesday, uploaded 2 versions of it on Thursday.

Two Hands

Two Bloodied Hands

For everyone who isn't as into anime as me, her name is Revy and she's from Black Lagoon.

I actually really enjoyed doing this one, partly because I love the source material (pre-ordered season 1 & 2 the other day) but also because it allowed me to use a new technique. I looked through the Black Lagoon manga, looking for good poses that I could use as reference points for the design. Rather than finding just one pose though, I used several different images to build a template, and in doing so made an entirely new pose for Revy. Was pretty fun to chop up the source material like that and create something new out of it, so i'll have to bear it in mind for future designs, especially anything from manga or comic books.

Been meaning to do a Black Lagoon tee for ages now, so i'm really happy with this. I'll be buying one of these myself when I get paid in a few days time along with one of the One Piece ones I did a little while back. I'll post photos of them once they arrive.

Quick update

Just a quick post to let you all know what i've been up to.

Good news - I'm working on several different tees, and I have ideas for several more once those are done. Bad news - my graphics tablet seems to be playing up. Hopefully it's just the USB cable and not the tablet itself, but I haven't had time to check either way.

That's it for now, i'm going back to working on these tees. Hopefully some of them will start going up soon, maybe by this weekend.

DONE

Here they are.

Luffy

Zoro

Nami

Usopp

Sanji

Chopper

Robin

Franky

Brook

The Iphone cases will come later on.

New tees to go up today

I've done the main body of work for the new set of tees, i'm just making some final adjustments and tweaks before I upload them. They should be up by this evening.

New t-shirt styles

So the other day I got an e-mail from Redbubble saying they'd added a new style of t-shirt to the range that was previously available; the baseball 3/4 sleeve. Here's a look at one of the tees for you.

So there you go, new stuff you can get. Lovely.

Also, a quick update on the set i've been working on; i've got 7 of 9 done, so there's just a couple left to go. I would've got them done sooner but I got distracted by E3 this week. Unless I run into some unforeseen problems with the last two, then the full set should be up by Sunday hopefully, although i'm working Saturday and Sunday so it might be a little later. I'll try my best to get them up before Monday though. I mean it this time.

UPDATE: Just finished the 8th, one more to go.

Update

So, a few things have happened since the last post. The tee I was working on is still coming, however, since i'm fickle, I actually moved onto another set that I had an idea for, so i've been working away on that for the last few days when I haven't been at work. However, i've hit a bit of a problem.

Trouble is, when i'm making the t-shirt i'm working in RGB. As soon as I upload an image to Redbubble, it converts it to CMYK (since the t-shirts are printed in CMYK, so presumably they do this so people looking to buy stuff from the site can get a good idea of what the finished product will look like). Trouble with CMYK is that it's a far smaller colour space than RGB, which basically means that there are less colours that Redbubble can use on its t-shirts than I can have on screen, so when I end up uploading a design, it inevitably loses some of the saturation and vibrancy; you can't really get luminous colours.

The trouble this is presenting with the set that i've been working on is that the pictures have a lot of skin colour in them, and the conversion to CMYK is making the skin looked really dull and washed out to the point of being almost grey. I spent a good few hours yesterday tinkering with colour balances, saturations, brightnesses and curves to try and reduce the affect as much as possible, but unfortunately I can't quite get a finished t-shirt that has colours that i'm particularly happy with, so i'm at a bit of a loss as for what to do next. Stickers, posters and Iphone cases are all displayed in RGB, so they're shown in their full glory, but I really wanted this set as t-shirts (since I actually was going to buy some for myself), but i'm not so sure about doing them as t-shirts anymore. I mean if i'm not happy with the product myself, I shouldn't really put it up for sale when I know it could be better.

I'll continue working on it and see if I can come to some kind of compromise. I really hope that I can, since I'm really eager to get this set finished and uploaded (i'm really excited about it), but I may be forced to just have them as stickers and iphone cases at the end of it sadly. I'd rather it didn't come to that, but it's looking more and more likely at the moment.

Urgh.

UPDATE: HAHAAA

I have succeeded in getting around the pesky CMYK issue. I will now be promptly cracking on with this set and should have it ready within a matter of days.

New tee incoming

Nyaaaah, I've been working on a new t-shirt see. It will be done by the weekend; only reason it's taken this long so far is because I've had to make letters in order to do it. There wasn't a font for the design I'm making, so I've had to improvise and try and make it myself more or less from scratch.

Also, the Illustrator piece that I'm working on is coming along, albeit slowly. I'm learning stuff about Illustrator along the way though, even if the process is a little frustrating. Not being able to do something simple that I could easily do on Photoshop and spending 15 minutes trying to figure it out is a pain, but it's all part of the learning curve I suppose.

Kamina Squirtle - Shining Drill version

Took a little longer than I planned (had to tweak a few things to get it right) but I uploaded a new alternative Kamina Squirtle design just now.

      

Sticker and a larger version of the IP case (the same scale as the Kamina Squirtle (Large) IP Case)  is coming later on.

Belated update

I've been meaning to do this for a while, been putting it off a bit though. Not because of laziness for once, but because i've actually been busy.

