Monday, March 29, 2010

the yin and the yang.

i had an interesting day.

i worked from 9am until 10pm, and that really wasn't any fun. missed spending time with the family, relaxing after a normal sized stressful day, etc.

but in an effort to balance out the boo-hoos, the cosmos delivered unto me 3 things:
montana flash.
montana flash!

this is one of those overly-expensive rock band figurines that are carved from ceramic by a 3d sculpting/painting machine. and that alone is pretty keen. but even cooler is that this character is a doppleganger for my father circa 1970. my dad was nicknamed "montana flash" (hence the custom shirt graphics i created for him) and it was a shirt design i made for my dad's birthday a decade ago that piqued my interest into the legacy that is, montana flash.

so that was pretty cool.

and on top of that, i finally received my monster league baseball playing cards!
the cards are here.
the pre-orders are shipping out, click here to order yours today!


and lastly, my wife surprised me with new tank tops. this is fantastic solely because of the unexplainable lack of them in our area outside of the summer months. i know i live in wisconsin, but there weren't even any wife-beaters in the walmarts... that's absurd. so the 3 month wait is over.

you take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have the facts of life. the facts of life.

Saturday, March 27, 2010

1960's clerks intro.

after seeing the myriad saul bass inspired and re-imagined movie intros on the web, i went to work retooling my personal favorite movie: clerks.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

sunny day, sweeping the clouds away!

finally.

i'm contributing to pop-culture rather than just parodying or riding its coattails.

late last year, threadless was contacted to take part in a project focusing on sesame street characters. the staff then brought it to the alumni group (printed threadless designers) to come up with an idea to make a collaborative piece that centered around what makes grover who he is. the idea of his traveling tales trunk came up and the group went to work on grover's stickers collected on his journey.



the full project was for "t-world magazine" an australian bi-yearly publication, and the magazine just came out today:



and here is an early scan of the magazine (if you squint, my name is creditted third from the bottom right)


click here to zoom


if you want to get a better idea of the construction of this collab, please visit the flickr set. and an extra special thanks to ian leino for compiling everything and keeping us all in the loop!

last we had heard, t-world and the folks at children's television workshop were very interested in seeing this printed on (can you guess?) t-shirts! i would be very pleased to see that happen!

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

posters are here!

wheeeeeee!

it's so exhilarating to see your own work as a tangible product!
monster league posters have arrived!

the baseball cards (the other portion of this monster league baseball set) should be done very soon. you can pre-order now by clicking on any of the words in this sentence, but not the exclamation point!

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

march madness.

i have to thank a handful of my designer friends and my wife for making my store's inventory a lot more enticing to potential shoppers.

for the most part, i had edited the previous blog to reflect the changing offers, but as it stands now (sorry for the double post of this merch) there is:
a poster set

you have your choice of 1 of 5 of my monster league baseball characters (detail shots of each can be seen here) on a 11.75x16.8 inch poster plus a set of all 6 characters on their own baseball cards.

i just finished all the art for the backs of the cards (that's right, 2-sided, did i just blow your mind?) and i had some fun writing the bios for each character. the bio for reginald carg has been out there for over a year, but i figure i'll leave the rest as a surprise for the folks who buy the poster set or the individual order of the cards.

and second, is my updated plaidinum sticker set:

i just found out that my order of stickers will include the smaller "cell phone" stickers, so those are now included in a 3 sticker pack. i originally had just one sticker on there, but where's the fun of ordering a kick-ass sticker online, getting it in the mail a few days later and then sticking it on a stop sign and leaving empty handed (vandalism!)? now you can have one for your bumper, one for your grandma, a little one for your cell phone, and one to deface public property!

the posters are already being printed, and the cards should start printing tomorrow. the stickers are paid for and queued up on the press. now i just have to spend a few more dollars on mailing tubes (it's more expensive to ship the damn tubes to myself than the tubes actually cost :P ) and i'm ready to start spreading the madness. join me, won't you? preorder today!

a non-merchy postscript, i have risen from my design by hümans slumber and submitted a couple designs tonight. i'll be sure to let everyone know when they're up for voting. (the time is now! lycaena gygax and the unveiling.)

