Wednesday, April 30, 2008

wood is good.

i have finally made my first board specific art.

i've been posting designs at popdeck for a few days now, and i finally came up with something brand new.

wood is good.

if it tickles your fancy, you can vote on it here.

i hope your fancy is thoroughly tickled.

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

another day, another deck.

i've become obsessed with popdeck.com lately. here, i've taken another old threadless design i had made that i thought would really suit a skate deck.

a-ha!

you can vote here, if you're so inclined.

Monday, April 28, 2008

there can be only one.


HowManyOfMe.com
LogoThere is
1
person with my name
in the U.S.A.

How many have your name?



looks like i'm the only dann matthews in america.

that explains why my dannmatthews.com domain was still available when i bought it in february.

i was a little perplexed to find that 99.9 percent of people with the first name dann are female...

guess i'll have to confront my dad in a bar "boy named sue" style.

Sunday, April 27, 2008

skate decks and sketches and ink, oh my.

i recently stumbled upon popdeck.com, a site like threadless where designers submit art that is voted on and has a chance to win a cash prize.

this time, it's art for skateboard decks.

i'm not a skater by any means, for those who have seen rob and big, i'm definitely more big than i am rob. but i had been itching to reuse the design i had blogged about here, so i put this together:

multinational deck.

please help this cool community grow, vote on the design here, and join in!

in inky stinky news, i must request that you watch this sketch comedy clip from the whitest kids u know before scrolling any further:



finished?

are you sure?

if you are not, please don't scroll yet.

it will ruin the awesomeness!

seriously.

stop.

oh you did watch it?

okay.

i figure i should let you continue.

here it is!

most dedicated fan i've ever seen.

that, my friend, is dedication. much more dedicated than my autobot sigil tattooed on my shoulder.

that is fantastic.

site update.

my personal site was built a few months ago, it started with the idea for the designs page with the moving train cars. shortly after creating that (the inception and creation took a saturday afternoon) i built the home and print pages around it. i had never been particularly happy with the print page, especially when compared to the design page. so this morning, i woke up with a new idea to match the interactivity of the design page and created the new print page. i am pleased with the outcome, another idea inception to completion within an afternoon. and just in time for something i've been waiting to blog about here for some time... but i can't quite say yet what that something is...

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

gold, silver, bronze... tin foil?

i recently placed fourth in a jones soda t-shirt contest... possibly.

why add possibly after a dramatic use of elipses? well, after 1st place and runner up, there are 6 honorable mentions, and i'd like to imagine that they're in order, making me fourth place.

unless they're not in order and i got third, i'll accept that. a bronze medal is better than a tin foil medal any day.

here is the design i had entered:
abe loves aquanet and jones soda.

how could aquanet lincoln not have taken home the prize? he could have been jones soda's new spokesperson, rivaling the burger king! (despite being a different market entirely, they would battle regardless... war doesn't have to make sense [it has to make dollars! hahahahahah. {i'm sorry if that joke was insensitive, oh my! i'm into my 3rd set of parenthesis! i should probably back out now}])

to celebrate my 4th place near-victory, i command everyone to go out and purchase a jones soda green apple soda and drink and be merry and use to many "ands" in your sentences.

i have to applaud the threadless bloggers. we were directed to this competition from this blog, and after looking at last years winners, we decided to make it our mission to win this. 5 of us entered and we got the top 5 slots. super congrats to wotto for the 1st pace win.

Sunday, April 20, 2008

casey and his brother figures.

for anyone who's not a fan of tim and eric's awesome show great job... shame on you.

casey and his brother are two characters who perform their own casio keyboard fueled songs on the cable access show "uncle muscles hour" these disheveled boys mix their singing with performance art, costumes and weak gag reflexes



a short while after i made my own paper figurine family i stumbled across these little guys:

casey and his brother paper figures.

not for everyone, but definitely for me!

to keep you from digging around the net for the free paper figures, here are the links:

casey
his brother
his brother's hamburger suit.

enjoy!