I bought a graphics tablet, a Bamboo Pen, and i've been messing around with it a bit, seeing what I can do and how it works. I got it primarily because I keep having ideas for more illustrative designs (kind of like my Kamina Squirtle tee) but I find the mouse to be a little limiting. It's my first graphics tablet, so I didn't want anything to advanced, but hopefully once I get more acquainted with the workings of the Bamboo, i'll be able to start producing more illustrative pieces with greater ease and greater variety.

Speaking of the Kamina Squirtle Tee, i'm going to be uploading an alternative design for it today. I always said that if it proved successful enough then i'd upload an alternate design of it, and since it's been pretty popular i'm finally going to get round to uploading it within the next hour.

While i'm getting the hang of the graphics tablet, i'm also working on a new design. I won't say what it is, but i will say that it's a longer term work and won't be finished anytime soon, partly because of the nature of the design, but primarily because it was a golden opportunity for me to have a proper crack at using illustrator rather than photoshop. I've made a start on it, but there's a lot to do and i'm intentionally working outside of my comfort zone so that I can learn more in the process. I'll be posting updates on it as tome goes on. All i'll say for now is that it's most similar to my Metal Gears design.

One last note, while that illustrator piece is in the works, I've come up with a new design. I haven't started on it yet, I just have the idea in my head. I may try it in illustrator as well, as a lot of what i'll have to draw for it will be relatively simple shapes. I should really be using illustrator a lot more than I am, so I guess I should just go for it.

Curtis

It's a little later than planned (busy weekend), but I managed to finish and upload my new design today.

 

I wanted to do something a little different from my usual style; it's always good to be diverse in what you do and step outside of your comfort zone. I enjoyed doing the design, and I actually learned a vouple of things along the way, so that's always a bonus.

Decided to go with a different approach this time and go with stickers, IP cases and, for the first time, a poster. I tried it as a t-shirt but I wasn't really happy with how it looked; the file has to convert to CMYK when you upload it, so it loses alot of the vibrancy that the other products keep, and I think it kinda killed it for me as a tee, which is a shame. Still, i'm pretty happy with these. I made a bit of a meal of the shadows on the letters at first, but I figured out a much more sensible and faster way of doing it, which helped sped the process up a bit.

I've still got quite a few unfinished designs sitting on the computer which I think I may try and complete next, but I do have new ideas that I want to try out too. Either way, i'm going to be putting in a lot more effort from now on, both in terms of designs and this blog too. Expect much more regular updates from now on.

Here's the link to the RB page for Curtis 

New design preview

As promised, here's a quick preview of the tee that I'm currently working on. Bear in mind that even this preview isn't quite done yet; it needs some tidying and further adjustment yet. I'm still hoping to get the tee done and uploaded by the weekend, but I'm gonna be pretty busy with work and other things in the meantime, so it may be a little late. We'll have to wait and see.

New design coming...at last

Lol, I haven't posted in over a month, oh well

To be fair I have actually been working, but even so, I really need to stop procrastinating with this so much

Anyway, just a quick post to say that i'm working on a new t-shirt. Started it the other day, it's a little different to my usual style but it's good to mix stuff up once in a while. Shouldn't take too long to do, so hopefully it'll be up by the weekend (I mean it this time).

I'll post a little preview of it later when I get back from work

AT LAST

It took me about 5 times longer than it should have done in the first place, but I finally managed to finish my new design.

Here's the link to the redbubble page for it.

Right, onto the next design.

I am still here

Just in case anyone was wondering, I am still here. I'm sorry to say however that i've been majorly slacking off lately. What can I say, i'm bad at motivating myself, but i'm working on it.

Anyway, I started a new t-shirt design today. It shouldn't take too long to get it done so hopefully i'll have it ready by the weekend.

End of year round up

I probably should have gotten this done sooner but oh well.

I did a round up of my sales figures last year, taking note of things like the most popular product, most profitable month, etc. I did it again this year, so I figured i'd post the info here.

FYI, I didn't spend a particularly long time doing these numbers so they're estimates rather than exact figures. I might get around to correcting them so they're more precise sometime in the future, but for now bear in mind that they're ball park figures.

Best selling product overall: Sonic t-shirt (same as last year)
Best selling t-shirt: Sonic t-shirt, 70 sold (roughly 59 more than last years best selling t-shirt)
Best selling sticker: Sonic sticker, 25 sold (roughly 21 more than last years best selling sticker)
Best selling Iphone case: Daft Punk, 3 sold (no Iphone cases last year)
Best selling kid's clothes: Sonic, 5 sold (no kid's clothes last year)
Total number of products sold: 334 (roughly 277 more than last year)
Number of designs introduced: 27
Most profitable month: August, £136.91 (£92.89 more than last years most profitable month, November)
Least profitable month: March, £12.24 (£7.95 more than last years least profitable month, August)
Highest monthly sales: December, 82 products sold
Profit: £702.04 (roughly £521.13 more than last year)

So there you go, not bad. I'm pretty pleased with the 27 new products introduced, I didn't realise it was that many. With any luck i'll get closer to 50 this year.