Saturday, November 29, 2008

Ooh. I'm a designer!



My entry cunningly disguised as a t-shirt!


Wow!!

Yesterday entries closed in Redbubble's challenge to design a temporary logo for the site, to celebrate the imminent arrival of RB's 100,000th member!


Having done a t-shirt for TSR's logo challenge, which didn't really comply - it couldn't have any words other than Redbubble, I decided to use the design again - adding the original header for Redbubble with a bit of a tweak!


So anyway ... I actually came 6th (two tied for equal first) and my first thought was of a dear friend of mine who congratulates me every time I do something which takes me another step away from being a "bloody photographer!".

So there you go mate ... look at that!!


Wednesday, November 26, 2008

You have succeeded.....

Every now and then, a tshirt comes to your attention that is so simple, so well designed and with such a meaningful message, that you wonder why someone didn't think of it before.

Today, I saw one such shirt.




By the amazing Lucan Industries Unlimited (to give him his full title) it follows closely in the footsteps of this:



and



Certainly no exponent of the large eyed cute and cuddly bunny/creature/monster tshirt, His Lordship (for short) elevates the use of typography on clothing, quite often handwritten, to a whole new level.

Other works satirise our consumerist society, the women we put on a pedestal and strange and meaningless design trends.

To paraphrase that much abused and hackneyed phrase ... Do yourself a favour and check out Lucan Industries Unlimited at redbubble.com

Saturday, November 15, 2008

London Calling - Vote NOW!!




With over two hundred amaaazing entries, Redbubble's fabulous London Calling challenge has become "the" place to see some of the most amazing t-shirts on the interwebs!!

My muse, unfortunately was on holiday - obviously somewhere like Octamocktie (wear the fox hat ..) and I didn't come up with anything half reasonable to enter ....

But never mind .... go have a look for yourself ... and hey, if you're an RB member have a vote or two!!

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Anglophiles Rejoice

To coincide with the launch of the 'Official RBUK Office' (and to welcome onboard the amazing Natalie "T is for Tshirt" Tyler, Redbubble has launched a wicked new challenge.

The theme is "This is London Calling" and your mission should you choose to accept it is to design a tshirt which oozes all things London!!

The winner and runner up will score some amaaaazing retail exposure in Demo - in that veritable icon of British fashion - Carnaby Street!!

I'm busting to enter this - but whether my muse will strike remains to be seen!!

Friday, October 03, 2008

Ignite Your Imagination!

I love photography, more to the point I love digital photography. The sense of "instant" results is one of the reasons it's my artform of choice.

I admire people whose art takes time to create ... and since I've been on Redbubble I've been inspired by and admired so much art.

This is Redbubble - and it certainly isn't instant, but it sure as hell is creative!!

From the people who bought you Right Sided Thinker comes Ignite Your Imagination.

Saturday, September 20, 2008

Redbubble Calendars

Yay!!

RB have kept another promise, and have delivered calendars able to be sold to the public in time for the calendar season.


RedBubble calendars are printed on an HP Indigo 5000 press. Each page is a satin-coated prints on 170gsm high quality art paper. The cover shows your choice of image on heavier 300gsm paper. Your calendars have a hanger and white wire binding.

RedBubble calendars are satin-coated prints on high quality art paper. They’re A3 size (that’s 297x420mm, or 11.69x16.54")

I've got a couple up already, the first, Vintage, old buildings, planes and cars ....





The second, Bloke, a little bit more of the same with some an old shed, cars, and some good Aussie bush!





Stay tuned - there may be some more to come

Edit: Indeedy there is another one now ..... called "Old Friends" it shows just a fraction of my teddy bear collection .. in my younger wilder days I was a dedicated arctophile!!




As always - clicking on the pictures will take you through to Redbubble to purchase these by the thousands!!

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Wat is Art?




No, it's not a typo - it's a great blog blogged (that is grammatically correct isn't it??) by Tania Rose!

Like me, Tania is a member of Redbubble, and she has fired up WIA to showcase some of the amazing talent on the 'bubble with interviews and samples of work.

Tania Rose has also made a "feature" of the header of the blog - and I am proud to say that at the moment, the header was designed by me ... (following in the footsteps of one Soxy Fleming!)

So, clink on the post title above to slide on over - look at my lovely header (/grin) and check out some of the amazing talent on show.

Sunday, August 31, 2008

A lovely new toy!

