Here’s a preview of one of the new designs that will be debuting at RENEGADE CRAFT LA and the LA STREET FOOD FEST this weekend:

It’s called HEIRS TO THE AMULET, and is the narrative sequel to an old design of mine called THE AMULET:

So, I love doing character illustration pieces, but it’s no secret that my big sellers are my simplest pieces - my food-loving dinosaurs and my goofy slogans are essentially what pay my rent. And that’s okay! Those are the pieces that make people laugh, that get people who wear my shirts high fives in the middle of the street, and if one of the main reasons I do this is to make people happy and make them laugh with original jokes rather than a cleverly placed movie quote or reference, then it’s Mission Accomplished as far as I’m concerned. One of the main reasons ARTSCAPE went so well this past weekend is because people would see my slogan pieces from the street and yell them out to their friends, everyone would have a good laugh, and many of them were kind enough as to actually come buy a piece of my work.

To everyone who came and bought one of my goofy joke shirts at ARTSCAPE, thank you so much. Baltimore welcomed me with open arms, and the weekend was an absolute success.

To those of you that bought some of my character illustration pieces, or told me that you think my work is sick (Mom and Dad: in this context, “sick” means awesome rather than depraved, though I get that occasionally too), that really meant a lot to me too, so, thank you.

Either way, these bad boys will be premiering at RENEGADE CRAFT LA and the LA STREET FOOD FEST this weekend, along with two new Superpredators tanks, a new Taco Dino colorway, a new tote, and probably some other stuff too. I’ll be saving some for RENEGADE CRAFT SF, and then putting them online as soon as I get back home in early August.

Hope to see you out there!

Oh man oh man oh man.

So lately it seems like the work has been coming in nonstop.

I did a special t-shirt for an event NERF is throwing this weekend, where they’re unveiling a new blaster (and yes, I got to see it before the general public, and it’s awesome, and its appearance and name is the one secret I’ve managed to keep from my girlfriend) - I’ll post pictures of that shirt design soon enough. It will probably be the hardest to get SEIBEI shirt out there if you’re not attending the event, though if the people at the event hate them a crop of them may show up on eBay.

I’m starting to work on a new website design that will be more friendly to all English-speaking and Japanese-speaking people.

I’m bringing out some new designs and some new colorways next week (and, in true SEIBEI fashion, I’m finishing up one of the designs right now).

I’ve got tons of events and ideas and random things to blog about and photos and videos to edit.

I just sold my Jeep to a really nice guy who’s starting college this year, so my girl gets to retire from the hard life of hauling t-shirts up and down the East Coast and enjoy the sweet life of college once more.

On top of all of that, I will be working three (possibly four) events over the next three weekends. Here’s the scoop on all three (four?).

ARTSCAPE

ARTSCAPE is a huge three-day celebration of arts and music in Baltimore, MD and will be happening THIS WEEKEND (Friday - Sunday). I’ll be getting rid of a ton of current designs and clearing out lots of discontinued items in the “DIY @ Artscape” section, booth C-15. It’s a huge huge huge event and I’ll be just a tiny part of it, and lots of other buddies from the craft circuit will be there as well, along with live music and tasty food and tons of other crazy crap I’m sure. Several city blocks are being shut down for it, and it should be a lot of fun.

RENEGADE CRAFT LA

Renegade Craft LA is going to be held in the Los Angeles State Historic Park on July 24th and 25th. I am really excited to work an outdoor event in LA; UNIQUE LA and Renegade LA have always been held indoors and I’m really excited to just hang out in a park and slang tees and prints. I’ll be there with NEW DESIGNS AND COLORWAYS and a big smile on my face.

It looks like I might also be splitting a booth with my homies for life TWO RABBITS at the LA Street Food Fest as part of the UNIQUE LA Marketplace. This isn’t set in stone yet, but the Saturday night of Renegade Craft LA I will hopefully have a few of my “greatest hits” tees and some new jams on sale at this AMAZING food event. I am pretty bitter I won’t be working it myself, since it’s basically a festival of stuffing your face with some of LA’s best street food, and there’s also going to be a tequila truck? GEEEEEEEEEZ I’m the boss, shouldn’t I get to work this one? Sadly, no.

RENEGADE CRAFT SF

I will be spending the week after Renegade LA holed up in the Two Rabbits’ print shop, working on a print collection/series that I can hopefully pull together in time for Renegade SF.

