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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.

Legion Headwear Release wotto Beanie Design

Legion Headwear and Apparel  are a new company specializing in some very cool headwear. To launch their brand they held an art contest to select one beanie and one cap to add to their existing line of headwear. I entered the fray and came out on top in the beanie category. My design ‘Chalk Doodles’ was selected as the winner and went into immediate production. A few months later the company released the final product.

The good people at Legion sent me some samples of the winning design and made it available online. The quality is really nice and my son immediately wanted to wear it for the rest of the day. A nice fresh mint color with a doodled pattern, this hat is ideal for the slopes. I’m really happy with the final product and can’t recommend it enough. It’s selling fast so if you want one go grab one.

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.

The New Internationalist is a multi-award winning, independent, non-profit media co-operative. For over 40 years, they have specialized in investigative reporting and publishing on human rights, politics, social and environmental justice.  Each year they release a diary/planner and for the 2016 edition I was asked to contribute three pieces of my art.

The 2016 Planner features Resilience, The Infinite Struggle and The Eternal Struggle; all three pieces center around the constant struggle the planet experiences with human pollution. I was flattered to be featured alongside some cool artists. It was also nice to be featured in a publication that is attempting to change attitudes globally. If you are interested the planner can be picked up here.

Brewlink Brewing in Plainfield, Indiana, USA is an awesome brewery born out of the heads of too very good people. These people hired me to design their branding a while back, since then they have got the brewery well oiled and the beer is pouring. Their first beer was a “hoppy Pale Ale” and I got the job of designing a can for it. The design was aligned with the previous branding but also captured a lot of my style.

The main area of the can boasts the beers name, which is obviously important. This is surrounded by an octopus, doodles and the original BrewLink characters. The beer was launched last month and has been very well received locally. The owners sent me a batch and it was delicious, not just because I designed the can. These guys are going from strength to strength with the first batch completely sold out. As I type this they are busy cranking out more batches and more delicious brews!

You can see more about this project here, including keg collars and a tap handle! I’m off to design more cans…….

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 >