October 31, 2007
Happy Halloween.. this festival has come to be my favourite one of the year. Less sickening than Valentines and more fun than Christmas. The best bit? Pumpkin carving and dressing like a psychopathic chef!
October 22, 2007
Well it seem The Upsiders – the Floridian Ska band who I designed a T-Shirt for (and who have failed to pay me or send me my T-Shirts) have sadly split up. This – I am sure – further reduces my chances of receiving the T-Shirts. However they have pictures on their MySpace of one of their recent gigs and guess what! the T-Shirt is there!!!
Here they are performing, the T-Shirt is in evidence being worn in the left by a bloke with his baseball cap on backwards and on the right by a bird with a beer.
And in this photo we see the mosh pit in full flow as three large guys (one of whom is wearing my T-Shirt) barge the audience out of the way so they can push each other around.
I have used the latest digital enhancement techniques to enlarge the low quality photos.
Its very sad that I have not been able to get my hands on the T-Shirt thus far. I am sure it would be very popular with pissed up moshers and boozing birds. Maybe they will send them.. who knows…
October 20, 2007
Here is my contribution to an anthology for the Birmingham Comic show. Like the T-Shirts it was unfortunatley not printed in time and therefore not distributed at the show. At least I was on Birmingham Mail TV as a person from Bath – otherwise the show would have been a complete waste of time!
The Anthology is by a guy called Dan Lester and will be available for purchase at some point…
October 18, 2007
So I am NOT from Bath. Check out the coverage of the Birmingham Comics Convention at the media node that is the Birmingham Mail!
In fact the journalist and I discussed what it was like to live in Oxford!
October 13, 2007
Or how not to get a T-shirt printed. Here is a design I did for ‘The Upsiders‘ a Ska Punk band from Orlando Florida.
A while ago I received this out of the internet ether:
21/07/07 – Bryce – The Upsiders
‘I love your work, I have checked through your website and was amazed. I’m in a Ska/Punk whatever band out of orlando florida. We’re working on a 4-5 color tshirt and basically I was hoping you would design one for us.’
At last the website was working for me! So I replied and we agreed that they would pay me a small amount of cash and a box of T-Shirts in exchange or the design.
25/07/07 – Bryce – The Upsiders
‘awesome!! deffinately stoked on it. I can easily do a box of shirts. thats no problem either. We are of course by no wealthy rock stars but I’m sure we can work out money and stuff.’
In the creative process we discussed Summer Blockbuster Transformers:
08/08/07 – Bryce – The Upsiders
‘dude I saw transformers last friday!! OH MAN!!! Do me a robot shirt!!!
PLEASE haha. Seriously that has to be one of the best movies in forever. I grew up on that and it was absolutely awesome!!! anyway keep me posted!!’
Finally I sent his some roughs and here was the reply:
10/08/07 – Bryce – The Upsiders
‘I can’t even express that those are more than awesome. I had a heart attack and called all my band members about how wicked they are! My favorites are robot 2 and robot 4 (mowhawk and the pompador guy). Those are just awesome. On robot 4 I especially like the idea of the outter ehhh glow for lack of a better word. Whatever you decide on can we encorperate that?’
Enthused by all this praise I did a full colour T-Shirt. In fact I didn’t like it so I did it again. Then they asked me to change some colours – and I did so. I sent them the Hi-Res file and received this response:
31/08/07 – Bryce – The Upsiders
‘he chris. so we finished the shirts, and DANG!!! they look awesome!!! I’m totally stoked! I think you’ll love them! Hopefully your comic book went well! After you get these shirts, I have 3 ideas I would like done.’
Finally I asked when they would sending the reply. I received this response and then nothing:
10/09/07 – Bryce – The Upsiders
‘hey hey! Yes the shirts came out awesome and I think you’ll be very happy with them. I put that for min the box and Mike (our singer) will be shipping them out today.Sorry for the delay but this last week and this coming week are just crazy. We have our cd release show coming up (I’ll call mike and have him throw a cd in the box for you) and its just been a hassle. Hope you like the shirts and all that and after you get them email me and we can try for another design!!! thanks so much -Bryce’
I sent a few emails asking if they were going to send the T-Shirts, should I look out for them in the post and could I have them in time for the Birmingham Comics convention. Today is the 1st day of the convention in Brum and I am about to set off and sadly nothing has arrived and there has been no enthusiastic email response. The lesson from this story? I think it could be something like ‘never give anyone anything for nothing’ but maybe it actually is ‘never give a sucker an even break’…..
