Lyrics are Bottomless again!

Heyo! For those of you missed out on Lyrics are Bottomless. Good news, I've put it up for voting on Teextile, so if it gets good votes maybe you'll see it print again. Please drop by and give it a vote. It's on a black shirt this time :)





Lyrics Are Bottomless


BY Stray





-stray

Hip-hopopotamus vs The Rhymenoceros up at Teefury!

Up at Teefury for $9. Now I don't want to sound too cocky, but I think this is a fine piece of work for a $9.
If you don't know what Teefury is, they sell limited edition t-shirts, for sale for only 24hours. As I write this about 4 hours have passed. It's going to be gone come 9:00 December 24th, so don't miss out!

http://teefury.com

-stray

New 2 for Thursdays #3

Alright, back on track with the 2 designs a week. Here are two:

"Diamond Antlers"

This is kind of a style experiment I'm doing. I plan on doing a whole bunch of other designs in this fashion. Trying to be versatile and all.
You can see more color variations HERE.

"Smarter than your average bear"

If you don't get it maybe you're just too young.

Thanks for looking. New designs next Thursday!

-stray

Heyo!

I've been a litte bit sick, that's why you haven't seen any new work yet. But I'm feeling alright now and working on something RIGHT now. Hopefully you'll all enjoy. Anyway, let me get back to work. Later.

-stray

No new designs! Sorry!

Haha, already breaking my promise. I haven't just been slacking off though. I've had my little brother over, he's 6, he requires a lot of attention obviously, and I also just haven't been feeling that well recently. Not sick, just tired, and headachey. Probably not drinking enough water and getting enough sleep. I hate making excuses, haha. I don't know who's actually keeping up with my blog or anything, but if you are I'll have some more stuff up by the weekend to make up for the lack of productivity. I've got lots of ideas ready to execute.

Keep an eye out because I should have a couple shirts coming out in a matter of weeks. Really excited about them. ALSO, you may see the return of some of my popular (yet failed) designs getting a makeover and trying my luck with them again.

DBH and Teefury have been very good to me, and I plan to keep on subbing with them because I like both of those places and what they're about, but I'm going to try to also broaden my horizons and try my luck at more varied places. Hopefully they'll be as receptive to my work.

That's my update for now, hope you like the things are that to come.

-stray

New Designs #2

I said last time that I'd be updating with at least 2 new designs every Monday, well I've changed that to every Thursday. Fits better with my schedule. I typically don't do a lot on Thursdays, that's the day all my favorite shows come on. So it makes sense to me for my deadline to be the day where I'm not doing anything, if that makes sense. Anyway, here are the two new designs

If you don't get the reference to this one you're dead to me.


Okay this kinda sucks, but I was just experimenting, I'll probably redesign this another day.


And happy Thanksgiving all! Hope you had some good eats and enjoyed some people you love. For the first time I cooked a dish for Thanksgiving, mac n' cheese, and it went down REALLY well, everybody loved it, so I was proud to have proved my culinary worth. I can do much more than just make pretty pictures ;) haha.

-stray

New Design MONDAYS!!! #1

So to increase my productivity I've decided to do at least 2 t-shirt designs every week. I'll post them in my blog on Mondays. I really want to get better, so hopefully this will help that. Also the more I design and submit the greater my chances of winning right?

Here's what I have for this Monday

Botticelli: The Forgotten Ninja Turtle




and something different from me, an abstract design:







Thanks for looking. I'll have another 2 next Monday ;)

-stray

Giant Robot FTW! at Teefury

New shirt up at Teefury. Available for 24hrs only so don't sleep on it. This is a collaboration between me and my good friend Jorge Juarez http://eaglegriptechnique.blogspot.com

This is my 5th print this year! I'm really happy about that, I only started t-shirt designing about 7 months ago, and I've already got 5 under my belt, one of them being a runner up in a major contest. So I'm either just having amazing luck or doing something right. Maybe a little bit of both? Hopefully there will be many more to come. Once again I'd like to thank everyone for their support.

-stray

Pixskullz desktop wallpaper

http://www.designbyhumans.com/downloads/wallpaper/pixskullz_1680.jpg

Thank Jimiyo, he made it. http://jimiyo.blogspot.com/

-stray

Pixskullz for sale @ DBH

You can get it here:



Thanks to everybody who voted for it. Really love the way it came out.

I've got many more designs in the pipeline, and hopefully I'm just as successful with them.

-stray

One Itty Bitty Step up for voting @ Threadless

Would really appreciate your votes.