RENEGADE SAN FRANCISCO is always a lot of fun, and, as usual, will be held in the Fort Mason Festival Pavilion, and is July 30th - August 1st. Considering that Kate and I are planning to move to the Bay Area in late September, I am way excited to see my SF peoples again and let them know that I am about to be up in their faces a LOT more.

Alright! TIME TO GET BACK TO WORK!!!

The SEIBEI Grab Bag and some other new items, like a new tote, a new handkerchief, a collaborative beer koozie, and the super limited Yo Gabba Gabba Live! print are now available!

A BIT MORE ABOUT THE SEIBEI GRAB BAG

So, every so often, I will discontinue a tee. Not because it’s bad, not because I hate it, but just because I only like to have a design up in the store for so long (unless, of course, it’s so absurdly popular that I can’t take it down). What this means is that I have boxes and boxes of discontinued tees in my office, which I occasionally bring to shows to sell on the cheap.

Because we’re moving later this summer, and because I’m looking to get rid of a ton of designs and start fresh with a new website and a bunch of new designs next month, putting the SEIBEI Grab Bag online is a way for me to clean house and clear a little room, and a way for you to get your hands on some older designs that you may have missed. Just to sweeten the deal, with every Grab Bag order I will be throwing in an extra present - it could be a bunch of buttons, it could be a tote bag or a beer koozie, or it could even be another tee or a sweatshirt in a random size so you have an extra gift for a friend.

Also, when you buy the SEIBEI Grab Bag, you have the option of telling me if you want a discontinued tee or a current tee. I’ll do my best to honor all requests, but as supplies dwindle, I may not be able to, but I’ll do my best to send you something awesome regardless.

But just to sweeten the deal a bit more, I’m also going to hold a drawing. On July 9th, I’m going to put together all of the grab bag orders (each grab bag purchase will count as an entry), and randomly select a winner to receive a handpainted SEIBEI figurine. If you’ve followed my blog for a while, you may have seen these while I was in the process of painting them. They haven’t been released online yet, but one lucky winner will get one. That means, one lucky person will receive a tee shirt in their size, a random gift, and a handpainted figurine for just $13 + shipping.

I have to finish blogging about the Tokyo trip and Renegade Craft Brooklyn and add a bunch of new stuff to the site…but I thought I’d show you guys a picture of our new baby boy, Beauford.

He’s a 2002 Ford E150 Cargo Van who miraculously only has about 63,000 miles on him and has a clean bill of health from the mechanic. We rescued him from a questionable dealership in Brooklyn for a very low price, and he’s going to start working shows as soon as we clean out the back (which the dealership left in pretty gross shape, but whatever). Johnny Cupcakes has his ballin’ Mercedes van…and we have this big ol’ boy. In addition to working shows for SEIBEI, he’s going to take Kate and I across the country to our new home somewhere around San Francisco later this year.

In the background, you can see my Jeep, which has served me well for a number of years and has hauled t-shirts all over the place, but it’s time to sell it (hey - if you know anyone that wants a 1994 Jeep Cherokee with 185,000 miles in good shape with a decent aftermarket stereo system, I’ll be selling it for $1200, get at me).

I am so excited about taking this bad boy to shows. Instead of having to play a stressful game of Tetris every time I pack shirts and displays for a show, I’ll get to pack it into a van with TONS of cargo space and hauling power.

Soon enough, we’re going to get a nice custom paint job and some SEIBEI graphics for the outside (we’re thinking maybe bright yellow, since it will look totally AWESOME and if you paint your car a bright-ass color like yellow you can actually get an insurance discount since that’s proven to reduce accidents), put in a bumpin’ stereo, and some solar panels to charge up laptops and the like. EXCITED!

So, I’m finally sitting down to recap DESIGN FESTA - for those of you who don’t follow my life and career obsessively, Design Festa is a two day festival in Tokyo, Japan, where over 2000 artists exhibit for over 150,000 attendees. With the help of two wonderful friends of mine, Jon and Ben, I flew to Tokyo, with hundreds of shirts in tow. I worked my ass off getting ready for the show and preparing for the trip, and had high hopes for breaking into the Japanese market, making a solid grip of cash, and reconnecting with my Japanese roots (I’m not Japanese by blood, but, having lived there for a year in college, I feel a deep connection with it).

