New character!

I've started on a new character... a baby. In this case, a very unhappy baby. Why is he so unhappy? Well, you'll just have to stay tuned and check back to find out :)

In any case, here's a small preview of him. He's not quite where I'd like him to be -- want to add a lock of hair and a couple of other things.. but I think he's coming nicely.

Google Base and Best Darn T-Shirts...

Today, I've uploaded my current set of cafepress products to Google Base (formerly known as FROOGLE -- can't imagine why that name didn't go over..) as well as Darn Fine Shirts. I've only added a few designs there currently to see how well it goes over. Apparently, people are encouraged to click on these links to help rank those shirts higher:

-- the Border Security Shirt

-- the iPoo shirt

-- the Gore Peace Prize shirt

-- the "explosion A" shirt

So if you liked (or haven't seen) any of those, please check them out and rank them on that site.

More to come....

Quick update.. and a poster

I've taken one of my 3D designs that lends itself to a poster and rendered it at poster-size (4600x7000) for what should be a very nice 23x35 poster. It's the design below, on a white background.



I've also spent some more time working on the blog and related items behind the scenes. And, as always, more designs coming up soon.

Sold another one... more character work.

Sold another t-shirt today, that makes 5 in all so far. They've all been the Chuck Norris quote by Mike Huckabee. I've really got to give it to Huckabee for doing that -- he's got some very savvy marketers (and very savvy tech people) working for him. He's got some good ideas about some things as well, but I digress...

I'm slightly concerned that after Christmas, sales will drop, but I suppose political humor is political humor all year 'round, so maybe they won't. I'm still working on some new character designs for the cafepress shop... still trying to figure out which direction I want to go in with them. Getting feedback from people on the shop (and the designs) always helps. I did spend a few hours wrestling with the html/css/tables of the shop yesterday, and added a link so that people can add the cafepress store to their del.icio.us with a handy image and link in the sidebar. Don't know if anyone else has done that -- they probably have, but I haven't seen it. I'm going to add Digg and Reddit and Facebook icons soon (and all the other ones people use) just to round it out. If you make things easy for people, they tend to be more likely to bookmark than if it's not as easy.

Anyway, I know a couple of people are reading this... I'm hoping over time that this blog becomes both a history/journal of my cafepress adventures, as well as a guide to anyone who is considering opening up a cafepress store. I'd really encourage you to do it -- you can open a basic store for free, and uploading a design is free, and getting some very decent graphic software for free is pretty easy in this day and age. I'll probably go into more detail about the tools I use, both graphical and website related, at a later date. I'm also going to post some statistics about what I've done and how many things have sold and all that... but it'll be more interesting later when there's more than a week's worth of data. But so far, I've been up for about 10 days as a premium store, I've got about a dozen designs, a variety of products (some designs are a good fit for some products, but not others) and I've sold 5 t-shirts, for a grand total of $5 profit towards my $35 membership (for 6 months). So, all in all, I'm pleased. It's a lot more work than I thought it would be -- the shop interface can be a bit clunky at times, but as I'm getting more used to it, I'm getting faster. I'm also optimizing keywords and things like that which hopefully will help people find me better. Anyway, I'm off.