Marcelo aka ecsu and I noticed there aren't enough St. Patrick's Day tees around this place, so we thought we should whip up something for everyone to wear down to the ol' milk bar when they go celebrate all things shamrock-related:



Massively amusing/incredibly boring process blog coming soon!

At least you can take advantage of my insomniac scoring habit if you don't feel like doing the same. So much goodness up right now, even more than the usual much goodness.











































Some other tees that I want on my wall instead of my shirt:







And a whole mess more of really strong contenders in the shirt designery world of Threadless:

...cheap, imperfect and full of funny people doing funny things. This has the potential for lots of awesome.

Emptees Love This Way!

Hey all! I know I've been blogging it up about the latest in FA collab technologies, but I felt this design deserved an extra-special blowout on account of the enormous amount of work rising Threadless star mreisel did day in and day out, month in and month out to perfect this design and cram it to the gills and beyond with beautiful eye bounty.

I approached Mike nearly a year back to ask him to collab with me on account of his beautifully rendered, highly complex Threadless pieces, and he picked this one for a nice easy starter collab with me:

Jock Cock Fight: Wanna know what aliens REALLY do with human beings that disappear forever after being abducted? Well, let’s tell the world about the intergalactic human rights abuse taking place on planets out of our cosmic jurisdiction! I picture a group of aliens in all shapes and sizes, colors and styles, gathered around a small pen of sand and gravel. The aliens would have a bunch of money of all kinds (coins, bills, etc) and a bookie with a green visor on and the classic rolled-up sleeves of that kind of character. There would be lots of shouting and excitement in the scene, possibly some booze bottles and nachos flying through the air. In the middle of this cast of crazy alien characters would be a small group of human beings, ones that have been captured and now are involved in a human cock fight of sorts by their giant alien overlords! There could be a few scattered pieces of human life, perhaps a small tree or two, maybe a beat-up car and some other small things the aliens would put in the area to give off an appearance they would think would look like Earth to the humans, some garnish to the scene if you will. There would maybe be two or three humans staring at each other or coming towards each other on one side of the sandbox or cock fighting pit, and perhaps two others trying to hit each other with a piece of wood or their fists or whatever, maybe tackling one another on the other side. In the background we could see alien ships hovering, space and stars and such or maybe even a sportscaster announcing the play-by-play and/or a hot dog/alien food vendor hawking stuff for this alien sport of cock fighting/Roman gladiator style.

Mike's first quick concept sketch of the design:



Mike got to work right away churning out human competitors for the piece:









And a few aliens to start the crowd off:



I convinced Mike that astronauts would be the way to go pit fighting against one another for their own survival, and we discussed further turning the piece into a Gladiator style battle (complete with space lion in the pit) along with elements of a cock fight.









Reference photos:





In the meantime, more monsters are created through a bunch of brainstorming emails, with the first talk of popular culture aliens making their way sporadically into the piece as Mike is sketching along at a sweet pace:











At this point we had changed gears to astronauts in the main pit of fighting, suggestions were made to make the main fighting area smaller but allow room for more fighters into it:



Mike started restarting the sizing of the arena perspective:







First attempts at a background added here, as well as many many more aliens Mike continued to think up, as well as me suggesting we change the outside of the arena from a solid structure to a banner flying by to better make the design more understandable with some small text prodders:







I asked Mike if he could experiment a bit with the background to make something a bit less swirly and old-school and something more Star Wars-ish and celestial, and Mike very quickly illo'd up a background that was much more fitting to the piece, although it wouldn't be the final revision. More elements added amongst the crowd as well:



Mike further refined the background and changed the style of the ships also in the background next update:



At this point Mike and I both knew we weren't to the finishing line yet and had kind of hit a wall for dreaming up new and interesting alien creatures to populate the arena, as well as wanting to re-incorporate some of the space pop culture references we were planning before but backed away from. At this point we made a blog to ask for the virtually unlimited and helpful resources of the Threadless community, and you did not dissapoint! We got oodles and oodles of new alien ideas and pop culture creatures you wanted to see in the design!

Read the original help-along blog here, Mike and I will announce the winners of that contest very very soon!

After writing out every single new alien and pop culture alien the Threadless world asked for, nay, DEMANDED of this design!, we picked a couple from each list that were the strongest ideas and Mike went to work again chopping out some of the characters we felt were the weakest and incorporating the new ones as seamless as possible. I also suggested to Mike that we change the alien ship in the air to a souvenir stand selling all types of event-themed items, and Mike loved the thought and went to work on that big change as well:



By the way, the redneck beer-guzzling alien's shirt reads "Sweet Home Andromeda." Classy!

The suggestions by the Threadless loyal really re-energized Mike's ambition to finish this piece, and updates came at a rapid pace from here on until completion. Mike moved the souvenir stand to the other side of the sky, more pop culture references were added in as well as a suggestion to put some random pop culture space ships as well among the made-up typical outer space ones:



I also made a special request at this point of an alien Waldo which Mike made better than I had ever dreamed!:



It thrills me to no end that he's among the alien throng. lol. Don't call me a loser through the computer screen, I can hear you!

