Since most of my shirts are products / places / things from shows and films, I’m never under the impression that I’ll be the only one doing a particular tee. Since I’m a video editor and not a designer or artist, I never expect I’ll be doing the most well “drawn.”
However, I never expected shirt companies to take something I’ve done and sell it as their own.
Most companies only took the bug portion of the drawing but some just sell the EXACT design.
Since I did this shirt [Vamonos Pest Control] after the first time the fictitious company was shown on Breaking Bad, I didn’t have a great source image to trace (which I do when attempting to replicate an existing element to incorporate into a design). Since I’m not a professional artist, there are some unique details in the shirt (mistakes) that no one would have intentionally done. The oddest part of this is that other people have done the bug design better than me, but their’s haven’t been appropriated.
BTW, I haven’t included any comparison images because I don’t want to increase the frequency they show up in searches, but look a the one above and imagine the exact same thing (for the the bug, at least).
Given the nature of the types of shirts I make, I’m not unaware of the irony of crying about copyright infringement when 90% of my stuff is at least inspired by another’s intellectual property but at least I have the respect to take the time to modify and alter and re-draw the element and make something different with it.
Here’s the list of companies to date that took my rendering and have been selling shirts and other items with my drawing of the drawing from the truck on the TV Show on them: Crowne Apparel, Cinefilia Camesetas, (both of whom literally used the entire design), Mean Fellas, Degenerate Clothing, Front Room Cinema, 3D Supply, Texlab, ShirtCity and Futbolk.uk.
At this point, I’ve only contacted a company about the Crowne Apparel design as they took the entire design and sell it on the same print to order shop as mine. The other one’s don’t really bother me too much, I just think they’re sort of stupid for not stealing one of the better renderings of the bug.
I’m just happy some people buy the shirts I make (for myself. first and foremost) and enjoy them.
In other news; all Breaking Bad related shirt I’ve made and will make will now also appear in their own shop at the Breaking Bad Inspired Redbubble Page.