Monday, April 24, 2006

CafePress Merch is Up!

Phew, what a busy Saturday we had! In addition to doing lots of work/school stuff for the two of us, we managed to get merchandise up and for sale on our store! I have to say the logo designs look great on the products; both leeshee and I have long wishlists of products we will be buying shortly! We both love the hoodies, buttons, and raglans, and I am especially partial to the messenger bag myself.

Once I get enough of the AngstyBishy characters made, we might rotate each month which one is up for sale on the value t-shirt: sort of a Now or Never like at Glarkware, but not as final. Very excited IMO! Now we just have to get the word out.

And as always, we are eagerly awaiting input by people of which AngstyBishys they want us to do next, or shirt ideas they would love to see up.

Thursday, April 20, 2006

CafePress Store Open for Business!


Wow, I finally have news to report, amazing. ;)

We've been working on the AngstyBishy idea for what feels like forever. So I am proud to announce that we (meaning I, since Elicia's loved it since last fall) are happy with the design, and we are finally going to sell the design on merch! I opened up a shop yesterday at CafePress, and we hope to get up t-shirt and such up soon. It's an opportunity for us to make the shirts we have always wanted to see in stores, so I'm really excited.

Here is the message I typed up for our store's home page:

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Hello and welcome to our little shop! We are Lizzabell and Nyusama, at your service.

This store is in response to us having too many of those "wouldn't that make an awesome t-shirt?" ideas. It's mostly for our own use, but we hope if you are heartily amused by our strange ideas that you will snag an item or two to keep for your very own. Keep checking back as we plan to have an assortment of goodies over time.

For more artwork by Lizzabell, check out lizzabell.deviantart.com.

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So as you can see, a lot of developments in the works. Not for our manga per se, but for all the little t-shirt ideas we have bouncing around in our heads.

I finalized the very first AngstyBishy fanart guy, which will be Sasuke, of course. =) He is the anygsty posterboy, so I feel it is fitting. If we determine that we can sell our satiric fanart of all the bishys online, then we will make up posters and such and do so. Stay tuned.

To browse the shop (Nothing is there yet, except our logo and blurb), click here.

My DeviantArt site is up, and I have a few things up, including the AngstyBishy logo. To go there click here. Below is my little blurb at DeviantArt exlaining my concept for AngstyBishy:

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AngstyBishy is my way of poking fun at all the super-serious, super-angsty anime/manga characters I know and love. The idea for the mark was born from making fanart for my sister, and wanting something like a symbol on my picture to group all the bishies I was drawing together. After all, remove their fantastic costumes, tragic backgrounds, and crazy hair, and you are left with is boys all wearing the same surly expression. Angstybishy is the simplified face and attitude of every bishie I have ever seen—it's frightening how truly alike they all are.

I sketched the figure on sketchbooks/scrap paper/napkins, then scanned those into Photoshop and drew the final lines with my Wacom brushes. I then brought the finished guy into Illustrator and traced him with the pen tool. The font is Futura BT Light Condensed, and the letters have a 1 and 2 point stroke with rounded caps and joints.

The misspelling of "bishie" is on purpose, to help it rhyme visually and to differentiate it. The tagline comes from a sign some friends of mine made for a Sasuke costume at a Con, with hilarious results. I hope to use the basic form of my guy to draw lots of famous bishies, and make posters and t-shirts of both my original guy and all the bishies. I would love to get a brand of him going. If the idea sounds appealing or you have a certain bishie you would love to see done, let me know. Also, let me know if there is anything about the guy I should tweak to make him more polished. Thanks!

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That's all for now, but I'm so happy to finally have something to talk about. For more discussion on concepts and art stuff, go to my onlie art journal Converging to a Center.