Cathie found a new toy!
Cathie loves words, Cathie loves colours, Cathie loves tshirts .....

Cathie found Wordle.
(Cathie hates talking about herself in the third person ... really)

The home page of Wordle describes it thus.

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

That is sooo understating the fun you
can have. After doing a couple for the kid's bedroom walls, I decided to try and put one on a tshirt. After a little fiddling I got it figured, and here's the results: (note the plural - I challenge you to stop at one!)







Ah yes - clicking on the tshirts will take you to my RB site to buy one all of your own!!

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Running the Numbers

Wow.

I'm not a numbers kind of girl - obvious to many who know me, But Chris Jordan's website Running the Numbers has absolutely blown me away.

For those of you (and me) who struggle to visualise boring statistics and numbers, have a look at this!

http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=?view=XXX_09NNN/

Be mindboggled ... by both the statistics AND the analogies.

Monday, August 25, 2008

The Joys of Social Networking (Part Deux)


While doing some housekeeping on here today, I was quite surprised to find that I have had a presence on Facebook for a year, and the big excitement at that time was that I had created a Tizme.

So, since then .....

Well - Mr Facebook has sold himself and become a squillionaire at some ridiculously young age - another fine case of "why didn't I think of that?" and the thing that is Facebook has just got bigger and bigger.

Amazingly, of the people that I grew up with, the only people I know on there are my mum (seriously), my cousin who is a few years younger than me and one bloke that I went to primary school with. I don't know what the issue is with the friends of my youth - perhaps they're too busy having real lives or maybe they're a little a-feared of the techolojony??

Me, I love it ... mostly as a promotional tool for my tshirts and photographs, but also because it sorta fits in with my preferred level of correspondence .... "Hi! ... you're still alive then" ..... nice puppy/kitten/kid ..... "How drunk were you??" .... and "You're going on holidays again??

In that time, I've started two groups - one for my "art" and one for old scholars of my primary school which was bulldozed a few years ago. That's where I found the bloke who was in my class, all the others in the group are mere babes in arms!

I've created an application - "Send a Cathie Tee" which would be a great tool if I could just work out how to put an actual link to the real tshirt - so if people liked it heaps, they may be inspired to buy a real one ..... a dismal failure ... I feel like the guys who invented WD39 and 6-UP!

Today I created a Cathie Tranent "Page" so that people could become fans, well probably more so I could get a much better interface for showing photos and I now have 5 fans! (even if one's me and one is me mum ...)









All this social networking is a wonderful thing, but I do wonder sometimes how much more time I would have for making art if I wasn't so busy talking about it?? ;P








Thursday, August 21, 2008

Moo-ved to Blog!

Today in the mail, I received my eagerly awaited Moo business cards!

Having heard so many people on Redbubble speak so highly of them, and having been a recipient of some of thickblackoutline's mini cards I decided to lash out.

The quality is everything promised and then some ... I got the pack of 50, and sent through a dozen photos. I have just put my name, email and mobile phone number on the back .. (left the url of my website off (???) but there's room to hand write it anyway, for that personal touch!)

They come securely packaged in a two part cardboard box - great for storage with a pair of dividers marked mine and theirs! (And it's made from recycled cardboard as well)

The colours are rich and vibrant, and the matte finish just make you want to touch them!

I have put aside one of each to keep - I just keep seeing them in little frames .... a great promotional tool for something special.

They are by no means the cheapest business cards available in the web wide world, but as far as quality is concerned, I think they're second to none!

Oh - and if you want to check them out for yourself - click on the "Moo-ved to Blog" header to be taken to moo.com

Friday, August 08, 2008

Catherine Lambert

 

After a chance meeting at the Gaslight Tavern at Bowden, I was lucky enough to discover that Adelaide jazz diva Catherine Lambert and I were long lost twin sisters (ask her - she'll tell you .... /grin).


Over a couple of bevvies, Catherine mentioned that she was in need of some new promotional shots - and as luck would have it, I'm a photographer ... lol.

So after taking some shots for Catherine's amazing Adelaide Cabaret Festival Show, we looked at getting some of the aforementioned promo shots.


 


These three are some of my favourites from the session!

TinEye



This nifty little "thing" (image search engine) - will search an image for you by
using sophisticated pattern recognition algorithms to find your image on the web without the use of metadata or watermarks.

TinEye instantly analyzes your query image to create a compact digital signature or ‘fingerprint’ for it. TinEye searches for your image on the web by comparing its fingerprint to the fingerprint of every single other image in the TinEye search index.