"Revenge is Sweet" for sale @ DBH

Hey, kinda late in posting this, been kinda busy and it slipped my mind.
My "Revenge is Sweet" won a print in DBH's Halloweek 3 contest. REALLY proud of it and the print looks great from the pictures. Haven't received my own yet, but when I do I'll be sure to post a pic of me in it.

You can go buy it here: http://www.designbyhumans.com/shop/detail/5566

Shipping is FREE in October for customers in the US. So get on that while it last.

Thanks everyone for voting. More shirts are on the way, so keep an eye out.

-stray

p.s. I've also been getting messages and IM's about both the Superfly and the Cerbearus. Unfortunately as of right now there's no where you can get them. But trust me, I want them available more than anyone, haha. If I had the resources or money to print them myself I'd definitely do that. When I find a home for them I'll definitely let you guys know, but to be realistic don't hold your breath, it may take some time. Thanks for the interest though, you guys are awesome.

DBH Halloweek 3 submissions

Heyo! DBH is having their third Halloween contest. I've got TWO submissions in the running, check them out:

The Funk of 40,000 Years



vote for it here: http://www.designbyhumans.com/vote/detail/63024

and

Revenge is Sweet



vote for it here: http://www.designbyhumans.com/vote/detail/63357

I like both, but I'll be very honest with you, I'm a lot more fond of "Revenge is Sweet", overal it's a way cooler shirt and idea I think, and it was a lot of fun (and also frustration) to do. I hope I get a print out of it.

Thanks for lookin.

-stray

GIANT ROBOT FTW! Up for voting! Go give it a 5 and a $.



-stray

GIANT ROBOT FTW!!!

Haven't updated in my blog. First thing I should say is thank you EVERYONE who supported me in the 10k, if you haven't heard yet, I was a runner up. That was my first print at DBH and I got $1,000 for it! I'm feeling very accomplished, and I don't want to let the cat out of the bag just yet, so I'll just say you'll be seeing more prints from me ;)
Anyway, you can get the Umibozu here: UMIBOZU FOR SALE!

On to other business, I'll be having a new design going up at Threadless soon! I'm going to need your support again. This shirt is a collaboration with my friend Jorge Jaurez aka LuminousL who has a blog here: http://eaglegriptechnique.blogspot.com/

Here's what we cooked up:


Quickpost this image to Myspace, Digg, Facebook, and others!

Check out the submission page, I made a simple flash presentation for it.


I'll let you guys know when it's up for voting.

-stray

Last day to get Umibozu to the top 4!

So I made it to the top 10, and hopefully tomorrow I'll be in the top 4! But to make sure this happens I need everyone to vote, and I need everyone to get everyone they know to vote! Thank you guys so much for your continued support without you none of this would be possible.

Here's the link to sign up:

Here's the link to vote:

Thanks everyone!

ALSO, I want to give a shout out to my favorite band in the world The Color Turning, they just released their first full-length album Good Hands Bad Blood. Here are some videos to get a taste:

The Color Turning - "Marionettes In Modern Times" from Welikeit.indie on Vimeo.

The Color Turning - "Where The Sky Ends" from Welikeit.indie on Vimeo.

Go to their site for more info: http://thecolorturning.com/

-stray

I got a shout out from Singularitee

T-shirt blogger AdderXYU was kind enough to endorse my design for the DBH 10k, he had this to say:

"It really treats the tee as a canvas, utilizing every inch to bring the image and the story it conveys home. It's a great vignette, too, combining a whimsy and wonder with a fear and dread. The creature rises out of the water as if a threat, with his shadowy body and immense size spelling doom for the ship, but at the same time he seems concerned and curious, and though he is in shadow, he is surrounded by light, as if he's simply a gentle giant, to be seen as a wonder, not a threat. The juxtaposition gives the scene a lot of potential directions, and that helps make it so appealing. Not that the expert use of lighting hurts either."

Read more at his blog:

http://singularitee.blogspot.com/2009/08/contest-watch-plus-week-of-july-30.html

Really enjoyed that review, because he totally nailed what I was going for. I hope I can pull off a win in this 10k. I'd appreciate your vote:

http://www.designbyhumans.com/vote/detail/60283

Thanks for reading.

-stray

Umibozu: My 10k SUbmission

So here goes my bid into DBH's prestigious 10k design contest. If you don't know about it, it's a t-shirt design contest, where the prize is ten thousand f***ing dollars. That's a good chunk of change. 4 runners up will also recieve one thousand dollars. It's an elimination type of dealy, they go up for voting for a few weeks, and the designs with the most votes and best designs will become the top 20. All votes are then reset to 0, and at the end of the week the 10 shirts with the top votes become the top 10. Votes are reset to 0 again and the top 5 become the winners.

