Hi, I’ve recently set up a store on Zazzle: http://www.zazzle.co.uk/gingerhammer

I always liked to get hold of 3DSMax merchandise from events etc. and have a few Discreet and Autodesk items and wanted something more to do with CG art generally.  I initially produced a Utah Teapot design with 3DSMax and thought I might as well add a few more designs.

Originally I set up an account on Cafe Press several years ago but didn’t have the time to do anything with it and forgot about it.  I put some effort in a couple of weeks ago but it still needs work and I don’t know HTML.  I found Zazzle very simple and easy to use so that’s why I provided the above link.

I’m not sure yet how suitable my designs are for Zazzle’s (or Cafe Press) printing on t-shirts but I’ve so far received a mug with my Utah Teapot design on and it’s pretty good (but they are quite big mugs at 12cm tall).

When the t-shirts arrive I’ll be able to judge the quality and let you know (if indeed anybody is interested!)

Kind regards,
Lee.

AMD PhenomII X6 1090T 3.21GHz, 8GB RAM, ATI Radeon 5800 1GB, Windows7 64bit

I take it these forums are a little quiet of late. I haven’t been stopping by for a while either. Used to enjoy reading the ‘off topic’ posts from the old forum.

Anyway, whether I’m just talking to myself or not, I’m glad nobody has noticed/paid an interest in my post.  I bought 3 of my t-shirts from zazzle and (in hindsight I’m not surprised) I’m going to have to re-work the colours to suit the printing.  Hopefully, zazzle will respond with some help but it could turn into a lengthy and costly to-and-fro prototyping mission.  I’ll also have to remove some designs I expect there to be problems with.  Disappointing to have a half-empty shop for a while though.

The cosmic swirl design on white t-shirt came out nicely and the Utah Teapot on black t-shirt looks great. After spending my life dealing with the vibrancy of computer displays and a little experience with high quality printing, it’s hard to look at printing on t-shirts without feeling a little disappointed but I’ll learn to accept and work with the limitations.

I’ll have a look at improving the Utah Teapot t-shirts but actually the darker, less vibrant printing works unexpectedly well and it might be best to leave it be.

On a further note, I wanted to create some digital art t-shirts to satisfy my own wants and then thought that perhaps other people with similar interests might fancy one of my designs.  Conversely though, do you think this somewhat niche market would be reluctant to buy such things because they have the skills themselves and would perhaps prefer to wear their own designs?

I’ve noticed an increase in the acceptance of digital art on the high street. Where once it was looked down upon because ‘the computer does it all’, I imagine all the ‘digital everything’ marketing has helped imprint a wider acceptance?

Lee.

AMD PhenomII X6 1090T 3.21GHz, 8GB RAM, ATI Radeon 5800 1GB, Windows7 64bit

Yeah, the forums are a shadow of what they used to be in terms of activity.
I used to like to drop by and read and respond every once in a while but seldom visit myself,
except maybe while having some spare time at work.
I am a fairly avid fan of Zazzle myself, though mostly for creating custom birthday cards for the extended family.
I did do a couple of mugs some years ago that came out pretty nice with my own design.
I tried one t-shirt before that but wasn’t all that thrilled with how it came out, though I must admit after seeing the print it was mostly due to the kind of things you are probably experiencing, not the best layout for the print and relying on detail too much that really was too high an expectation for a t-shirt.
Myself, not sure I’d but a Max t-shirt, but I might.
Might be careful about creating too much Max stuff, in case they (Zazzle) decide to shut the line down due to copywright issues.
Maybe they aren’t going to be all that sensitive about it, though.
I’ve had a few cards they wouldn’t print due to me putting collages with recent movie images or known characters in them.

Max 2014 64
Windows 8 64

My Game Blog

Hi Don, thanks for replying.

I’m having some success quality-wise now.  After buying most of the items on my store I made some minor changes to a couple of designs and took a couple off which didn’t come out well enough.  It would be really helpful if zazzle could provide a colour profile but, although their customer support has been surprisingly quick in response, they didn’t comment on this.

It’s been quite fun setting up and I’m sure I’ll design more in the future, time permitting. It will be interesting to see if people randomly find my store as time goes on.  I’ve already had visits from the far east to the far west and in-between. Hopefully people will leave comments too. Good or bad I look forward to both.

I’d also like to see stores set up by other 3d/digital art folks…

Kind regards,

Lee.

AMD PhenomII X6 1090T 3.21GHz, 8GB RAM, ATI Radeon 5800 1GB, Windows7 64bit

Hey Lee,
Whoops, never received notification of your response, so just now found it.
So you’ve made some progress with Zazzle.
It could be a lot of fun if one really concetrated on creating a full inventory,
but my interest isn’t that strong.
My public stuff is here:
http://www.zazzle.com/gifts?ch=hometime
As I mentioned above, most of my stuff is for relatives, so private.
The t-shirt I made for my sister (runner) some years back and have sold a couple to others
on the net and one of the Christmas cards sold to someone I didn’t know as well.
Not tried to promote anything just happen to have marked these public without much fanfare.
Oh, I did make the gas pump on the coffee cup in Max.

:)

Max 2014 64
Windows 8 64

My Game Blog