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!

Soon!

I always dislike when blog posts don't have any pictures to encourage me to read the post, but if you are reading this then thank you for caring enough to do so. Days are running out and so are the things that are left to do thankfully. Mostly everything is complete for NIX on Friday. I think all that's left to print are some tote bags and the Starved shirts, and depending if there's time to print up a few sizes of some of the designs that don't sell as much. The joys of doing your own printing, we don't have to be limited or limit you on what products you can purchase from us :)

We're arriving in Toronto the day of the show but we're hoping to have an hour or two to walk around, possibly see Chinatown or the CN tower or something before we work, work, work until it's time to pack up and go back home. Then forcibly pull myself out of bed to go back to my dayjob
...ugh.

Days Are Running Out

As the start of convention season creeps around the corner Dora and I are doing everything except for relaxing (except for last night where had some Captain Morgain Spiced Rum and Cokes, amazing!). We're desperately trying to get things together with the 4 hours a night we have to devote to AI. With 70% of the stock printed and ready we're running out of things we didn't expect to run out of, such as "M" sized labels and red ink :P The good thing about running out of things is that it forces us to use our brains to figure out a way to fix it. Also with the labels running out means I can finally update the label which I've wanted to do from the day we got our first set of labels.

To think next week at this time we'll be setting up our booth in Toronto. This year will be a lot of fun, we've learned from last year and we're ready to take on another year of meeting great people, and old friends. It's just crazy to think with 3 weeks left till we go on vacation everything we hope to get done will get done. I guess the only way to look at is to take one day at a time.

The Stores

So much news about some of the stores we're in.

1- Sin City Tattoo and Piercing :: The first shop to do any kind of wholesale with us has moved from the remote Ile Perrot location to a much smaller downtown area. Our shirts aren't currently up yet but apparently it will be the only clothes sold in their new shop. You can find them on St Denis street in Montreal. Click here for the map.

2- COCOPINK for Lovers :: A pretty high end punk-styled online boutique based in Japan. I'm not 100% sure if they have an actual brick and mortar store, but they have great items from what I've seen on the website. We are really excited to see how we will do within the Japanese market. Here's their website.

3- Cruella :: I've been to this store many times when I was younger. This has always been the ultimate goth store in Montreal. Decorated with coffins and lots of black paint this will be a great place for Akumu to be noticed. Cruella has been around since 1996, and underwent a fire in January but they're coming back stronger than ever. I'll get back to you on the directions, I don't think the location has changed...all I know is that it's on Mount-Royal street. you should know where it is :P