Ben Hartnett

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Shirt Design – Muscle-Building Quiz

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And now for something completely different! The new-look Threadless came up with a themed challenge called “Threadless Loves Taking Leaps”. One of the categories was for regular submitters to use a very different style to what they’d used before, which is certainly true of “Muscle-Building Quiz”! For ages now I’ve wanted to try a very simple style but my ideas just didn’t work that way. Fortunately this idea popped into my head just in time for the challenge. I did rough sketches in Photoshop and the final art in Illustrator.

Animation Degree – Anniversary Celebration

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My Dad (author of “Dewthor”) and myself in front of “Sloth Darts” (I wore the only animation-themed shirt I had: “Invention of Colour”)

My old university course, the Animation Bachelor Degree at the Queensland College of Art, had a 25th anniversary celebration last weekend. My health nearly kept me from attending at all, but thanks to my Dad I was able to get to the exhibition and part of a screening of student short films from years past.

The best part was catching up with a handful of folks I haven’t seen in many years, including John Eyley (who has been with the course from its humble beginnings), Damian Pin, and Joe Brumm.

Threadless Tee Design – Skin-Swap Safari

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Skin-Swap Safari - Threadless T-shirts, Nude No More

A good dose of African animal silliness for this shirt design! I don’t know where the idea came from but I thought it was fun and that was a good enough reason for me to do it. At least we all know what an elephant looks like with a baboon skin, which people have been curious about from the dawn of time (possibly). This was drawn in Photoshop.

Rapunzel in Boots

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Rapunzel in Boots

I had a couple of pleasant surprises recently: the CG animated movies “Puss in Boots” and “Tangled”. I confess I didn’t expect a lot from either of them and in some ways they met those expectations pretty much exactly, but they both had some really funny moments and some enjoyable character animation. I actually liked the character animation in “Puss in Boots” more than the “Shrek” movies, with some natural, fluid motion and subtle, character-specific body language.

“Tangled” had possibly my favourite CG human animation to date, as well as some superb timing and poses on one of the funniest characters I’ve seen for a while: Maximus the horse. Great stuff! To get the main humans so right, though, in both the subtle and the broad acting (along with appealing designs for the main two characters), well, the Disney folks really set a high standard with this movie I think. In fact, while I’ve enjoyed other CG movies more than this one in terms of their complete experience, I’m not sure that any of them have inspired me to just enjoy top-quality character animation like “Tangled” (although “The Incredibles” provides tough competition!).

I did the above sketch in TwistedBrush Pro Studio.

New Stores

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I’ve finally got some artwork available for online purchase in a variety of forms, through two print-on-demand sites: Zazzle and Society6.

Zazzle tends to focus on an amazing variety of products and styles and the ability to customize items, so that’s the place to go if you want heaps of options and a good quality result. Society6 aims for even higher quality, on a narrower range of item types (especially art prints, including stretched canvases).

So far I’ve been impressed with both places, and not a week goes by without me cheering up my workspace with the Zazzle mug you can see in the picture (believe it or not, that smiley face design took as long to do as some of my fancier digital paintings!).




Threadless Collaboration – Astro-Not

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Astro-Not - Threadless T-shirts, Nude No More

Another bit of teamwork between myself and the thinker Evan Ferstenfeld. It may not be a scientifically accurate depiction of space exploration but I like it! It was fun to play with the idea of adding a glow ink to it as well. It was another good experience and I’m happy with the design, so let’s see what it’s future brings!

Threadless Collaboration – Be Afraid of the Dark

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Closet full of classic villainsBe Afraid of the Dark - Threadless T-shirts, Nude No More

It’s finally here: a remake of the popular but unprinted “Do Not Enter”! After a lot more communication with the brain of Evan Ferstenfeld, the two-sided design has become one-sided, the level of scariness (and the number of characters) has been increased, and the colouring technique has been changed. We managed to get it done in time for the Threadless “Horror III” design challenge. Strangely enough, I’m not a fan of horror but it can be great source material for some silly shenanigans (does anyone else use the word ‘shenanigans’?)!

Big thanks to Reags for doing the Threadless submission’s Flash presentation!

Check out Evan’s online store.

Edit – I’ve removed the technical notes from the post and added a more detailed version to the tutorial section: Shirt design process.


Threadless Tee – Loot Collector

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Loot Collector - Threadless T-shirts, Nude No More

A bit of geek humour for people who enjoy science fiction and fantasy. The initial idea was to parody those video game characters that can carry an impossibly large amount of items in their inventory but then I got a bit carried away myself! There were another couple of movies, tv series and video games I wanted to reference but couldn’t find a way to do it. Oh well, I had fun with the stuff I did manage to squeeze in! I did a pencil sketch for the character then did all the finished art in Photoshop.

Threadless Tee – Frankentee

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Frankentee - Threadless T-shirts, Nude No More

‘Life stuff’ has kept me away from art for a bit, but here’s something new at last! Threadless had a design challenge going, with the theme “Character”. The goal was to develop a fun character that could also be made into a costume. Unusually for me, my entry was done entirely digitally from sketch through to completion. I used Photoshop CS3 and a Wacom Bamboo Fun, using the hard round brush.

Invention of Colour Again!

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Threadless is advertising gift certificates, and using a character from my design “Invention of Colour” to do it! Unfortunately my design is all sold out, so at the moment you can’t actually use your gift certificate to order it! If you like it, though, you can go to the product page and request a reprint (look just under the “Add to Cart” button).

Edit 11 Feb 2012: It’ back in stock as a 2nd edition!

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