Alice In Wonderland

Ok just cuz I'm posting about this doesn't mean that I'm looking forward to it. I love Alice In Wonderland as you may have noticed some of my designs are based on it. It's like one big messed up trip, and the thought that Tim Burton would be putting his creative genius into it sounded like a great idea. But personally looking at the trailer is giving me serious doubts. It looks a lot like his Big Fish movie, and as though he got the same people doing his effects as he did for Willy Wonka... I don't know, we all know how the story goes so you'd think it was Tim Burton's responsibility to make the style and effects impeccable. But looking at the Queen and her Imac-camera-like effect is nothing special. I will of course see this in theaters and hope it's better than it has lead on to be so far.

Vacation Pics

So I'm back from my 2 week adventure with Dora to her home country of Indonesia. It was great, at the time I thought it was hot like hell but it seems I brought the weather back with me here cuz I'm melting. Not seeing much difference, although apparently it remains that hot over there all year round. Here's a quick recap of our vacation:





















This was the door of a Buddhist Temple.






















We also went to this awesome petting zoo where we could hold a bat, turtles, a snake, as well as other animals.





















We went to this walkthrough jungle that held approx 500 monkies. You would be on the path and the monkeys would actually come right up to you. It was great and I got this nice photo of a baby.

I Am The Trend

If you have not seen this check it out around 3:10 we were featured as Tshirt company of the week on the I Am The Trend website they did a little interview with us as well. Check it out here. Love what they had to say about us, and even though the dudes didn't seem sure if they were right about the things they were saying about us they actually got everything right. Even the spelling of Akumu Ink, so we appreciate it!



Also to let you know, I (Joey) am back. Dora will be coming back in 2 weeks, but everything (site and our emails) will go back to normal, I'll be printing and shipping out orders until Dora comes back and we'll take it from there. I'm going to post some pics soon of our vacation we had a great time and got alot of inspiration for new items and designs so get ready for the next phase of Akumu. Also I'm done with my dayjob and now all my time will be spent here with you guys so feel free to let me know how we're doing and what you'd like to see if we're not doing it already and we'll keep giving you what you want. I'll update soon.

Last Day.

So this is it! Today is my last day illustrating children's books. In approx 7.5 hours I will be my own boss from here on out. It's kinda weird how tomorrow we're leaving for Asia like right away so I don't even get to enjoy my new found employment until I get back, but I feel like it's a great way to kick start our new life. I'm hoping to come back rested and refreshed with a new mindset to get all my ideas out into Akumu. Awesome. It's going to be awesome.

Pictures of Things

Here are some pics from the last few weeks that I've been meaning to post. Starting off with photos of Tiny at my dayjob:





















This next image is from a restaurant in Montreal that makes awesome hamburgers called Mr. Steer's.
















Next set of images are from my Going-Away/Pizza Party with a bunch of my coworkers. I laughed so much at the end when the staff came out singing happy birthday with a delicious cake. Thanks so much to all those that came, I'm going to miss all of you. You really made Phidal like a home to me for the last 4 years :)

Please Note

So if you have visited our product page for any of our items you will notice a "Please Note" box right above the "Add to Cart" icons.

My last day at my dayjob is this Friday July 3rd.

On Saturday July 4th Dora and I will be flying to Singapore and Indonesia for a vacation/me meeting her parents for the first time. I will be gone for 2 weeks and back on Saturday July 19. As soon as I get back I will print all orders that were placed while we were away and send them out July 24th. So if you're planning on buying or considering buying anything please keep these dates in mind :)

Dora will only be back in August but she's taking care of preparing everything before she leaves so that I can take care of Akumu entirely until she gets back.


















Here's a map of where we'll be spending the 2 weeks. Right between Australia and China.

Beatles Rockband Cinematic

Gorgeous artwork and simplistic stunning animation. I love where the artists took this cinematic. I'm glad to see some companies putting an effort into their product rather than just throwing the band's brand on the game and shoving it down the gamer's throats. From an animator's perspective 2D and 3D animation is all about doing something with characters that you can't do with just a camera, so it's great to see how creative they got with all the Beatles' albums concepts. Check it out:

Creepy Queen

Check out this blog, it's got a bunch of cool items if you like creepy things like I do. The blogger is not the creator behind the products that she posts about, but acting as a curator to let us know about cool products worth looking into within the goth/punk scene. Actually just scrolling down the first page I want to buy like 10 items. And we were mentioned on there too.... Awww.

Blablablas...

Yesterday was thankfully a Quebec holiday, my body is so exhausted from constantly working and going to conventions that Dora had to force me to wake up at 3pm to get my day started. As we prepare to head out to Indonesia in a week we're trying to tie all those loose ends. I have pictures from Toronto, and pictures I took today at work that I need to post. It's just crazy how little time we have these days. It's good though, when I'm working from home there will be more time to do everything, and more of course :)

Another Shirt Gone Forever

So we got back from Toronto on Sunday night. Fun show in the sense that we had a lot of repeat customers from the prior year, and also we saw a bunch of people proud of their purchases wearing their Akumu gear around at the convention. It's always surreal when I see someone wearing one of our shirts, and I'm always impressed with how great it looks on you all.





















Anyways, I won't post pics of the show just yet. We didn't take many photos of the convention itself but what I do want to mention is that we did sell out of our last RockStar tshirt. I'm always happy to see old designs go cuz that forces the progression forward of Akumu's style. We started off with a very generic emo look and have so far pushed into our own world (all within 1.5 years) so I can't even imagine where we'll be in another 1.5 years.

Akumu Inked

First I want to tell everyone thanks for the support on facebook and on here, I really appreciate the comments. I'm glad I made the right decision.

So Jenn is from the USA. She emailed me a while back telling me she wanted to get our "Never Say Die" character tattooed on her arm, so we discussed how we could make this work for both of us. What's really cool is that Jenn is the sister of Jarrod (The Brutal Drifter). It's always surreal for me to see that someone put my art on their skin forever! Oh you Akumu fans are crazy! I'll be creating much more art and characters in the future to cover your bodies wth lol. Thanks so much.

Bring on the Plagues!

I want to thank everyone who's been a part of Akumu Ink since we started over a year ago. Everyone who's fallen in love with our brand, to those of you that just got one shirt once cuz you liked the design. Thank you!

It's because of all of you that today I was able to give my dayjob boss my two weeks notice. I will be working at my dayjob for another 2.5 weeks, and then after Dora and I are off to Indonesia for 2 weeks, but as soon as I land back here I'm going straight to work on building this brand beyond anything I could have realized otherwise. I'm going to make this a label you're going to want to be a part of. I'm looking forward to working on Akumu fulltime.

We also have a ton of other ideas we're looking forward to putting in motion which we had no time for prior. This is a very exciting time and we're happy to share it with all of you. Thanks everyone!