post-postscript, i've been listening to comedy death ray, i love movies and nerdist podcasts over the past week. my goodness, who knew there was more hilarity in the podcasting world outside of the smodcast universe! fantastic.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

merchy swag!

i have been contemplating getting my monster league baseball project printed for some time now, and i finally got some print quotes and i'm ordering up posters and baseball cards this week.

to celebrate, (and sell them) i have set up a store at big cartel, and took one of my more popular designs and i'm getting it printed up as die-cut stickers.





right now, both products are on pre-order. i'm having the posters and cards printed at a local printer, i expect those by the first week of april at the latest. and the stickers have an expected 4 week wait, so those will be in by late april at the earliest. i have a limited amount of each, so get your pre-orders in now!

Thursday, March 18, 2010

toys!

patch together is a site where people submit their character art for voting. this winning designs get made into figurines. i currently have my character, clyde, up for vote:

here's clyde:


and here's where you can vote:
clyde

let's make toys!

Thursday, March 11, 2010

drinking and driving.

i have 2 new designs up for vote on threadless.

one is a "what if" for the world of tron:
tron to be wild. - Threadless, Best T-shirts Ever

the other is a classy version of the beer hat:
soiree hat. - Threadless, Best T-shirts Ever

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

out of 1-ups?

here's a little sneak peak to a (possibly) soon-to-be-printed design for the folks who dove deep enough into my site to read my blog :D



and here's some weird late news. i had sold a design to a korean company about half a year ago, and then never saw the design surface. my curiosity got the best of me and i decided to search their site, and lo and behold, there it was. so i have categorized this on my site as a "recently printed" design, but i have no idea how long it has been on their site.

believe, at culture twist.
click here to buy.


they added a stressed treatment to the design and my hometown of wisconsin was "translated" to milwaukee... interesting.

awesome!

i recently complained on facebook that the city of duluth was featured on the awesomer before any of my work was.

then, yesterday, my design, "plaidinum." went up for sale on teextile.
plaidinum sale.

and i finally got my wish, a small 300x250 pixel stake of real estate on the awesomer.
awesome.

this has been a dream since i first found the awesomer following a link from a dick firestorm shirt. now if only i were as awesome as mr. firestorm...

Monday, March 8, 2010

come to the plaid side.

if you missed your chance at getting my "plaidinum." design on tee fury last year, here's a second chance!

plaidinum, at teextile.
click here to buy now!

this design sold well enough to get into tee fury's top 10 selling designs last year, so i am hopeful that having this design available for a full week at teextile (maybe more?) will at least match the level of awesome it did there!

Sunday, March 7, 2010

slick.

i spent the evening redesigning danndesigns.com's look, and as much as i detest words like "edgy" and "hip"... i have to say that i went for a "slick" new look.

i whittled down the amount of designs, so to see my full body of work, you should check my flickr page.

and to celebrate the new doman/new design, i put together a video on the home page. i was inspired by a blog on threadless collecting initial sketches of printed threadless designs, to both contribute, and make this video:



that same video is also integrated into my new site, so be sure to check it out there as well!

Monday, March 1, 2010

sales bonanza.

huge edit! feel free to read the post below, but these shirts are no longer on sale. i was either unlucky, or scammed. i'm hoping it was the former. this company just folded a week after opening, and will be refunding all purchases made. that seems legit, but this company now has my print ready art for the shirts seen below. so my designs may show up in china or malaysia (hot spots for stolen designs).

the tshirt vault site is now live, and you can buy my shirts!

clyde, at the tshirt vault.
lycaena gygax at the tshirt vault.
the death of supergrover, at the tshirt vault.

i am thrilled to have these designs on sale, especially the butterfly/glasses design. a buyer from fueled by ramen (or a manager) contacted me interested in showing the design to the band paramore, but they passed. and i've always had a lot of interest in my "the death of super grover." design when in the sidebar art on tee fury, so i'm hoping that parlays into a lot of sales.

what's in it for me? besides seeing the smiles on the faces of the children? i take in $3 per shirt sold, and i have a chance at getting a chunk of a $10,000 prize if i am one of the top 5 designs sold on that site. so, please, tell your friends. order 12 in case 11 of them are destroyed in a chemical fire. it could happen!