The benefits of Snake Oil - Designing for T-shirts

First, I want to thank everyone who made "Walker-con" such a success! It was a bummer missing Wonder-con but I was able to dang-near sell out of all my T-shirts through this experimental web-store event! Thanks to everyone who picked up T-shirts and to everyone who helped spread the word.

Well, since my portfolio site is currently devoted to my illustration and personal artwork, I thought it would be good to compile some of my "Snake Oil" T-shirt designs, stories and testimonials as a blog entry. I've had to slow down on printing T-shirts now that I live in a small San Francisco apartment but I've had some recent opportunities to design cool stuff for clients.

This is a logo I did for Mad Trapper Tea Company, a new place to get a warm beverage in the cold and unforgiving Yukon territory. I printed up some T-shirts too.

Here is a limited edition Tee I recently designed for Yahoo! Inc. Sorry, it's just for awesome employees of Yahoo!

I designed this Tee to sell at the 2011 Santa Rosa Handcar Regatta. It was also made available at select boutiques in San Francisco.

I stopped this guy on the streets in SF. Represent!

More Snake Oil designs. These T-shirts have been known to get people out of speeding tickets and into hot dates with hotties! (Results not typical)

Ben Walker's Snake Oil Logo tee

Jackalope Crest tee

Toast Boy tee

Armed Bear Icon tee

Bad Bear tee

Armed Bear Crest tee

Winchester's Bicycle tee

Society of Flying Machine Operators tee

Armed Bear West Side tee

Hey, check out these sweet customer photos and testimonials!

"Ben is a great artist with a great attitude! He's very easy to get along with, does excellent work, and his T-shirts are awesome.”

-John Romero, Game Designer

“Ben’s Old West inspired designs are clever, eye-catching, wearable art. Gun slinging bears, giant jack-a-lope, and moose antlered hares, fill Ben’s cotton canvases. Every time I wear one I inevitably hear, 'Great shirt! Where did you get it'?”

-Michael Slack, Children's book illustrator

"Ben is a great artist, AND a great person! ... Ben has done incredible T-shirt and graphic design for me: timely, original, affordable and incredible!"

-Kepi Ghoulie, Rock Star

“I've been a fan of Ben's artwork for some time and the Snake Oil company is a fantastic direction. I get comments every time I wear a design. They're my favorite.”

-Cheyenne Allot, Account manager

"I've never had more comments or compliments wearing a graphic tee than I have with one of yours. In fact I'm wearing one today. I own four of them and even though my Toast Boy one is well worn and ready to be retired I can't bring myself to toss it because I love the graphic that much. Thanks Ben for making me feel hip again."

- Marc Mascot, Sculptor

More Happy Customers

Authors of Cool Jerk and One Con Glory (respectively) Paul Horn and Sarah Kuhn

Actor, Author, Geek legend Wil Wheaton

Epic Artist, Matt136

Well, there it is: The full Ben Walker's Snake Oil experience. I'll keep designing cool T-shirts and getting them out there however I can. I'm also looking for new opportunities to collaborate with larger clothing companies, bands, and what-have-you. Hit me up!

Thanks for reading,

Ben

Mega Big-Time

I was inspired to post something after The Bold Italic.com recently posted an article on on Power Couples in San Francisco. The article features some local couples who do amazing work individually and in colaboration with the person they love.

Over the past year I've been collaborating on projects with my girlfriend, Amanda Storey. She is full of fresh, clever ideas and I love that we can bounce ridiculous ideas off each other. It's also refreshing to be able to create things that don't exactly fit with the look and subject-matter I usually work with. Amanda may be all about style, beauty, and sugar-frosted feminine fantasy, but its the fact that she has the exact same sense of humor that I do, basically that of a 15 year old boy, that makes us work well together.

Check out Guest Checks

So now any artwork that we do together is created by Mega Big-Time. Here are a couple paintings that came from characters in Amanda's sketchbook.

Princess Adora of Dobel Woods, Princess Fraulein of Muhlenberg

The only rule of Mega Big-Time is that there are no rules!!

