Posts Tagged ‘Donkeyshines’

Devil’s X-mas

Monday, December 5th, 2011

I know it may spoil the surprise for the family members I send X-mas cards to, but I worked hard on this, so I’ve decided to post it.

Devil X-mas

It look me longer than I think it should have, but I’m still learning how to digitally paint. I actually used photos of a friend of mine as the inspiration for The Devil. Writchy doesn’t always look like Satan, but for some reason he did on October 30, 2011. Go figure. In addition to modeling for X-mas cards, Writchy is a brilliant writer, and you should check out his work at Intrusive Thoughts. I won’t be selling this card, as it is no longer cost-effective for me to either print and distribute cards myself, or have them printed in bulk. I still have a few older X-mas card packs for sale at Donkeyshines, so check them out if you haven’t already.

Weird Al Meets Donkeyshines

Tuesday, July 19th, 2011

I was pretty psyched about how good my seats were at the last Weird Al Yankovic concert I attended. During “Wanna B Ur Lover”, he actually jumped off stage and got right in my wife’s face, staring creepily into her eyes. However, that’s nothing compared to how close my Twitter friend Dawn got to him.

Apparently, Dawn and Al both went to Lynwood High (in CA, I’m assuming) They are both still in touch with their former Physics/Calculus teacher who hooked Dawn and her son up with back-stages passes after a show.

Since Dawn was wearing the Donkeyshines Nessie in a Fishbowl t-shirt, I almost feel like I was there myself.  I don’t want to be one of those guys who tries to get celebrities to wear their shirts, but…wouldn’t Al look good with a Robot Penguin on his chest?

Robot Penguin Hoodies- Coming Soon

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

robotpenguin400

The most popular Donkeyshines T-shirt is soon to be a full-zip hoodie as well. Living in the northeast USA, a person can only really show off a t-shirt for about 2 months out of the year. If you live here and you want people to know how you feel about penguins and their robot friends, you need to display it on something with sleeves and, preferably, a hood! I’m going to do an extremely limited run of about 100 unisex style fleeces. I’m going to use stylish Continental blanks. I’m going to sell them at redonkulously low prices, by high-end hoodie standards. Something in the ballpark of $35!

Note: When I initially decided to call this company Donkeyshines, I promised myself I would never use the word “redonkulous” to describe my products. That was a promise I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep forever. But here it is a year and a half after I launched, and I’m using the word for the very first time!

New Concept for T-shirts

Monday, June 22nd, 2009

On Sunday I was able to work on the painting for about 37 minutes, and there wasn’t enough of a difference to bother posting the progress. Hopefully I’ll be able to finally finish it once I am moved and settled into my new apartment. In the mean time, I think I’ll be able to work on some T-shirt designs. This one is based on one of my old greeting card designs:

barrelofdonkeydraft

It is different than the usual Donkeyshines one-color designs, so I might submit it first to Uneetee and see how well it does there. I am working on a new style which will fit with a new concept I’m developing. The current Donkeyshines line mostly draws inspiration from two places: 1) 1980’s toy logos, and  2) the coat-of-arms logos worn by the people of Krypton in the 1979 Superman movie. I really do like the simple, single-color designs, and don’t plan on discontinuing this theme any time soon. But I also want to work on this other idea I have rattling around in my brain. I have always been fascinated by the idea of giving people part of a story and having them fill in the rest with their imagination. That is, I give people an image of a scene with lots of unexplained details, and they need to figure out what is going on. Sometimes I have something specific in mind, and sometimes there is room for individual interpretation. This is what I did with my greeting card illustrations, and in fact I plan to go back to more of them for t-shirt ideas. The  Barrel of Donkeys is a good place to start, I think, because it is still a pretty simple concept, while at the same time suggesting a full story. It could be sort of a bridge between my two styles. Eventually I want to get into more complicated scenes such as this one:

officevdaysurprise

I still want to limit the designs to 5 or 6 colors, which is going to be challenging. I am expecting it will take me some time to come up with a style I like. I am not satisfied with the Barrel of Donkeys yet. I’m not sure what it needs or what it is missing, but it’s just not quite “right”. I will post my progress , so stay tuned n’ stuff.