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!