Blog Moved Back!

We were over here for the last year: www.akumuink.com/blog

But since I've changed over to Wordpress, Blogger has updated their whole look to fit our needs better. I also came back because I felt so alone over on Wordpress. Hopefully we'll get more interaction/comments in here.

Japanese Hardcore Band

Last night I couldn't sleep so I was determined to get something done that I've been wanting to do for a long time. Find some new Japanese music that was heavier than what I've previously heard in the whole JRock/Visual Kei scene. As that didn't translate to the heaviness I am used to with American hardcore. Check it out this band is called CrossFaith.

Why Are You Screaming?

Ooh! I really like the new look to Freddy. I really like how he speaks improperly due to the burns on his face. As much as I hated Transformers, Michael Bay knows some great editors that make all his trailers look pretty awesome. Don't F this up please.

"Hopeless" Akumu Ink Comic Strip

I've been working on this for the past few days trying to get it just right. Dora and I went to Dim Sum this weekend with some great friends who keep mentioning that we should make an Akumu Ink book. Although that's ways a way, I was inspired to do this little comic strip featuring our The Storm and Lost Soul characters. Let me know if you like this :)

Story and Illustrations by Akumu Ink.

American Apparel Pickup

This is a photo Dora took while waiting in the car as I was picking up something from American Apparel's warehouse.

1,000 Facebook Fans

Last month we celebrated our 2 year anniversary as well as reaching 1,000 fans on Facebook! Quite exciting to see how far we got in only 2 years. It's been a crazy ride and we expect a lot more as we go forward. I am working on a bunch of new projects all Akumu related. Finishing up those huge canvases, working on sourcing new Akumu products that you would love as much as we would, and creating a new line within Akumu Ink which will be a lot of fun when that launches. So for now enjoy the newest 1" pins to add to your collection.

Turning Japanese?

I saw this over at ToysREvil's blog. Apparently it's for "Pop Life: Art in a Material World" art exhibit in London's Tate Modern museum. I like it! Appearances from Takashi Murakami and my man Nigo! Directed by McG, and featuring Kirsten Dunst cover the song "Turning Japanese" by The Vapors.

Looking at Old Comics

I was looking through some old works I did. Felt these shouldn't be forgotten because not only does old artwork tell a story within the actual image. But the art itself tells a story as to where I've been, where I'm from, as my current artwork shows where I'm going. Here is a post from 2008 of a similar body of work as the one below. All these pieces were done within a year's time. Right before meeting Dora and starting Akumu I was going to begin working on a comic about a band that was touring in Japan and somehow a girl from the audience was to fall in love with the American guitar player. The whole idea was to revolve around the idea that they couldn't communicate through speech due to language barrier so they had to find ways around it. I was later told that this concept had already been done, so I never went through with it.


The first comic here is based on this lame story about 2 kids from high school falling in love. I never had a proper script or idea as to the direction of the story and kept trying to rework the storyline and characters. It ended up being more of an exercise/practice than a comic worthy of anything.




































The second comic page was for a 6 page anthology but the writer and I didn't see eye to eye on the story and we never made it passed this first page. I had come up with all these attractive character designs that I did on napkins and scraps of paper while at bars and restaurants, but the whole thing fell apart and was never looked back on.




































I'm happy to look at these comic pages because I'm always impressed when I did something well, sometimes I can't believe I would have come up with a body posture, or a scene layout, or a facial expression. But what I don't like is how unnatural the whole feel of everything is. I did these in a program called illustrator and it shows. It's something I easily chose to stay away from in my current Akumu works. Sometimes the fact that things aren't perfect make it better. Anyways, hope you enjoyed this trip into my past. I'll have to eventually create some new stuff!

Hottest Korean Idol

Do you have a preference between Lee Hyori or BoA? Please no negative comments. These girls are both hot and talented Korean singers.

A little history, Lee Hyori has had a really good last 3 albums. She was sued by Brittany Spears agents for plagiarizing one of her songs.

BoA is a mega talent and the acronym of her name means 'Best of Asia'. BoA has had countless number one albums and never fails to create great pop songs. The video below has her performing with the infamous Verbal of M-Flo and Teriyaki Boyz fame sporting his latest project Ambush Design rings. Amazing talent in that video!

Let me know which one you prefer or if you have a link to your more preferred Korean or asian idols ;) I know I've never posted something like this before but I'm hoping to learn about your favourites and if you know any new music that I can add to my playlist then I will be forever grateful.