More finalizing the coloring and positioning of the background and foreground elements was done to make sure everything clicked as well as we could get it:



The final aliens were drawn in up top...:



....as well as the banner finally displaying a combination of words and phrases suggested by the Threadless faithful, as well as a little bit of complete spacey gobbledygook about free Groxvorbs thrown in there that Mike was gracious to include for me:



Finally, the piece was......wait for it..........COMPLETE!:



After scraping the rather embarrassing and completely mock-ready original name of Jock Cock Fight, I jokingly suggested Gladiastronauts and realized the two words fit together pretty dang nicely! Mike agreed, I wrote a little copy for the design, and voila!:



Emptees Love This Way!

Thanks again to Mike Reisel for never giving up despite this seemingly impossible task he took on of depicting a most epic revenge fantasy an ET could only dream of! Thanks so much again to the Threadless community for providing such amazing additions to this piece and for Santo76 who helped put the presentation together out of Mike's slides.

He can turn absolutely crap interviews with horrible interviewers into spun gold.



This asshole better have been playing purposely dumb, but even if he was, he could have done it a hell of a lot better. I guess he was playing purposely awkward, but Will just swerved around his strangeness to skewer him with hilarity fireballs.

"Yeah i like playing scrabble, but not in an ironic way."

Hey all! A ton of collab babies done with some of Threadless's most awesome artists are coming to full term! Check em out and tell us what you think! I'll be putting all my collabs for 2010 in here to decrease the millions of extra megabits I gobble up on the Threadatabass with 1,500 collab blogs.

More collabs coming soon with Bakpakmak, ratkiss, badbasilisk, ben4002, passenger72, jellyes, speliewelie and eventually Laser Bread again! Whoo!


SCORING

With fat pigeon:





PENDING

With ecsu:






FINISHED

With Polynothing:


With tolagunestro and diogohg:


With choubaka360:


With mreisel:


With Bakpakmak:


With TOSOMB:


With B7:


With tshirtfanatic:


With Bakpakmak:




MINI-PROCESS BLOGS

With fat pigeon:



After four or so revisions and an amazing new shading/shadow technique by Charley were incorporated:

Congrats to both you guys! From Bramish, a really simple yet hilarious slogan that gets funnier the more you think about it (and even funnier when you start looking over your shoulder every few seconds while wearing it to mess with people around you), and Ginette for doing such a dramatically different type treatment than your Hector type tee and making it look just as impressive. Those lil hidden eyeballs give me quite the uneasy feeling with their goofy yet constant googly-eyed stares!

I'm writing this blog in a tone and frequency that allows only you and I to see these words. Everyone else who looks at it will see an image of a donkey trying to make love to a broken down tractor in the middle of the desert.

I think it's time we combine forces and make something almost inconceivably bad-ass together. What do you say?

I'd love to email you some schtuff to see if anything tickles your fanciest fancy, or you can email me at frickinawesome@gmail.com to get the ball rolling and eventually turn into one of those giant snowballs you see in comic strips that have like three people smooshed inside with skis sticking out of it.

No biggie if it's not your thing, just thought I'd ask while you are browsing the Threadless blogging badlands.

I'm so glad you can't see the picture everyone else is puking upon sight of.

Hey all you aural lovers! I made this mix almost two months ago but my cd burner had finally passed away and it took forever to get a new one. The brand new laser is firing away and carving digital o's and 1's into compact discs with wild abandon, so here it is finally to say thanks as always for all the fabulous music all of you give or highlight for me and others!

Clickie here for rapid rail transport over to "Searching For Shipwrecked Rainbows"!

Searching For Shipwrecked Rainbows:

1. Simple As.. by Kid CuDi
2. Amongst The Waves by Pearl Jam
3. Ring The Bell by YACHT
4. Crystalised by The xx
5. Sleepsinging by Damnwells
6. Hawaii by Mew
7. Osaka Loop Line by Discovery
8. 6669 (I don't know if you know) by Neon Indian
9. I've Seen That Face by The Beatles
10. The Cure by Tegan and Sara
11. Pain by Songs
12. Just What I Was Thinking by Glorytellers
13. The Only Exception by Paramore
14. Daily News by Maps and Atlases
15. Undisclosed Desires by Muse
16. Mirrors (feat. Bun B) by Wale
17. Casual Goodbye by Bear In Heaven
18. In The Morning by Wolfmother
19. Battery Point by BEAK)
20. All For The Best by Thom Yorke

Ipod visual accompaniment commence!:




Sorry if any of these songs has become a mainstay of the radio, I try not to put a band's singles on my mixes but I don't listen to the radio and it's been a little while since I made it. I'll have another mix out soon too, been listening to a lot of awesome things in 2010 already!

PS- These three designs are about to be up for pending soon so here's some sneak peeks:

With Bakpakmak:





With TOSOMB:

I was doing a tiny bit of research for an upcoming collab and had no idea of the brilliance of bookend makers. Such full-bodied concepts for things whose purpose is to prevent your old-school keepers of parchment knowledge from falling on your brain's knowledge-storing areas.

Now i wished I read more than graphic novels and Ziggy comics.





















Unicorns and female Leprechauns are not left out of the bookend club!:



ummmmmmmmmmmm:



Even ones for Greedo Shot First DVD lovers!:




I think i want to be a bookend concept maker when i grow up now.