Fatal Fall EP Launch

Our boys from Fatal Fall recorded a video from their EP launch. You can catch the bass and guitar player both sporting Akumu Ink gear. Nevermore and Impaled to be precise. Also in the background you can see the banner we got printed for them. Looks awesome guys keep up the hard work!

Week End

This weekend was rough but yesterday things turned from sour to sweet. My mother was in the hospital undergoing surgery but things are looking good finally!

As for Akumu stuff, I'm so thrilled to see the amount of you guys wanting the logo to remain at the back of the shirt. I thought that by giving an option without having to ask us would mean more people would want to remove it. Thanks for being a part of this, whether you're jumping in now or have been following us since last year. Every morning I wake up I can't believe how many of you are excited about our brand. The emails I get, comments, and photos from all you happy people! It's totally worth the cases of Red Rave (cheaper version of Red Bull) I invest in to stay awake :)

End of the Week

Well it's the end of another week. This has been a roller coaster of a week. I would say our strongest week as Akumu, but terrible and heartbreaking as far as my family is concerned. Let's hope things get better in all ways positive.

We Print For You

Here are some pics I took Saturday night of the screens before printing. Of course off to the side out of the frame Tiny felt a need to sit right next to me. I'm glad to see how well the new designs are being received. I'm currently working on getting some kind of a newsletter together, so maybe in a few weeks that will be available. I'm going to try and add the Faceless and Skeleton Key hoodie today.

Let Me Explain

So I'm assuming you saw the new designs? What do you think? Didn't I make the gold Skeleton Key design awesome? hehe. Let me do a more in depth, behind the scenes explanation about them:

The Skeleton Key :: Dora's idea after we bought the gold ink. She suggested it and at first it reminded me of the movie with Kate Hudson? But then I wiki'd for the meaning and found it to be more interesting than that. So I simply drew up a key with the skull on the end, which wasn't super impressive until I used the Japanese characters for Akumu as the locking tip. Very happy with this image.






















Faceless :: I had been throwing around the idea of drawing some sort of geisha since the beginning, but since every other unoriginal tshirt company has done that I didn't want to follow that. After watching Tokyo Gore Police I was especially inspired to make a geisha for this month's design. And I cross breeded the image with the Hexidecimal character from Reboot, and Koh the Face Steeler from Avatar: The Last Airbender.






















Also, I hope you like the new pics, we took a bunch more photos that I'm working on and slowly replacing some of the older ones. Also I hope you like the new features on the website to see more pics, and demand no logo without emailing us about it :) More to come of course!

Shattered Glass

So Dora and I went to see my friend Marc's band. I'm super uptight about parking downtown. So instead of parking in the busier part of the area I parked on an expensive looking side street with big town houses. I was sure I was safe there. So we left and went to see the concert which was great! Two good bands with completely different styles but both have great sounds. Later when walking back to the car we noticed that my window looked almost frosted. The closer we got the more we realized something was wrong. Someone shattered the glass, but not to steal anything...weird. Anyways tomorrow I have to go deal with getting it fixed, lame way to take a day off work.

Banners pt.2

Yay, Dora was able to finish school earlier today to forward me the photos of the banners. If you're in a band or know a band looking to get a banner like this please be sure to contact me, we can give a good price for them. I did artwork for the Meet the Storm one (the one with The Storm character) and the Sungazer banner (the one with the sun rays) and our Akumu Ink banner. Next time we see these banners it will be at the bands shows.

Banners pt.1

So as I've mentioned on twitter, I woke up 15 min after I usually leave in the morning to go to work. So no coffee, no shower (gross), and unfortunately I didn't bring the pics of the banners. I only have one with me that I sent to the band last night. the photo is a bit blurry but I'll post the other ones up latest tomorrow.










Last night my friend Marc who comments quite often on this blog came over to get his band's banner that i did the art for. I showed him the new design and he bought it :P So that is very exciting. So, soon more banner pics and 2 new designs this weekend. Hooray!

For Once a Little Excitement

So today was great, the banners showed up finally. And I got a promotion at work! Finally things are looking up. As mentioned two new designs are fully completed and will be released this weekend. I need to make my screens, print up some shirts, take photos, and pop them up on the site. It's going to be awesome, I'm really excited about these new shirts, and you should be too. It has been a while. I promise we won't let it take this long again for new designs. I can't wait to open up the banners and take pictures of them, very exciting. And if you check out these bands concerts you'll see these very banners at their next shows. Fatal Fall, Meet the Storm, Sungazer, and our Akumu banner for our own shows. I'll post the pics tomorrow morning.

