Tees

wotto’s  ‘Calavera V’ design launches DBH Subscription Boxes 

Design By Humans launched a subscription box in December 2015. The first box was art directed by Sage Hagan, who invited me to be the very first featured artist in a DBH subscription box. The box comprised of two limited edition T-shirts only available by subscribing to the box. The theme was Birth and Death, thankfully I got Death. It seemed fitting to submit a Calavera Day of the Dead skull, as that’s a style I am very well known for at DBH.

I created ‘Calavera V’ in vector form using a limited grayscale color pallet. The final tee was printed on a super soft heather charcoal tee using discharge inks for a quality finish. The box, when assembled consisted of two tees, mine and a ‘Birth’ themed Phoenix design by the very talented Studio8worx.  Packed with the tees were sticker sets, postcards and a card describing the theme and artist bio. This was an interesting challenge and something different for me, an honor to be placed next to such a talented artists. I’m told it was received very well by the fans too.

Famebit launches promotional t-shirts and shoes with doodle art by wotto.

I recently had the opportunity to work with Famebit, a company that matches influential social people with products and opportunities. I was asked to create a promotional design that could be used on t-shirts  and shoes, maybe other items too. After a short discussion they were drawn to my doodle style. It fit the job well and they gave me a long list of items, words and stuff that they felt visually represented their brand.

I created a fun vector design that encompassed all of the elements mentioned, everything from ceiling cat memes to a selfie stick stick man! The color palette reflected their core branding and the final tee was printed really well. They gave away several pairs of converse shoes as part of the promotion, you can see them here. Famebit also sent me a nice care package to see the tee first hand, always a sign of a great client. The quality was good and another cool client was added to my list.

Billabong t-shirt design by wotto

I worked with Billabong’s Art Director for 3 years between 2010 – 2013 designing tees for their apparel lines. After many concepts and back and forthings my first design was selected. The design was called ‘La Playa’ which featured a very detailed illustrative surfing Day of the Dead character. This design was very successful and Billabong printed the artwork beautifully. It went on to feature on several colors and crossed the globe in several forms, ending in Australia as a kids seasonal tee in 2012. Most of the other pieces I created were in a similar style, on the back of the first one being such a success.

Eventually the company took a different graphic direction with a trend change and I moved on to other projects. This experience while painfully slow taught me a lot and put me in front of many other clients. La Playa is still a T-shirt I see around and definitely the one that people reference years later. It was worn by a few people on TV shows and Kevin from The Kevin & Bean Show wore it several times.

StarWars x wotto Apparel. How often can you cross something off your bucket list? Not very is the answer. Well recently I crossed off working with Lucas Films & Disney on StarWars merchandise! Pretty amazing. It was an opportunity that arose through Design By Humans. One design led to several and here we are. Having my art approved by these industry giants was mind-blowing. A lengthy process but worth every nail-biting moment of it. I completed and had five designs approved, each featuring iconic characters from the movie franchise.

I designed a really mixed bunch; a cute Boba Fett, if you’re going to restyle an iconic Starwars character best to start with Boba.  Next I did a piece called ‘Sketched Empire’. I wanted to do a very hand drawn looking piece. I drew several of my favorite elements and composed them together, probably the least ‘wotto’ piece but the best seller of the bunch. A vector design of my favorite villain, a portrait of Darth Maul.  A Tie Fighter pilot with day of the dead style was my fourth tee. Finally I wanted to tackle the Ewoks, one of my favorite sets of characters. I wanted to make them ridiculously cute but also kind naughty. I came up with the idea that these cheeky little critters were graffiti-ing up a tree in the forest with the rebel symbol.

You can read a lot more about it here and get links to the products too.

Shirt.woot and I go back quite far, I have had several tees printed there. More recently they have branched out into other product lines, like journals, aprons and sublimated all over printed t-shirts. These sublimated tees are pretty cool, not just because the art can be printed all over the garment but also because they are on trend right now!

I’ve always felt my doodle art style lends itself well to this kind of all over printing because of the level of detail in my work. Woot opened their doors to all over submissions and my design ‘The Dirty Doodler’ was picked up. It was printed and made available for a short period of time, I was lucky enough to get a free sample. The tee is printed ridiculously well, with almost 100% front and back coverage! The images don’t really do it justice but I am one happy camper. Click “View Full Post” to see images >

Threadless has played a pretty big role in my life. I got my start in t-shirt design there, I met some great contacts through them and most importantly Threadless bought my wife and I together! So when they offered me an exclusive store to showcase my art I was super pleased.

I decided to showcase some of my most popular pieces but also feature three exclusive-to-Threadless designs.  ‘The Scoundrels’, ‘A World Without Humans’ & ‘Con Gusano’ are only available in this store.  Threadless also pay amazing commissions on every sale here so you can genuinely know that your purchase is really helping the artist. It’s not a token payment, it’s everything about Threadless’s bottom line!