I’ve already done some blogging at various stages in the trip, but this post (or series of posts) will hopefully serve to fill in the gaps and bring everything together. Also, I’M FINALLY GOING TO POST SOME PHOTOS! Getting the trip photos together was one of the main delays for posting about the trip, but honestly the main delay was that I talked a big game before I left for Japan, not only to myself, my friends, and loved ones, but also to my fans and the t-shirt community in general, and while there are elements of it that were successful beyond what I could have imagined, I was certainly a bit ashamed that it wasn’t the immediate commercial success that I’d been hoping for. The trip wasn’t a failure by any means (though I certainly wish I’d brought a few less shirts or done certain things a bit differently), and I’m so happy to have gone, but still, it’s tough to admit that we didn’t sell nearly as many t-shirts as we’d hoped. It’s tough to admit that after years of working shows, I misread this one a little bit. I even broke one of my cardinal rules of selling at shows…but more on that later.

Let’s get one thing straight first. I’m talking a lot here about the commercial aspect of the trip not going as well as I’d thought…but I wouldn’t have traded this trip for anything, and seeing old friends, making new friends, and returning to America full of inspiration and ready to do better, these things are all more important than selling t-shirts. I mean, it’s not like they go bad or anything (of course, you could argue that designs have a finite shelf life, too, but I digress…). I’m so thankful for the trip, and I can’t wait to get back.

So let’s break the trip down in chronological order, and try to begin to get a clear picture of everything.

Tuesday, May 11th - Friday, May 14th: PRE DESIGN FESTA.

I have already blogged about the first couple of days of the trip here. The Cliff’s Notes version of that post: I HAD TO LUG FIVE HUNDRED POUNDS OF SHIRTS AND IT WAS SUPER GRUELING, BUT NOW I’M HERE AND I’M STOKED. Here, you can really get a taste for my undefeatable optimism leading up to the show.

I’m so hyped for Design Festa. I think I’m gonna blow a lot of asses out of the water, and I’m ready to see all of our hard work pay off. And I’m glad one of my bags was nearly destroyed in the process of bringing it here - it reminds me of - and bear with me here, because I don’t remember any details about it, though I’m quite sure it’s a true story - it reminds me of an army of soldiers who landed on the beach to face a large opposing force, and their commander burned all of their ships. That way, the only way they were going home was through the other army - no retreat, no surrender. I think they were Greek. Either way, I am READY TO DO THIS, and there’s no way I’m getting most of my shirts home, now, so I’ve got to do my damnedest to sell them to everyone at Design Festa.

Spoiler alert: I had to use that broken bag to take a decent number of shirts home. Did I mention that I shipped extra stuff in to Design Festa? At least I didn’t have to ship anything back, and my bags were slightly lighter…but more on that later.

Here’s a picture of my first real Japanese meal - thanks, All Nippon Airways, for the lovely curry, noodles, and unlimited Asahi Super Dry. MMMM MMM.

The first few days leading up to the show were fun and carefree. I spent a lot of time reacquainting myself with Japanese foods I hadn’t had proper dishes of in years, like ramen, katsudon, onigiri, melon pan, and I walked around Tokyo and took in the sights. My buddy Jon lived right on the Yamanote line, which is the central train line with stops in big areas like Shibuya, Shinjuku, Harajuku, Akihabara, and others, so I had a great time dicking around and just trying to get used to being back in Japan after so many years. All the while, I was doing last minute work on my displays and sales pitches for the show.

Fudge if I can remember where exactly I took this photo. I think it’s in Shibuya. I also spent one night walking around the red light district of Roppongi, which I blogged about here.

Meanwhile, my buddy Jon was working at his salaryman job full time, so we’d catch up, crack a few beers, and hang out late at night when he’d get home from work. Jon was kind enough to let me stay at his apartment in Minato-ku, near the Tamachi station on the Yamanote line, so I was SET. My man lived right near the station, and had a lovely apartment with wireless internet, a washing machine (SUPER VITAL considering I only packed about five shirts, three pairs of pants/shorts, and an assortment of socks and underwears for a two week trip), and a Japanese-style futon to sleep on. It was perfect, and I can only hope that someday I can repay Jon’s hospitality.

So, where was Ben? Our buddy Ben lives in Seoul, South Korea, so he flew in on Friday to join in the ridiculousness. His flight came in Friday, and after spending the day with his girlfriend Winnie (who rules, by the way), the two of them joined Jon and me for a tasty dinner at PIZZAKAYA.

SIDEBAR: WHAT IS PIZZAKAYA?