When I was asked to be part of Gallery 1988's tribute to Wet Hot American Summer, it was Amanda's idea to make a road-sign pointing people to the campsite or "town". The rest was easy.

Props to Matt136 for helping with the wood cut-outs!

But why stop there? Amanda had the idea to take advantage of a sunny San Francisco day by doing some promotional photos before the artwork had to be shipped off to LA.

What's next? Mega Big-Time is excited to be part of Gallery 1988's 8th birthday and celebration of the Internet's favorite creations. MEMES Opens May 4th, 7-10pm.

More info at www.nineteeneightyeight.com

Thanks for reading!

Ben

Logos and such

I've done a couple illustrations recently that allowed me to check off items from my "Always wanted to do that" list. This first one is a beer coaster for Cypress Grove Chevre, a goat cheese company in Humboldt county. So these are getting handed out to beer enthusiasts at brew festivals. Check! Plus I love goat cheese so I'm looking forward to a care package from these guys.

Created in Adobe Illustrator.

This is a logo I did for a coffee and tea company in the cold and unforgiving Yukon territory.

The Mad Trapper was a real guy who was the focus of a wild man hunt in Canada back in 1931.

So, next on the list is a beer label. I'm talking with a microbrewery about a concept for one of their labels right now. I'd like to do lots of beer labels, wine too. Maybe I should stalk wineries at the events around Napa and Sonoma....road trip!

Thanks for reading!

-Ben

Ah, the Romance

I thought I'd post a few illustrations I've done recently that are muy romántico! This first one is a pin-up caricature of my girlfriend that I drew for her as a gift. Want one of yourself? Hit me up. (sorry, if you aren't my girlfriend, it won't be a gift.)

Personal pin-up Yow!

Did you know I can be commissioned for ultra-personalized wedding invitations? This one was hand painted in watercolors. My hand-writting could be, uh better, so for this one I used a transfer from a print-out of the desired text. I don't want to post the snap-shots this couple sent me but I can say they were very happy with the likenesses. This illustration even prompted the groom to loose a little weight in order to look more like the invitation. My drawings can improve your life!

Wedding invitation, watercolor

Birthday invitations too. You don't need to have the budget for a full-on watercolor painting. I can do a sweet line drawing and color it digitally. Snap! It's ready to send out to all your jealous friends.

Birthday party invitation

Thanks for reading!

-Ben

Gama Go

My first job after graduating from Academy of Art University in 2006 was with Gama Go, a San Francisco design company. I helped create designs for their Fall, 2006 clothing line. It was a great learning experience working with people I truly look up to.

Below are some samples of the artwork that ended up on T-shirts and in their book of collected works, Art and Design of Gama-go.

Here's a design concept I was playing but didn't make the cut (haha).

Game Art

I'm looking for new opportunities to make cool art on a full-time basis. Here are some samples of artwork I've done for various game companies. I'm good with the whole Adobe creative suite. Hit me up.

For more info, please check out my Linkedin profile.

How to Steal a Million

Art Theft in 2012

I want to address an issue that is by no means new but could use more discussion. It's something that all of my professional artist friends deal with and in these tough times, it stings more than ever.

Thanks mostly to the instant availability of countless images and ideas found on the Internet, large companies are stealing images and concepts from independent artists and designers and passing them off as their own. Are there any repercussions for these thefts?

Yesterday a friend pointed me to a YouTube link for SB Nation. They were discussing the redesign of an NFL team logo and presenting more redesigned team logos as gags. Wow, I was surprised to see their spoof logo for the Chicago Bears. It was my painting, Bad Bear, poorly recolored orange and placed in the Bears iconic C. This image is the most popular and recognizable of my artwork. I've sold hundreds of prints and T-shirts bearing the image since 2008.

Here's my original painting

Here is what appears in the SB Nation video

See the full YouTube video here

Of course it isn't just large-ish companies ripping off artists and passing things off as their own. By coincidence, this theft was called to my attention the same day I had discovered desktop wallpapers that were clearly derived from the same "Bad Bear" image. Thanks to Google's reverse image search feature, I've discovered this piece used as club/band flyers, avatars for strange political groups on Facebook, or just being passed off as an amateur artists' own work on Deviantart.com.

