In which we are still being alien invaded

So, as you may have noticed, yesterday the wonderful folks at shirt.woot.com began selling my “Alien Invader” design on their lovely site.  But now, where’d it go?  Seemingly, those halcyon days of alien invasion are behind us, because if you know anything about woot it’s probably that they feature/sell an item for a mere blink of an eye and then it’s gone… lost in the shifting desert sands of the internet for all time.

Or IS IT?

Fear not, gentle reader.  If you’d still like to get your hands on the Alien Invader shirt it lives on until such time as it is either sold out or becomes wildly unpopular with the wooters, in which case it gets booted from the site.

Greetings, Wooters

Hello and good day!  Thanks for visiting my blog.  My name is Brian, you may remember me from such woots as:

Navy Seals:

Scrap Hunt (aka The Gearassic Period):

Wind-up Wildlife Encounters:

Live Wire:

I hope you didn’t hate any of them too much 🙂

Thanks again for stopping by and have a great day!

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For all you non-wooters of the world, my exciting news of the day is that one of my glorious benefactors, shirt.woot.com, has printed one of my designs and it is now up for sale!

Alien Invader:

Beastie Boys!

Not those Beastie Boys.

So a little while back, shirt.woot asked some of its artists if they would like to submit a black & white character for use in their New Year’s MashUp tee.  I decided to draw a tyrannosaur unicorn with caterpillar arms. . . in a tux. . .  They didn’t use it, which was a shame, but I enjoyed the settings I had used on the brush tool and whatever so I doodled a few more Creaturely Mistakes of Morhology and came up with these fellers below.

Grippely F. Creeper:

Bateye Tuskerfluff:

And, of course, the nasty forerunner bugger:

In other news, it appears that my first new job of 2010 may be designing a map for a pirate treasure quest themed scavenger hunt.  Fun!

So, it appears that my first new job of 2010 may be designing a map for a pirate treasure quest themed scavenger hunt.  Fun!

A touchy subject. AKA, You’re a sensitive lad, aint you, Tommy?

So I was perusing the site of one of my glorious benefactors, shirt.woot.com, when I happened upon a design that seemed strangely familiar to me.  It seemed familiar to me because it is uncannily similar in color, composition, and concept to a design I made a while back called Close Enough, about a drunk-on-the-job stork that mistakenly delivers a baby platypus to a couple of beavers.  Granted, the punchline is different… The design on woot has dropped the booze-addled angle and inserted a pair of ducks, but that’s where the incongruencies begin to become largely aesthetic.

Now, I’ve seen people (especially younger people, and especially on the internet) sound the “RIPPOFF” alarm and get up-in-arms about less striking similarities than this (And obviously I have to at least wonder about the possibility of my work being reprocessed and pilfered for financial gain ($1,000+), which is not at all a good feeling) but I am generally inclined to think otherwise.  One thing I’ve learned the hard way after a few years in the biz is that’s there’s a lot of room for cross-pollination, as it were, and there’s a lot of room for convergent evolution, as it were.  It’s just not that uncommon for two or more people to have the same idea.  It’s not even that uncommon for them both to execute it in similar manners.

I know this the hard way because I once designed a shirt about a narwhal impaling some arctic friends on its horn, which scored well on Threadless and was later printed by them, only to find my work being called a blatant rip-off of a previously existing toy of the same concept*.  I had never seen the toy in my entire life.  I had never heard of the toy in my entire life.  I had zero knowledge of the toy before the day my tee was put up for voting.  And yet, some folks were dead certain that I had willfully plundered the ideas of another for my own personal gain.  This was not, as you might imagine, a pleasant feeling at all.

But, as I mentioned earlier, the feeling that you may have been ripped-off and that someone else may be raking in dough that might have been yours, well, that’s not a good feeling either.  And while it’s not necessarily uncommon for convergent evolution to independently produce two similar solutions to a problem, it’s also not that uncommon for people on the internet to play fast and loose with the art of appropriation, as it were.  In any case, you can decide for yourself, and frankly you may find that these illustrations are about as similar as a cactus and a porcupine, but I thought it was at least interesting enough to blog about, if not fuss over.

Mine, from long ago:

Theirs, from not so long ago:

* Though, I might add, dramatically inferior geographic realism/plausibility 😛

I reckon this post will be melodramatic…

I wondered, I really did.  I honestly wondered if I was somehow “Woot Proof,” incapable of creating anything that resonated at the appropriate Woot frequencies, something that could be embraced by the mysterious and fickle wooters of the world.

Every week Woot holds “The Day of Reckoning,” in which they eliminate the 10 lowest-selling shirts on the site.  Forever and for good.  My designs have all launched themselves into that void at break-neck speed, heedless of the oblivion into which they descended.  The Casualties List is their familiar home.  Failure is their nourishment.  Anonymity their joy.

— Dramatic Pause —

No More!  In a bold and unprecedented endeavor, it seems that I have actually produced a successful t-shirt design for shirt.woot.com, one of my biggest and most beloved clients.  Its success is documented in the records of The Reckonings… Five times it has been tested, and five times it has endured and emerged from the rubble of Reckoned shirts unscathed!  At the peak of its glory it even managed to crack The Top Ten, a lofty territory that I was sure would forever close itself from my designs, those loathsome and pitiful denizens of The Bottom Ten… It’s name is Navy Seals, and I am very pleased to say that it is still for sale.

The proof is in the pudding screen-shot:

WOOT!

The lovable rogues at shirt.woot.com have purchased and are now selling my Navy Seals design.

I love it when that happens!

I am especially excited about this one because it sold out on its big day yesterday. Historically, I’ve always felt that my designs for Woot flopped a little bit with the wooting public, mysterious creatures that the wooters are. 🙂  BUT, this new one seems to have done pretty well, so maybe I will be able to quell the standard mad dash to The Reckoning that my wootables seem destined to make.  Think I can fit one more bastardization of the word “woot” into this post? We’ll see.  In any case, sold out or not, Navy Seals is still available for now by means of a super special secret ongoing sale page, and will remain so until it becomes unpopular enough to be kicked out of the wootersphere* forever and for good. Hopefully not next Monday.  Anyway, here she is:

ARTIST'S NOTE: I am, in fact, aware that the animals depicted in my illustration bear a far closer resemblance to sea lions than seals. The decision to render them as such was made simply because I thought they looked better that way. Artistic license and all that. My apologies for making the world a tiny bit dumber 😛

* – Yup.  I get a cookie.

WOOOOOOOOOOOT!

Yesterday the wonderful folks at shirt.woot.com purchased my “Scrap Hunt” design and sold it to the mad masses of wooters under the title “The Gearassic Period.”  If you know anything about woot, it’s probably that they’re better at naming stuff than me.  If you know anything else about woot it’s probably that they feature/sell an item for a mere blink of an eye and then it’s gone… lost in the shifting desert sands of the internet for all time.  But FEAR NOT, gentle reader.  If you’d still like to get your hands on the Gearassic Period shirt it still lives here until such time as it is either sold out or becomes wildly unpopular with the wooters, in which case it gets booted from the site.