At the moment, according to the website, their database contains 701,666,310 images from the web but this figure is increasing regularly!

In private beta at the moment, I can only see this getting better as time goes on and their image base increases.

I have searched a couple of my most popular images and have found no matches, (thankfully I suppose)but have been having fun with their "cool search" function!

If you'd like to try it out for yourself, as of 18th August, it's now in open beta so click on the blog header TinEye above and be taken right there!

PS. They have a nifty FF plugin too - means you can just right click and search from your image page!!

Monday, July 07, 2008

World Youth Day 2008



World Youth Day is being celebrated in Sydney next week.

The Pope is visiting, and squillions of Catholic kids will be joining together to celebrate their faith.

Good on them.

What has pissed me, and a lot of people off, is that the NSW Government has slipped in changes to the law to make it possible for members of the public to be fined up to $5500!

And the crime for such a massive fine? "Causing annoyance" during July’s World Youth Day in Sydney. The laws “have the potential to make a crime of wearing a T-shirt with a message on it, undertaking a Chaser-style stunt, handing out condoms at protests, riding a skateboard or even playing music”.

So the Agent Provocateur group on Redbubble responded the only way a site that tells tshirts could ...

With the WYD Challenge

That's my entry at the top of the post - and you'll see lots more in the link above!!

Saturday, June 28, 2008

"The Bloody Photographer Writes"

Thursday I received a Bubblemail from Jo O'Brien asking if I would be interested in being interviewed for a Redbubble Creativity Survey .... 3 questions. I was then to ask those same three questions of two people of my choice, who would in turn ... well you get the idea.

So having answered my questions - I then asked the amazing Danny Nolan if he would be interviewed.

This wonderful interview was the result.

The Man from N.O.L.A.N


Questions: Cathie Tranent
Answers: Danny Nolan

How did you discover Redbubble, and what made you stay?

The same as a lot of people in the early days, via Annelli’s Blog on The Age web site.
It kind of hit a chord. It was easy and not pretentious and just wanted you to contribute what you thought was your best. It was great back then even though it didn’t have a fraction of what we have now. It was very friendly and encouraging and dare I saw it, predominately Aussie.



What made you stay?


Two things.
Firstly, the friendships I had made with the characters on my computer screen, and secondly great moments of inactivity at work. No, I kid.
It would probably be the million ideas and thoughts that invade my head since joining the ‘bubble and the ability to use Redbubble as an outlet to express them.
Sort of like an ideas box (or toilet).

Were you one of those kids at school who did caricatures of the teachers and excelled in Art Class or English? Or did you discover your talent later on in life?

I did do caricatures of teachers for the school magazine two years in a row and if you find an Ashwood High Yearbook 1977 & 1978, you’ll see them.
I was a lazy student and didn’t try hard enough, even though I was constantly told I didn’t live up to my potential, whatever that meant.
I don’t have any regrets. Everything I have and do now is a culmination of what I’ve done in the past and it’s turned out pretty good.

Who on the bubble inspires you – or do you admire?

I’m inspired by lots of things but the people who have really made me feel like there are no boundaries on Red Bubble are also friends.
Scott Robinson has been an inspiration, whether it be supporting my work or asking his advice, even taking my ideas to a whole new level. A great talent and person.
His Wound up tee is brilliant and is worn with pride around our house. Scott’s whole profile is excellent.

The one once known as Lucan has inspired me to do so many different things I don’t even think the same any more. He is one of the only true geniuses I have met.

Some chick called CathieT because she is so enthusiastic it’s contagious.

The writings, ramblings and quick wit of Mr Khan was a find on this site; he also is a very clever man.

TheWarOfTheRoses
doesn’t contribute much but what they have has been nothing short of shockingly brilliant. Stories to make you shake your head in disbelief.

That’s five but there’s heaps more: Ange, Anne Van Alkemade, Empress, the wonderful sjem who is one the nicest people on the planet and the Super Duper Multi Talented (and also nice) Glen Smith and shares his art with the world. I can’t forget the amazing Ronnie Purcell who with all her widgetry and bloggery and podcasting ideas has made me explore whole new areas in story telling.

There are countless pieces of people and art I admire but you’d have to check out my watchlist and favourites.

If there was one artistic talent you could have – and do jawdroppingly well all the time – what would it be?

To draw like Ralph Steadman or Gerald Scarfe

Your work is incredibly diverse. What gives you inspiration?

