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!

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 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.

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.

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!

monster league baseball.

i've been having fun making these guys. i think i will pursue printing these up!

you can check the previous batch in the last blog post, here are the new teammates / rivals:

meet bocefus.

bocefus and the gang (reginald and sebastian round out the crew thus far) are pro baseball players from the middle of the last decade. at least, that's the style i was going for when i created these "vintage" monster league baseball cards for a threadless shirt submission.

i started the project out as simple sketches of a monster posing for a baseball card. then after i outlined it all in illustrator, i decided to toss the whole mix into photoshop and model it after an actual aged vintage baseball card.

i started with sebastian tender here:



after mocking him up on a shirt, it looked very plain, and i asked some folks over on the threadless blogs for some critiques and i had to agree with the suggestion of adding more to mix it up a bit.

thus, was born bocefus charm:



i also put together the back of another card to get a well-rounded pile of cards feel to it (seen in the link below) and then placed them all on the shirt:



ideally, i'd love to make 23 more of these guys (including a picture of the lumbering reginald carg) and actually have them professionally printed to sell. but i need people to clamor over them first, lest i waste money on yet another pet project. so please if you'd be in any way interested, let me know by commenting below. i'll actually look into the cost of producing them if there's a call for them.

ah, pipe dreams.

citizens bank sucks.

my family recently had to purchase a new vehicle after our last one was totaled in a car accident.

we wanted to get the loan through our local credit union, as we're aware that the interest is usually decent due to credit unions being non-profit and all that jazz.

but the dealer we purchased the car through found a better interest rate through citizens bank. normally , when i throw out a name of anyplace, i'll link to them, but this bank seems to have no web presence at all. (unless the name change to charter one is permanent, but they're still mailing out the old citizen's letterhead in an equally moronic move)

strike one.

i received a call last week that our payment was past due, despite having purposefully set the due date to the 26th.

strike two.

we get our money together and call to make a payment, but they only take checks or they can use a check routing number for a one time payment for $12.95.

strike three.



i don't use checks, and i'm getting sick of these companies and corporations trying to save a buck to their bottom line by not paying out the fees necessary to set up credit card and debit card payments online or even simple paperless billing where they keep our numbers on file. (care credit is another notorious company)

so we called back, asked what we owe to date on our as of yet untouched loan, as we will be refinancing through another bank due in whole to their shoddy billing / payment practices. to which the phone rep. stumbles over himself trying to explain that if we refinance the loan this that or the other way, we could save more than the $12.95 a month and make the payments over the phone at our leisure. so, in reality, he told us we are paying too much for our loan, but it could be cheaper and we could pay the same amount. that is weapons grade ignorance.

so i am pleased to say that they just lost a single paying customer to what i can only imagine is a slow growing business (again, i point out that they have no web presence.... mom and pop cookie bakeries have freaking web sites!) and i hope enough people are annoyed with having to write checks in an ever expanding check free market.

citizens bank was built by simpletons.