my name is nic goodyear, i’ve been doing professional, commercial art for nearly 30 years. currently i do illustrations, shirt designs, logo branding/design, banners, stickers and signs.

if you’re interested in hiring me, email.

A BIT ABOUT NIC

started learning photoshop (PS2!) as high school yearbook editor, continued learning photoshop in college, making “kickass” graphics for serveral online clans for the game quake and over a hundred posters for local band Fish Out of Water. took 2d design and learned watercolor.

bullshat my way into a job at dolphin shirt company where i worked for five or so years until i was art director. dolphin was cool because it still had a ton of old school gear that they used, like enlarging tables, rubylith and duotone along with some other nifty darkroom stuff. i was hired by a fella named ernie norfleet, he was an old timer that had transitioned to photoshop, where as i knew photoshop but non of the analog techniques. it was so beneficial learning the old way of doing things while I was busy getting better at photoshop and learning macromedia’s suite of tools. did their mail order catalog for a couple of years.

left dolphin to join c.mote screenprinting until that fell apart. perfected the poor mans’s fine art of using a hp laserjet4mv to create films for shirts that actually worked for registering multiple colors,

worked for square deal recording and supplies, more commonly known by their store fronts, cheap thrills and captain nemo’s. nice enough people there, but man i could tell you some stories about the owners. they were the first people i had ever met that had internalized ayn rand’s materialist philosophy. I was once told that if you have some degree of intelligence that it was your right, nay, your duty to take advantage of other folk or else, “how would they learn?” fell in love with coreldraw, did a couple of their black and white mail catalogs. then departed.

did some designs for tee public, some branding and marketing for local restaurants, some websites, but had become a little burnt out. took a break for a couple of years.

hired at staples print department. after a couple years become copy center lead. staples was the worst. met a lot of nice clients there, but corporate is only interested in one thing..taking advantage of their employees as much as possible to eke out the barest increase of profits.

jumped across the street to borah’s awards, a local trophy shop, that’s been a staple in slo since the fifties. learned how to engrave…damm near anything. they called me doc and i had a great time there. learned how to run a big bed laser engraver. learned how engrave bricks, crystal, glass, plastic, glasses, frames. rings. guns. spent so much time creating unique designs for customers’ biggest moments in their lives. spent even more time learning to match really old plaque designs. learned how to run a sandblaster. built a complete mock-up system to do fully simulated full color proofs. rebuilt the laser control card (tho’ truthfully i just supplied the engineer…my old man…thanks pop!)

borah’s was sold to well-seen signs of atascadero. i was sold along with the shop…apparently, tho i only found that out later. i worked for well-seen for three years until they suddenly had to move to oregon to take care of ailing family members, stiffing me my unpaid vacation time in the process. im totally not bitter about that. not even a little bit.

i went back to staples as copy center manager for one more dreadful year, until i had to take a leave of absence due to being diagnosed with PAH (pulmonary arterial hypertension), more than likely caused by running a laser engraver in a small room without adequate ventilation, and with out any sort of breathing protection, for close to five years. PAH is scary. i couldn’t make it across a parking lot without having to stop as if i had just finished running the mile. standing up left me out of breath as if i had climbed the alps. luckily was diagnosed very quickly thanks to dr. ryan of central coast chest consulting, and began daily treatments. was finally able to move somewhat like a normal human. tho my capacity for activity is much reduced. I also learned the program sketchup and began to build 3d models of some of my original vehicle designs. eventually got the program v-ray and have been enjoying the ability to render my imagination for others to see.

then covid happened. i spent that year learning how to airbrush and i began making models and 3d dioramas. rekindling a passion for model making that had lain dormat for nearly twenty years.

i then was hired by quality tinting and signs. worked there for three years, running their large format printer and learning the ins and outs of printing vehicle wraps, large format graphics, signs and stickers. it was high stress and high demand and i enjoyed my work there. i just couldn’t reconcile what they preached versus what they did in practice. the straw that broke the back was when i overhead the owner give a client he was mentoring, the following advice: “you don’t even got know how to use a computer, just find somebody to do the computer and pay them like thirty bucks and then charge like a hundred for it. easy peasy.” one day things came to a head with the owners and the shop manager. i sided with the manager (a pattern!) and so i left. i had also been struggling with the ginormous amount of waste that is generated in the process of sign making. i mean everything about it was wasteful, from the cross country shipping of supplies to the sheer amount of wasted vinyl that we went through the cutter in the process of the making the sign.

i continue to create new designs and sell my art online through redbubble. since no asks here is my preferred software setup:

• photoshop for pixel pushing.

• coreldraw for layout/vector designs.

• irfan view for file viewing/converting

• sketchup 3d modeling

• fluidray 3d rendering

• topaz gigapixel (a game changer)

i’ve also been experimenting with affinity’s trio of programs. i like their no subscription model. and their policy of one lifetime license across multiple machines hits me right in the heart.

information wants to be free. gatekeeping of any kind is wrong. if everybody had access to correct information, think about how much better our collective decisions would be. you are only as good as the information you have.