Btw, if you're on twitter come join. I'm online right now. I post often and reply quickly :)

Design Apocalypse

I'm hoping that before April rolls in we'll be able to launch our 2 new designs. "The Skeleton Key" and "Faceless" (not yet named). They look pretty good, I'm really happy with the progression of our look. Taking new ideas and mixing them with old ones, as well as an accident that just made one of the images so much stronger than I could have ever planned. Gold, and purple ink will be used this month for these two great pieces.

Also the new website is done, everything should be uploaded by this weekend. On your end there will be very little difference except for some key elements which I will make a clear blog post about when the new site is up. But the whole look will remain exactly the same, it just got easier on my end to add new products quickly. And to make major changes quickly also.

Runway Event

Friday we're going to have about 8 shirts/hoodies in a little street fashion runway show in Montreal. It's a small 100 people event, so it'll be really awesome. Speaking of which I gotta pick the music for the models to walk out with...

Drag Me To Hell

Haha, love the comments on the last post. Just to let you know Akumu Ink doesn't support any kind of actual violence. But it does look really cool as an art piece.

Ok, check out this trailer for a new Sam Raimi movie (Evil Dead director) it looks like a lot of fun, and that main actress is awesome. She was great in Matchstick Men and White Oleander. So I'm sure this will be amazing. Looking through Raimi's imdb I saw he's in post production on another Evil Dead movie....really??

Decals Arrived!

Well half of my shipment of banners have arrived. The vinyl decals for our drifter came in yesterday. I immediately opened the package like a child at Halloween dumping my bag of candy on the table at the end of the night. Super glossy, gorgeous print. I'm very jealous that I can't get one printed for my own car. Next time I see these bad boys they'll be on the car drifting at the track. Can't wait! Here's how they look:


If you're looking to get your own get in touch with me for a quote.

Pictures from Leiden

Hey, I finally got my new computer since the other one crashed so expect updates more often (with pictures) than the past couple weeks boring blablabla posts. As promised I am working on new designs, this month there will be 2 designs. Quite exciting! Also as the Subject of this post clearly states we've got some photos from our Netherlands retailer. She seems to be doing very well with our items, and she sent in some pics of her store. Don't forget you can get your Akumu Ink tshirts in Leiden, Netherlands at Dominia Shop.

Ideas Raining from the Heavens

Huge explosion of ideas this weekend in terms of shirt designs. It's grea tto finally have such a burst of creativity. And I promise I won't be cheap about it either, starting at the end of this month there will be 2 new designs released. And there's a high possibility that next month will also have 2 new releases. I'm really hyped about it, different styles, different colors. It's going to be fun to see them take shape. Much thanks to Norma Jean's album "The Anti-Mother" I finally got into it and it opened up my mind to tons of visuals. Here's a taste, one of the ideas I'm working on is a continuation of the Tokyo Massacre look. I personally love that style, so I'm going to keep exploring it. I kinda did with The Storm and I'll keep pushing it further.

Rue Morgue Festival of Fear 2009

So Vegas is cancelled for the moment. We talked with the organizers and at this point we're not sold at all on going. But we have added a new show to our tour dates. For all you horror lovers in Toronto, Rue Morgue is putting on their 6th annual Festival of Fear. Quite exciting to be a part of this. So if you're in the area, or you're planning on going down. We'll be there!

Still in Darkness

Hey, my computer brutally crashed 2 weeks ago. I've ordered a new one and am waiting for it to arrive. So I apologize for the lack of updates and lack of photos, I use to upload everything on my own computer. But it should arrive soon. If you're curious to know what we're up to. I'm working on a new design that will be gold. It will be titled The Royal Blood. I just have no clue what the image will be :P Other than that we're still here, still working hard. Still trying to figure out a better way to build the website. I just learned about a open source cart called magento, so I'm looking into it. I'll keep you posted.

Banners Complete

damn this weekend was brutal. I spent hours perfecting all the banners, and working at actual size, the files were so huge and heavy. But in the end, and after alot of redbulls and pots of coffee later, everything looks great. I can't wait to get them back from the printer. I will totally be posting images as soon as they show up at my doorstep. In other news, I have not started working on this month's design... I'm going back and forth between doing something in the style of Never Say Die, or trying something new (at least new for us).

Also wj, the bubblegum shirt for men and the bubblegum shirt for women are not gone yet. I will be adding it to the RIP section this month with the option to buy still.