Anything and everything.
I can get so excited over an idea and it leads to other things (technical & gadgetry stuff) and then onto learning new skills to make it better. Red Bubble has helped me find out how to scratch that itch, then when that’s exhausted, just when you think that’s all you can do, Bingo – something else comes along.

There is no one specific thing I can mention, it just comes in one big coincidental roller coaster.

I have said heaps of times, I find a lot of story ideas in my pillow and that’s so true. I wake up early and have all these wonderful things bouncing around in my head, some silly, many with a twist, a few of them sad. That’s why I keep a journal next to my bed because I lost as many as I’ve written down.

What would you consider your best piece of work and why?

Hard to say, because everything was done for different reasons, some had a lot of effort and some had none.

I love Binalong Ave because it wrote itself when I was in bed wondering what a world without Mum would be like (morbid & strange I know, but I can’t remember how I got to that thought) and I started to go through a super fast history of the place I grew up in.

It fell into the pillow and I wrote down that morning and posted it on Red Bubble. It has since been published on Australianreader.com. I still get a bit emotional when I read it.

Fear and Loathing at Red Bubble is another all time favourite. After communicating a couple of times with the character Lucan I thought he’d make a great interview (I’d done a couple of profiles by this time) but I knew he wouldn’t be in it, so I made one up in the Gonzo style. It just so happens he was a big Thompson and Steadman fan so he approved.

I eventually met Lucan a couple of times and I now honestly believe the character in the interview could possible be him by the time he is 60. Hahaha.

Epic was fun because it started from nowhere and morphed into this crazy real-time story, something that could only be done on the Bubble. When it was finished and people commented at the end and realised it was a piece of fiction it was very satisfying. It was also the first appearance of the total and utter bastard Ruin.

Pious and Mouse adventures in Rattown was the realisation of a project that was in limbo for years and great to see finished and my latest effort Monk Rock was incredibly fun to make and I would love to see more of this type of story telling on Red Bubble.

Five things about you that might surprise people?

I can’t leave a book at a page that ends in 36 or 66
I am a recovering sufferer of Cynophobia
I raised my 3 children by myself
I have a hobbit hole in my back yard
I ‘m getting married in September



What do you dislike about Red Bubble?


Two things: One is the way people criticise RB for not having done this or that. I’ve been here for a year and I still can’t believe I get all this free. Peter, Paul and Martin should be given medals for being so generous.

Second is the mob mentality that happens sometimes and turns into a witch hunt. Very sad when that happens.


What would change about Red Bubble?


When sjem, sonofsjem, the zombieLucan and I broke into the RB offices recently I was shocked not to find an inspiring garret type artist commune but a boring old office. We tried to set fire to it but it everything was so wishy-washy that we couldn’t get anything to burn. If the cash situation improves I’d buy them better offices.

Five things you want to achieve before you die?

Go to Disneyland 5 times…..sorry it’s nothing I really think about, If I had one wish it would be that all my children outlive me.


If you had to restrict yourself to one genre of writing, what would it be?


Laugh out loud humour

Is there anything you would never write about?


If it doesn’t interest me I don’t write about it. I’m also loathe to write on technical issues mainly because you have to know you’ve covered every base before printing.

Do you think that formal training or lack thereof makes any difference to a good writer?

Firstly, I don’t consider myself a good writer, I have always said I was lazy and wrote too fast.

Secondly, there are a lot of people who love the English language and how it is written and they demand good writing.

So the answer to your question is No. There is market for anyone who is a good storyteller or has a good story to tell.

It is the reader who makes the final decision.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Warm Iron

After seeing Pax last week, and being excited by what sort of marvellous promotional tool it was, I then thought - hey, hang on - where's the tshirts?????

Of course the amazing Xavier was one step ahead of us - and late Friday teased with what appeared to be another mosaic compiled entirely of tshirts!! Woot ...

Patiently (sort of) waiting till Monday revealed this:

Being a tshirt kind of girl I applauded loudly and then wondered how the hell I was going to (hopefully) find any of my tshirts in this amazing work.

For those of you computerishly inclined, you can download a copy of Ruby, and run a little script thingy doover written by the amazingly multitalented Dave Pearson

Me - I was just really lucky that Dave's nosy and found the 11 shirts I have on there!!

Enjoy.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Honeymoon in Melbourne.

This is a composite image panorama ...



The bride is one image, the moon another and the Manchester Unity building another 3!!