But it's the large companies who really have no excuse. They have the budget and resources to commission and/or license illustrations. The least they could do is make sure their in-house designers use only their own skills and stock imagery to create content. Instead people can't seem to resist the temptation to pluck good ideas from the vastness of the Internet and assume no one will notice or care.

For me, the saddest thing is that people often don't care. Once a creation has been presented and accepted by the masses, it's "author" is set in stone and taken as gospel. Take for example the fact that Stairway to Heaven was clearly derived from a song by a long-since-forgotten band called Spirit. This was only called to my attention last week. The members of Led Zeppelin took the sound and feeling of that song and made it their own. Now it will safely go down in rock history as their legendary creation. Closer to home is the story of Chris Ware and Family Guy. Chris Ware is a contemporary comic book artist and well, a visual genius. His body of work is so robust. It's clever, heart-warming and beautiful. Chris Ware may be a God among artists but he is not a Household Name. And unless someday it comes out that he makes his drawing paper from the skins of his countless victims, he probably never will be. So what happens when a character designer borrows HEAVILY from Chris Ware's artwork in creating a character named Stewie for TV's Family Guy? Well, that character goes on to become beloved by fans of the show and when accusations go out the general population says "Who the fuck is Chris Ware?! We love Family Guy! Weeee! I'm hungry, pass that paste."

Compare and contrast

I wish I was better at putting into words what a travesty this sort of piracy really is. But my strength is in visual communication. Actually, it's my entire livelihood. I know that a lot of people have trouble seeing value in art, graphic design, illustration. There is a certain intangibility, even frivolity perceived in it. You can't eat, drive it, or build a bridge with it. And once its been created and made digital, I'm sure it feels completely harmless to just pluck it from the Internet and use it for one's own purposes. But good art and design takes a lot of thought, frustration and sacrifice to create. Artists have as much a right as anyone to be compensated for the service we provide. And it is a service. Good artwork and design drives public interest in just about any industry. That means other people make money from it. If someone chooses to use our imagery without going through the "trouble" of actually commissioning an illustration or licencing existing artwork, it's no less of a theft than walking out of Best Buy with a flat screen TV.

You wanted it. You took it. You benefit from having it. But you didn't pay for it.

This isn't meant to be a sob story. I only wanted to voice my thoughts and point of view on the subject and raise some awareness for folks who are surrounded by art and design, in other words, just about everyone. I ask that the next time you hear that "someone you've never heard of" claims to have created something that is credited to "someone famous", don't shrug it off. Hear them out.

Thank you,

-Ben Walker

*UPDATE* The parent company for SB Nation has since responded to my email. They have added a credit and link under the video and sent out promotional tweets pointing people to my work. I do appreciate these efforts. For now, I'd like to keep this post up as the issue in general is worth talking about.

For the record, here are some more thoughts on bears with guns and pictures of my "Bad Bear" through it's existence:

Here is the original sketchbook drawing.

The original painting sold to a private collector in 2008.

The T-shirt debuted at Wonder-con 2009

San Diego Comic-Con 2009

Wondercon 2011

Seattle Weekly photo of me at Emerald City Comic-con 2010

A bit more about the originality of this "bears with guns" theme. I'm certainly not the first person to think of this gag. When you consider the pun of "The Right to Bear Arms" (though I hadn't) it's an easy leap to a joke about a bear with a gun, but it did come to me organically. It happened in 2006 when I started painting work with an over-the-top Western theme. I wanted to answer the question of what would be the scariest thing ever to a cowboy. The childish answer of "a bear with a gun" popped to mind. I've created a lot of armed bears since then. Its funny and people respond well to it. So again, I don't claim ownership of the gag. It's like a zombie Elvis, people can't help but think of it, but it's fairly common as ideas for characters go. At this point I just try to do it my own way and let others do it their way.

Thanks for reading!!