Donkeyblog Donkeyshines is the Land of Absurd T-shirts!

January 28, 2010

Getfit T-shirt Design

Filed under: Artwork — Ryan Klemek @ 9:03 am

For the past few years, I have been doing this 12-week fitness program through MIT, called Getfit. I’m on a “team” with Vanessa and 4 other of our friends. It’s really not supposed to be competitive, all it requires is that you keep track of all of the minutes you spend exercising each week. For me that is always a lot of minutes, but it doesn’t really matter too much. Anyway, each year they have a t-shirt design contest to come up with the shirt they’ll give out to all the participants. I entered last year, and did not even get nominated. This year, I am hoping to change that. Here is my entry:

getfit2010shirtRyanKlemek

So in case it is unclear, that is a fitness machine, along with two figures at “before and after” stages of the fitness process. I am actually really happy with it, and would  wear this shirt even if I had no affiliation with Getfit. We’ll see how it goes. In addition to all the prestige that goes along with winning this competition, the winner also receives an iPod Touch. That would be a nice thing to get for free. Wish me luck!

January 25, 2010

Webcomic Progress

Filed under: Artwork,Story Premises — Tags: , — Ryan Klemek @ 1:28 pm

Well, I finally finished the first page of my webcomic! See if you can figure out what’s going on from this single panel out of context:

minotaurpanel

I wonder if anyone has ever drawn a minotaur making that expression before. Anyway, it took months to come up with a story I really wanted to tell, but I have finally gotten the ball rolling. I actually took some elements from some of my story premises I posted here on the donkeyblog. I still need a title for the comic, a name for the url and I’ll still need to build a new site for it. I will be using a simple wordpress comic theme with some cusomizations. I have the first complete page posted at a temporary site here. Obviously this site is just a shell. At the moment, it only seems to work in Firefox, which is one of the things I need to work out before I actually launch. I also want to initially start with at  least 5 pages, so my first readers have something to sink their teeth into. It took a couple of weeks to make this first page, but I was still finding my style and figuring out my process. I hope to be able to churn out 2-3 pages a week once I get going. Stay tuned!

January 10, 2010

New Painting- Jesus Turtle

Filed under: Artwork — Ryan Klemek @ 2:34 pm

Now that I have a huge 12″ x 18″ scanner bed, it’s much easier for me to scan my artwork. Therefore, I can go back to showing works in progress without having to take crappy digital photos or composite scans. Here is the pencil sketch for my latest painting, The Jesus Turtle:

turtledraw

In an effort to save time, I was considering doing a mixed media piece instead of a full-on painting. I thought of just using graphite for the faces and arms, and then acrylic paint for the t-shirts. However, since I ended up buying gesso board instead of illustration board, I decided I should do it all with paint. For one thing, graphite does not work well on the solid surface. It’s like trying to write on plastic. Secondly, I figure since the gesso boards are 3 times as expensive as illustration boards, I might as well use the medium for which it was intended. So now, with all the other stuff I have to do these days, I am not expecting to finish this before February. But at least I’ll get to show y’all updates as I go along! Incidentally, The Jesus Turtle T-shirt is our Shirt of the Week, and is on sale for $13.99 through Sunday, 1/17/10.

January 5, 2010

New Year, New Low Prices

Filed under: Donkeyshines Announcements — Tags: , , — Ryan Klemek @ 9:44 am

I’ve always considered the prices at Donkeyshines to be fair, reflecting the cost of the high quality blanks I use. Part of the reason costs are so relatively high is that I print small runs of about 100 shirts at a time, as this is all I can really afford. $24.99 for silky soft, environmentally nice bamboo/organic cotton blend is pretty reasonable, as is $19.99 for soft, fashion-forward cotton shirts. When all costs were considered, I wasn’t even making 50% profit on these as it was. And if these prices were too high for people, I always had a Shirt of the Week for $16.99, and regularly offered high % -off coupons. However, towards the end of last year, I found a new cotton fashion blank that is about 25% cheaper than the ones I had previously been using. This will allow me to perminently lower prices on all my shirts from now on. Even though the prices of the bamboo blanks haven’t come down, I can lower the selling price of these because of the money I am saving on the cotton shirts!  So from now on, The cotton shirts are going to sell for $16.99 and the bamboo shirts will sell for $19.99. By the way, the new cotton blanks I’m using are from Next Level Apparel, and they are not only less expensive than the ones I was previously using, but they’re softer and fit better as well. I’m so excited about the new shirts, that I have already put in an order for my latest design:

volleyball2

Look for brand-new Dino Volleyball shirts by the end of this month! Also, in 2010, look to see some classic designs like Donkey Pegasus and Gorilla Duck graduate from cotton to bamboo!

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