Pizzakaya is a Japanese-style pub (or izakaya) with amazing Western-style pizza (hence the portmanteau PIZZAKAYA), founded by an alum of our school in Japan, KCJS. Located in Roppongi, Pizzakaya is famous for their unique pizza recipes and general awesomeness. I think their most famous pizza is the Santa Fe Chicken pizza, which has tasty chicken and tasty house-made guacamole, and had us blasting big American pizza farts nearly a day later. Also, lots of TASTY TASTY BEERS.

Here I am with Ben outside of Pizzakaya. Love that dude.

Anyway, this is a good stopping point. We’ve now covered everything that happened between flying to Japan and the eve of Design Festa. We’ve seen a young man, reunited with old friends in his second homeland, full of brash optimism, and working hard to make things happen. In our next installment: DESIGN FESTA.

In between being super behind on freelance work, working on new SEIBEI designs for July, getting current new stuff ready to put on the website, and a million other projects, last night I drew a torso for an exquisite corpse print that the Two Rabbits Studios is putting out. “Exquisite corpse” is the right term, right? That’s the thing where one person draws a head/torso/legs and then one or two other people draw the other portions.

Someone else is going to be drawing a head and legs for this guy, and I’m really stoked to see what they do with it! Later on today Bob is gonna send me a head to add another torso to…Bob’s illustration style is the STUFF so hopefully I can do his work justice.

Here’s an earlier take on the character shown in the last post.

The “Where Is My Dreamcatcher?” is unrelated; I just felt like adding some text to the image. This guy will probably be on a shirt soon, sans veins (it seems most people don’t like hella veins in their weird barbarian drawings).

So, here’s a drawing from earlier this evening. It’s a take on a new character I’ve been working on, who will probably be on one of the next batch of shirts…somewhere.

I’m up late working on stuff for the first time in a long time, and it feels great. I’ve been in this state lately where I just go to bed when I get tired rather than pushing through it when I want to work. Screw that - I brewed a little pot of coffee around 11, put on the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (not to be confused with R. Kelly’s album Chocolate Factory), and got cranking and still feel pretty good…now, the question is, do I finish the pot and try to get some more work done, or do I try to go to sleep? HMMM HMMM HMMM.

I’m very tempted to start blogging about the Japan trip more, but I think that’s too big of a task for this gentleman to handle right now. I might actually have to sit down and write outlines and edit myself a bit, rather than just spouting off at the mouth, in order to fully convey the AWESOMENESS OF IT ALL and HOW MUCH I MISS MY FRIENDS ALREADY and how MY FRIENDS ARE FAR BETTER THAN I DESERVE.

I DID manage to email one of my Japanese friends earlier today…that’s a good start, right?

And I have a business meeting tomorrow that is supposedly going down at a ramen place. So don’t feel too bad for me.

Part of me is thinking I SHOULD MAKE AN ANIMATED GIF RIGHT NOW and part of me is thinking YOU HAVEN’T PLANNED IT OUT AT ALL SO YOU’LL JUST BE DICKING AROUND ON THE COMPUTER FOR ANOTHER HOUR AND NOTHING WILL COME OF IT EXCEPT YOU’LL LOOK UP RANDOM STUFF ON WIKIPEDIA. I think…I think I’m gonna draw a little and then go downstairs and go to sleep.

Here’s a quick sketch I did for my buddy Bones, since she is currently doing a “drawing for a drawing” trade.

I am bummed that I haven’t yet written any new blog posts about Japan, and I’ve yet to email any of my Japanese friends (I need to reinstall the Japanese keyboard on my computer TONIGHT).

Anyway, back to work!

Sorry I haven’t updated the blog yet with my insane-o Japan adventures - am still bringing together all of my photos and videos and trying to keep up with the mountain of work I left behind…

Anyway, RENEGADE CRAFT BROOKLYN is THIS WEEKEND!!! That is also why the blog has been a little silent…I’ve been busy getting ready for one of the biggest shows of the year!

Here are some quick photos from my phone of something special we’ve made for this show - you know those things you stick your face through at carnivals and have your picture taken on, say, a bodybuilder’s body? We decided to make some with a little SEIBEI twist.

I’m having trouble posting the photos, and don’t have the five minutes to make it work, so you’ll have to click these links to see the progress shots: here and here and here.

Alright, back to PACKING UP THE CAR!!! Come hang with the SEIBEI fam and my homies the TWO RABBITS at booths 78 and 79!