Tokyo Massacre Painting Update

Here's where we're at so far. Being that it's so big it takes a lot of time to complete. I think there's still a few hours left to pour into this one before we can call it finished. Hope you like it, and if you want something like this for yourself feel free to contact me.

Moleskin Notebook

I listen to this radio show on the cbc called "The Age of Persuasion" by Terry O'Reilly. It's a great program explaining the evolution of marketing and commercials from the dawn of radio all the way to the present. It's very interesting in explaining how brands like youtube, nike, apple, etc. got to be where they are today. As I listened to an episode last night while painting those Tokyo Massacre canvases I was introduced to the Moleskin Notebook. I've never used one of these before but Mr. O'Reilly made it sound so interesting that I felt like I needed to do more research. This is what I found directly from their website:

"Moleskine (mol-a-skeen'-a) journals are truly legendary, possessing a minimalism, style and quality that literally has centuries of experience. To the initiated, there is no substitute. Moleskine journals - and rest assured, they're not made from the skin of a mole - are the legendary notebooks used by artists and intellectuals who defined 20th century culture, including such luminaries as Hemingway, Van Gogh, and Matisse.

Today they are seen absorbing stories on trails and mountains journaling adventures; recording data at engineering sites; at coffee shops soaking up ideas and capturing artistic designs; at hospitals recording procedures, on planes keeping track of what has and is to happen - - in all cases being a trusted traveling companion."

Upon more research I found that these idea journals could be customized. I'm going to look into this but I'd like to know if any of you would be interested in getting some custom Akumu Ink styled Moleskin notebooks made?

Carmina in Wonderland Lookbook Shots

Hopefully you guys have seen this already as it was posted a few days ago. We've currently been soo busy getting ready for a show in Vegas that we'll be attending called Magic. A chance to get our line into stores and hopefully get more people buying. More Akumu Ink customers = MORE Akumu Ink items! We hung out with some friends this weekend that are highly encouraging us to do other things than just tshirts, like books and toys, but until we have a bigger fan base these things will not be financially possible. Also this week we've been looking for a new place to live as our lease here is coming to an end. So it's been really hectic, nonstop stress fest of things to do. Oh well, it's better to be busy than bored I guess :P

Check out La Carmina's full blog post here.

Tokyo Massacre Painting

We were commissioned to create two original paintings of our Tokyo Massacre design onto a 5x3 foot canvas. The hard part was that it was going to the UK...So we came up with a way where we broke up the image onto a bunch of smaller canvases that would come together once in the UK to create the final desired size. This painting is in no way finished (it's still a work in progress) but you can see the process behind it ;) Next time I post will be the final piece.





































































This is an early stage image.

La Carmina Portraits

Carmina just posted about our stuff on her blog. She's got some really great photos of her wearing the shirts. Take a look at how stylish you can be all the while retaining maximum comfort!

Architects (UK) "Early Grave"

Always love a great video with a concept and nice performance footage!

Akumu Ink Gallery

I don't know if you're like me. But my first 8 'bookmarks' are all blogs that I like. Every day (sometimes twice a day) I will go through my list of blogs in order to see if any of them have updated it with something worth reading. I always feel accomplished when I go through them and there was some good info and updates, but I feel like I wasted 5 minutes when I went through all of them ot find that no one updated anything.

today we went to a local boutique to see if we could sell our shirts to the shop. We brought samples in to show the owner. It was funny because the girl working there did a double take at our shirts and asked "Do you have some shirts in Perfide (Perfide is a boutique in Montreal that we actually do wholesale with)?" Apparently she owned one of our shirts for some time and really loved the print which was a plus for us when talking to the owner. We talked over some things and then we were asked if we'd be interested in taking part in a creating some canvas paintings for a show in July to introduce our line. It would be like a gallery within the store. So if you're in Montreal and would like to be part of this let me know as I think it's by invitation only. I will update you with photos and in progress work as we get closer to the date :)

Steampunk Tales

I posted this on facebook but I feel this needs a better look. I did this cover for an iphone app called Steampunk Tales. Every few months an issue is released that includes 8 original steampunk related stories written by some award winning writers. And you get my lovely cover for keeps on your iphone/itouch for $1.99. So check it out and tell your friends about it if they like that kind of stuff.

The Investigation Featurette

One of our customers mentioned to me that this design was abstract along the lines of our Faceless and Ripper design. Which is a good way to look at it. I came up with this idea during the summer at an anime convention. It never felt right to just release it on it's own, but as part of a collection I think it works really well. It's in line with the Steampunk essence we were going with for a while. I think my style lends from all these different concepts without actually being a part of a specific one. I've been wanting to do something that included a curly mustache without it being comical, or completely about the mustache. Hope you like it.

Devil Within Featurette

The Devil Within was inspired by some photographs I found online of old statues in Rome that incorporated drapery. I'm blown away by the talent Renaissance artists had to chisel out massive rock to create draped cloth on their sculptures that look no heavier than real fabrics. I was also looking at tons of images of gargoyles and paintings by William Blake (The Great Red Dragon) and somehow mixed all these concepts into this one demonic figure.

Death Before Dishonor Featurette

Death Before Dishonor I'm going to say is my most intricate piece that we've put out so far. It was the last design I sketched up and approved for this new collection, but it was the first one I began to finalize out of the 4. As this piece came into being it showed that Akumu Ink could have a new mature look, I was pushing the look away from what we had previously been doing so far. It also helped that I had been drinking absinthe and watching Japanese horror movies night after night, and listening to deathcore music with the blinds shut day after day. Really closing myself off and doing nothing but focusing on these designs and making sure every detail came out exactly as I wanted it to.

In the past our designs were created after I came home from work or on weekends, but this time around I had devoted all my time to making these something I would be proud of and making Akumu a look that wasn't seen done by other brands.

Inspiration for Death Before Dishonor: I knew I wanted to come up with a Geisha version of Marie-Antoinette. You can even see the cut around her neck from where she was decapitated by guillotine. I had this idea to have her looking at herself in a mirror. I was watching these awesome documentaries about Aleister Crowley and Nikola Tesla which got me thinking of using something crazy like symbols as the contours of the mirror. The symbols I ended up using were those of the planets in our solar system. They had a very demonic look to them, that of a ouija board.

Hope you all like the look of Death Before Dishonor. Feel free to leave your comments or thoughts as to how you perceive the design :)

Carmina in Wonderland Featurette

Here is the Carmina in Wonderland design. An intricate gold print with fantastic detailing. I placed both La Carmina and her cat Basil Farrow in the roles of Alice and the Cheshire cat at a mini tea party. I even switched the classic British style of tea pot and tea cup for a more Eastern look. There's even a small throwback to an older Akumu design, you'll notice the pendant on Carmina's necklace is the skull from 'Never Say Die' and 'Sip of Death'. Hope you like it, there's more little features to come. You can read more of La Carmina's blog here.