This Week

So we're working on doing something really big with Akumu Ink, we'll keep you posted if this really goes through but if it does it would mean more Akumu merchandise!

This week will begin a new project within Akumu Ink. We will be working on starting a separate line within the brand called 'Little Monsters'. This will be a cuter style which will be printed on baby clothes as well as our current shirt styles and sizes. This new line will in NO WAY affect Akumu's current look or style, or production. As I said it will be separate, meaning these items won't be sold directly on akumuink.com either but on it's own 'Little Monsters' page.

As an artist I feel that creating and being productive is the best outlet for me. I want to continue to build Akumu's dark and sometimes abstract style knowing I can have an outlet for cuter ideas without it stepping on Akumu's toes. For example the 3rd and 4th pin packs that I released.

Back From Vegas

This week was great, I spent it with my friend Jason from Red Corner Apparel in Vegas. We met up with some great people including La Carmina and Yukiro, and Kynt and Vyxsin from Amazing Race. Although the whole trip ended up being more work than play (working from 7am to 5am the next morning the first night), Jason and I were able to take the last night off to go 'wild'. Unfortunately that didn't turn out the way we planned, First we got drunk using the 'free drink coupons' the hotel gave us. Then we tried to walk to a burger place that seemed so close from our hotel room window, but it required us to climb an overpass and live a few near death moments. But it was worth it, the burgers were great! Then when we got back to the hotel we watched a full 20min of America's Best Dance Crew hosted by Mario Lopez before falling asleep fully dressed with our jeans and shoes on....All this occurred between the hours of 8pm and 11pm too which is the worst part :P We weren't meant to party in Vegas lol. Oh well, maybe next time! Anyways, it was a great trip and even though we worked hard we had a lot of laughs and that's what matters most!

Leaving for the Week

I haven't been updating recently, things have been pretty crazy. I'm preparing to go to Las Vegas again, this time not for a convention but a tradeshow. The biggest tradeshow aimed towards streetwear and apparel. We're hoping that this year we'll get into more boutiques and possibly chain stores. As we always mention the more we do well the more new items we can make for you guys :) So we're excited to see how this will turn out. I'll be going with my friend (best salesman I know) from Red Corner Apparel, and supposed to meet up with La Carmina once we're there. So if you're in the area and you want to meet all or any of us we'll be around. Let you know how it goes!

Here's the latest painting progress photo:

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.

Standing Banners

This week has been pretty crazy. You guys are loving these new designs! I haven't even had a chance to update or blog like I planned due to the orders :P Keep it up!

So this just came in from Indonesia. Two standing banners we had made for a show we're doing in Vegas. We might be bringing them to future conventions depending on how they fit in our luggage. Don't forget if you're in a band, or know someone who owns a store, or anyone who would need some kind of banner we can hook them up with a great deal. Quality work for a great price ;)


Also we were hired to create two 5 foot paintings of Tokyo Massacre. So as those progress we'll take photos and post them all up when they're done! Talk to you soon.

The Lost Soul Featurette

Here are a few photos of the Lost Soul print. Inspired by both our Tokyo Massacre and The Storm designs, I really wanted to continue creating my (morbid) version of cute Japanese styled characters. It's kinda like a continuous story of these characters that are evolving into something greater as I figure out more about the Akumu Ink world.

The more I design and print these shirts, the more I'm figuring out how to create some fun compositions. The goal for me for this image was to create a full composition with a character, and an environment, with our logo (almost like it was a movie poster) and make you feel like there was a sense of depth to the whole scene even though I only used one colour. I hope you like it, I'd love to hear your feedback on each individual design.

Screens

As I work on the next post check out this photo of all our new screens.

I Am The Trend TV

A few days ago we were mentioned on I Am The Trend TV. It's great to see people express their love and excitement for our product rather than just reading a blog post about it. See their excitement in the video below. They mention us around 00:09:00.

La Carmina Post

Also over at La Carmina's blog there was a great little feature about our new collaboration. In the next few weeks I will be adding photos of her in the shirts and describing the reasons we came up with what we came up with. More to come.
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I Am The Trend Review

Thanks to I Am The Trend for this great post. They've been big supporters of our brand since we came on the scene 2 years ago. If you're interested in knowing what's happening in the current tshirt community check out their website. They have interesting video updates and interviews with the hottest indie tshirt brands out right now.