June 24th, 2009 by Trevor

This week was the 100th derby over at shirt.woot.  They chose to go with “mystery”, which was not only the theme of the derby, but also the way the site was run.  They replaced the names of all of the submitters with “****” so that people would have to vote for their favorite designs, rather than their favorite designers.  It was a great idea in theory, but the users found a way to uncover the hidden names, so a lot of people were found out anyways.  I usually submit under “noisdois”, but to avoid detection (and to really play up the “mystery” theme), I made another account that would say “nicetry” every time you tried to peek at the artist’s name.

Before this derby even started I asked Kris Robinson if he wanted to collaborate on a piece.  We threw around a couple of ideas, and this was the design we chose to go with (here is the other idea we could have gone with.  I haven’t yet decided if we went with the right one).  He did the line work (flawlessly, I might add), and I did the coloring.  I chose to go with orange for a couple of reaons:

1.  The orange shirt color is rarely picked for printing.  The only one in the reckoning right now is “The Cake is a Liar”, which ironically has been around longer than any other shirt on the list.  I’d love to win a design with a color that is not chosen very often, just to shake things up a little

2.  It really was my favorite color for this design.  I tried it with a couple of different colors (green and blue to be specific), and though they looked pretty good, it didn’t quite pack the punch that this orange color gives it.

Anyways, it’s been a real pleasure working with Kris to finish this design.  He’s a good man, and an incredible artist.  I learned a lot, and I’ve also learned that I’ve got a lot to learn :/

Check out his website.