The competition is fierce already, there are some clear front runners, and more than a handful of designs that are potential contenders. I have no idea how mine is going to fair in the contest. I'm entering it kind of late, so it's going to sort of have to play catch up in terms of votes. I created a topic in the forum to show my process in making the design, and got a lot of good feedback and encouragement:

http://www.designbyhumans.com/forums/show/550054

I submitted on a Friday which means it probably won't be up til Monday. I worked really hard on this, and I hope it does well. I hope I can at least make the top 20, let alone be one of the 5 winners. Hope people will like the design, and I'm going to do my best to try to rally support. I'm up against some of the more profilic designers in the game though, and I'm a relative nobody, I've never had anything printed and don't really have much of a fanbase, so I'm going to be an underdog in this competition. Wish me luck.

Oh, and in case you're curious about what the design is about, he's a wiki link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umibozu

I'll post again when it's up for voting.

-stray

My submission for the Teefury collab

Teefury is celebrating it's one year anniversary and to celebrate they're asking people to send in their version of their mascot the teefury bird to be collaged onto a shirt. Figured I'd get in on the fun.
Really busy with my DBH 10k design right now, so I didn't have time to go full out with this. Spent about 30 minutes give or take in photoshop on it. Despite that, he's still a cute fella isn't he? Stay tuned for posts about my 10k design.

-stray

Monarch @ Threadless

My first Threadless submission, so head on over there and give me a High $5!

http://www.threadless.com/submission/219231

-stray

boombox skull

Still working on this fellar. He's so majestic dontcha think?



Just finished this. Don't know what I'll do with it. Maybe try to sell it.

So DBH is having an Incubus contest right now, and also their 10K contest will be coming up soon. I'm going to work on some stuff for those. Already have a few ideas for the 10K. Stay tuned.

-stray

Superfly

So I finally finished this design. It was a lot of fun to work on.



It was modeled after this classic Superman cover:



But the idea is a pun obviously of this old movie. "Never a fly like this one. He's got a plan to stick it to the man." was the tagline from the Superfly movie, except they said "dude" instead of "fly" of course.



Hope you guys enjoy the piece. I mocked it for a t-shirt and hopefully somebody will want to print it:




Thanks for looking. Have a swell day.

-stray

New stuff

New design up for voting at DBH.

http://www.designbyhumans.com/vote/detail/55741

And a couple works in progress:


I intend this one for Teefury


And this one I'm thinking of submitting to Threadless.

-stray

Oldies but Goodies

Decided to post up some of my old stuff, so that maybe when you see more of my recent stuff it'll make it look really good in comparison, and you'll be like "Whoa! You really leveled up!"
If it's the opposite and you're like "Jeez, it's all going downhill." then I'll be very sad. I'll most likely fling my body from a tall building.
But anyway, here you go, old stuff:





















I have a long ways to go as an artist, but hopefully I've made a lot of progress over the years. I'm really ready to start doing something with these so called skills of mine. I'm currently working a really boring frustrating dead-end low-paying job, and I sit there all day just waiting for my shift to end, which is the last thing I wanted to be doing with my life (gotta get those bills paid though right) so I really want to be on my way to doing bigger and better things.

The t-shirt design thing is just the first small step in my initiative. It's not so much the money that's the goal (although I could really use the money) but it's the web presence that being a winner could bring me. Something that can open the door for the other things I want to do, and hopefully afford me with people that will be paying attention to me when I start to do those things.

So hopefully, this blog will not only be a place to showcase my work, but to document my journey. Wish me luck and all that. Thanks for looking and reading.

-stray

Cerbearus up @ DBH

After a million hours of work I finally finished probably my favorite illustration I've ever done. Lost a lot of sleep, but it was worth it.



I put him on a tee, and he's up at DBH for voting. If it's something you're inclined to wear on a shirt you can vote here.




I'm tempted to post some process pics, maybe another day.

Thanks for looking.

-stray

Cerbearus

Linework for a new t-shirt design I'm working on. I'm sure you're familiar with the cerberus of Greek mythology, the 3 headed dog. Well, I thought what would be more badass than a 3 headed dog? A 3 headed BEAR! That's one beastly beast is it not??

CerBEARus. Like that fancy play on words? Of course you do.

I'm halfway done coloring this sucker, so perhaps if I finish up tomorrow I'll post that. I'm going to sub this sucker at DBH too I think.

Aerial: Another DBH submission

They've got a quiksilver contest going on over at DBH. Figured I'd try something and rushed this out before the deadline:



Vote here if you like it: http://www.designbyhumans.com/vote/detail/48237