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Vote for Beer Drinking Robots


The most amazingly talented Mike Hepburn (aka Big Fat Robot) has made the people's choice finals of the Ted 696 Project.

This entailed artists designing a brown paper bag for the new Toohey's Extra Dry Longneck ...

Mike has drawn an antlered red head girl and his design rocks!! (No comments about horny ginger nuts puhleeese!!)

Go here and then to the people's choice section to vote for her!!

Friday, June 06, 2008

Drawing Day 2008

Drawing Day 2008

June 7th is Drawing Day 2008!!

I'm gonna have a go ... should be interesting.

The Redbubble Drawing Day group is here.

Go to it folks!!





Well, thanks to my lovely Wacom tablet, here he is!!




And here he is again - on a tshirt .....



Even Connor had a go!! Entitled Man walking a creature!!

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Sabre Tooth Fairy

A fellow Redbubblian is doing it a little lean at the moment .... living in an attic with a wicked stepmother ... er, no, that's not quite right, but you get the idea!! (I wasn't kidding about the attic)

There are some great tees to be had here ...

Check 'em out!!

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Poor neglected Blog ..

Well, after surviving another visit from that evil thingy .. RuiN, normality has been restored to *A.R.S.E, Redbubble and the world as we know it.

Highlights of this week have included having "my" featured page featured .... finding Nat Tyler had added linky goodness to her new blog ... (link to come) and our collective consciousnessssses have been stirred thanks to the Road to Hell's Ross Robinson to kick up a cotton picking stink about China's abysmal human rights record .....



That's my addition to the CCCTM Cotton Consciousness Collective .....

Thursday, March 06, 2008

Blogs and Widgets

Phew - busy week with *A.R.S.E.

TBD and I had a contest to see who could throw together the best blog for the group, and I "won"!

The result was a blog entitled "Choice Pieces of *A.R.S.E" and of course, every self respecting blog needs a blidget (blog widget) so that you can leave it laying around everywhere!! (See below)

I did however manage to finally make the Band Aid tshirt .. thanks Jumpy!

Friday, February 29, 2008

Look at this!!



Woot - this is the "popular" page for RB as we speak .... not one, but both of the Malborough Lisa T's on there!!

Thursday, February 28, 2008

A little self flogging!


I did say I would be back soon, and I am.

I am currently one of the co-hosts of the Redbubble group known as A.R.S.E (Artists, Riters, Snappers and Extracting the Piss!)

The group began it's life as the Parody, Satire and Lampoon group, but soon evolved into something well, more evolved!

One of the member's was shocked to find that there was a guy on Zazzle.com blatantly ripping off one of Lucan's tees - along with some others, and so en masse the group had at him, and also complained through all the right channels to Zazzle management.

This led to the gentleman (loose term) removing more than half his word, and ultimately to the closing of his account.


Then - after finding Rumplo.com (sort of Flickr) for tshirts, we spread the word amongst the group, there were some others doing the same and all seemed great. Not only could you upload links to your own works, but also links to others.

A few days in - the admins of the site decided to stop accepting submissions from POD sites, such as Cafepress and others (including RB) - obviously drowning under the sea of crap from those who put stuff on a shirt just because they can - with little or no thought as to its actual artistic merit.

So then the onslaught. Jumpy and Ninja Steve had a very interesting conversation about tacos - I tried to sound righteously indignant - and Nat went straight to the top with a well placed email or two to their admin. Kathleen decided to stay and be a thorn in their sides!!

Nat also had the rather good idea of involving the Count of Cotton (onetonshadow) our illustrious tshirt guru Redman ... and filling him in on the whole saga - Rumplo was implying that the quality of POD product and art couldn't be as good as that of the inde designers and manufacturers .... So the saga continues ..... see the link here to keep up with it as it happens!!

Mission: Rumplo



Monday, February 25, 2008

Ah .. I knew it would happen

Well, as you can see, it's been quite a while since I updated this, but there has been much going on in between - not to mention Christmas, New Year, kids back to school et al ......

Lots of new tshirty stuff happening - not too many photos though!

Thank goodness for the widget in the top left hand corner ... at least IT's up to date with the newest shirts.

As you can see from the time this was written, the middle of the night is not conducive to coherent thought ... although I can manage the odd vector!!

Promise to upload some pics of the newest shirts, some of other people's brilliant stuff that I was able to get with my $200 RB voucher AND the reno on the bedroom wall!!

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