Saturday, April 19, 2008

my odd collecting continues.

earlier, i had chatted about my odd collecting habits here.

my family was in a store called family dollar... oddly not a dollar store, more like a big lots. i didn't find any hidden treasures, so i was about to leave the store a little sullen. but i stopped at the front to look at the toy machines to see if there were any cute 50¢ toys for my daughter. i happened upon a machine with toys called "strange collection" (how appropo). what struck me about these little guys was that they really resemble the odds and ends creations you might find at places like kid robot where they specifically make toys for hipsters, very artsy fartsy and fun. but those toys will run you $5-$8 for a 4 inch figure. these guys were only 50¢ each:

strange collection

to elaborate for those who are blind, or incapable of discerning different figures from my "wonderful" photography, there are tall hunchbacked skull mouthed bunnies, babies in mech highchairs with robot heads, cubist aligators, baby's riding on the backs of mobile easter island-like heads, gunslinging robots in need of dental care, & robots with pincher hands that remind me of the alphie toy from the 80s.

after a couple of google searches, i wasn't able to find anything on them, but i currently have all but one of the molds, and it looks like each one is produced in 4 different colors. i spent $9 to amass the collection above, and i think they're perfect for the hip toy collector living off the budget that i do.

this is on a completely different thought, but i designed a sign for the electric fetus (a duluth staple, a downtown music store) a couple weeks ago and i thought i'd share that as well:

electric fetus sign.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

finally over my designer's block!

i had an idea last night and finally sat down and saw it through.

i have to get up at 6 am with my wife so we can take her to work and i can drop my daughter off at the sitter's before i go to work, but i stuck to designing and didn't get to bed will 1am (which isn't historically an oddity for me really.)

i currently have the design in the critique section of threadless but i'm certain i'll enter this into the contest soon.

here's a look at the design, titled, "multinationalism.":
multinationalism

click here and let me know what you think.
update:

it's awaiting approval now, i pushed it through to enter the contest after a couple tweaks.
multinational. - Threadless, Best T-shirts Ever

update 2:

as you may have found if you clicked anything in the above update, the submission was declined. the design carries too much legal risk for threadless to even consider printing, so it wasn't allowed in the competition. i'm very bummed. i really wanted to see this go through the motions. i want this thing as a big poster in silver ink with a spot varnish!

i also want enough money to do all that without worrying about rationing the ramen.

sigh.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

kid robot / adult swim make dann angry.

well, kid robot has made a deal with adult swim to make some mini vinyl figures.

you can check them all out here.

why does this merger of pure awesomeness make me angry?

let's start with the fact that i am very excited at the chance to own a little figure of toki wartooth and william murderface (pictured below) from one of my favorite adult swim shows, metalocalypse.
william murderface.

but these toys are blind packed.

what's blind packed you say?

it means that all the toys possible are shoved into windowless boxes, and when you buy them, you get a random figure.

i wouldn't mind most of the figures offered, there are only a few i would consider throwaways. but when i specifically want 2 figures, i have to buy a entire case to make certain i get both. or i'll have to resort to ebay after they're released for an auction selling the particular figures for far too much.

so i may drop a few bones in hopes to get one or both of the figures i desire. i wish these had shown up before my birthday, i would just ask every family member for one and increase my chances 10-fold.

Monday, April 14, 2008

el tigre's soft side.

my birthday gift from my wife and daughter arrived in the mail.

kitty.

booyah, grandma. booyah.

i'm not a wrasslin' fan by any respect (my babysitter told me it was fake in 91' hasn't been the same since) but how could i pass up a chance for an emerald kitty cover that makes me look brutish at the same time. i think i'm just in love with the paradox.

Monday, April 7, 2008

dann figurine!

after finding this blog on threadless. i nabbed the outline to create my own boxy dann figurine.

boxy dann figurine

i love this widdle guy!

update!

i made the whole family:

the matthews family.