I actually had a really cramazing Thirsty Thursday post lined up for today, but it’ll have to wait until next week — I have an exciting announcement to make (well, two actually):

First up: my Diver Riding Shark shirt was worn by Jimmy on FOX’s Raising Hope this week!

The full video won’t be up on Hulu until next week, but rest assured, it will be embedded ASAP (provided Congress doesn’t destroy the internet between now and then). There’s something vaguely satisfying about Jimmy passing his GED test while wearing one of my tees…

But even MORE exciting than this teeny-tiny step up the ladder of fame is the addition of ART PRINTS to the Ex-Boyfriend product line! While a limited selection to start, I hope to be able to add to the collection of available art prints in the future. Each 11″ x 17″ print is digitally reproduced on 100 lb. glossy cover stock, ships for FREE in sturdy cardboard shipping tubes, and is guaranteed to get you mad high-fives & fist-bumps at your next dinner party (if your dinner parties are typically held at the Jersey Shore. And if they are, the high-fives might be for your delicious rum-ham.)

I realized that while I mentioned this on Twitter and Facebook, I never actually got around to introducing it here on the blog: my new Pterodactyl Springs Summer Camp t-shirt!

What better way to relive the halcyon days of your youth than by throwing on this distressed vintage-looking tee from the Pterodactyl Springs Summer Camp? Guaranteed to evoke fond memories of warm summer nights spent listening to the lake lap against the shore as the flap of dinosaur wings passed by overhead!

Wow, sorry for the radio internet-silence; the holidays can do that to a guy. And by “that” I mean “crawl into a cave for weeks at a time with nothing to keep him company but his wife, cats, and copious amounts of fattening food and booze”.

Speaking of cats, remember this cutie from our last chat? Well, she just had her surgery on Monday morning and is recuperating nicely in the pillow & blanket nest I made for her in the bathroom. I felt bad sending her under the knife without a name, so she’s officially Penelope, at least as far as the state of Maryland is concerned. More pix will be forthcoming.

Anyway, let me show you what I’ve been working on. First up is a new design documenting the on-going exploits of Fuzz Aldrin, first kitty in space!

Being the enterprising sort, Fuzz decided to make a little scratch doing what he does best, not unlike his bud Victorious Yeti did with his alpine resort. I present to you Fuzz Aldrin’s Astro Camp:

Cyber-high-five to Yuki Shichi, a fan who helped critique an early version of this design months ago and really got me pointed in the right direction. She rocks!

Another cyber-high-five to Victoria Vu, who loved the skull & cross-carrots on the Pirate Bunny jolly roger so much that she asked that it be made into its own shirt. Done and done!

Finally, as I’ve already done with my I’d Rather Be Making Out & Peanut Butter & Jelly Lovers tees, I recently re-designed my Now Accepting Boyfriend Applications and Now Accepting Girlfriend Applications tees. I think they’re way better now:

Well, that’s it for now. I should have some new stuff up in the next couple weeks. Tomorrow we resume our normal diet of booze, weirdness, Japanese robots, and hilarity!

For your consideration: two piping-hot, fresh off the sketch-pad designs to kick-start your holiday wish lists!

First up is my transit map homage to the world of Lewis Carroll, helping you get around Wonderland & Looking-Glass Land with ease!

Next we have this pretty rad romantic interlude between Red Riding Hood and The Big, Bad Wolf called “Star Crossed”:

As usual, both designs are available in men’s and ladies’ sizes on a variety of styles. If you like ‘em, share ‘em! Visit the Facebook page and let me know what you think:)

Related Art:

I was delighted to get an email yesterday from Elizabeth at Tenth Life, a St. Louis, MO-based cat rescue organization that focuses on treating abused and/or injured stray cats with special needs before adopting them out to forever-homes. A friend of her’s put her in contact with me after seeing my booth at Renegade Handmade a couple weekends ago in Chicago, and she very politely asked if it would be OK to name one of their new admissions after Fuzz Aldrin. Of course it would! 3-D Fuzz is pictured above. He’s had a rough go of it recently; Tenth Life’s vet believes Fuzz was clipped in the leg by a car a couple months back, which causes him to walk with a pronounced limp. So far he seems to be doing well, and following his upcoming neutering and microchipping, Fuzz will be available for adoption in St. Louis. C’mon, Cardinals/Rams/Blues fans—who could turn away a face like that?

To learn more about Tenth Life’s mission and how you can help (even from far away—Cash Rules Everything Around Us!), visit their website, and be sure to check out their video to meet some of their success stories.

So this weekend was Otakon, Baltimore’s annual anime convention. Though this was my first foray into the actual convention center, Otakon weekend (along with Baltimore Comic-Con weekend) has long been a favorite event of ours, purely for the people-watching. This year I got to experience it first-hand as a vendor in the Dealer Room, and it. Was. Awesome.

We got a primo position, directly across from the restrooms (seriously. Guaranteed foot-traffic!) and had a pretty sweet booth set-up, if I do say so myself. For the sake of clarity, I snapped this before the attendees were allowed in for an unobstructed view; with 30,000 people strolling around in costumes that in many cases doubled their actual size, I figured I should take a pic before it got blocked out by a giant dragon:

Yeah, that’s Spyro. And there’s more where that came from!

Everyone’s favorite Pokemon trainer, Ash Ketchum, also put in an appearance!

Not sure what was going on here conceptually, but that hair is awesome! And those beads—like a Japanese Mardi Gras reveler from the future!

An assortment of costumed attendees.

Lots of cute doll costumes like this cupcake-themed one…

…as well as more traditional, less food-centric ones.

We also spied this creepy quasi-Gentleman from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

The whole Joker fam, including Joker’s Daughter, Harley Quinn, and the clown prince of crime himself!

And nothing Japanese-inspired would be complete without an appearance from the Mario Bros (or Sisters!), Mario & Luigi.

There were also some more generic characters, like this spacey schoolgirl.

And this attendee, who seemed to have a pretty original look going on, though the hat, bowtie & jacket definitely remind me of Cheap Trick’s Rick Nielsen.

There were also a TON of steampunk aficionados in attendance throughout the weekend…

And of course, you had your staples, which ran the spectrum from your traditional Darth Vader (shown here attempting to choke me out from afar via The Force)…

…to more creative renderings of classic characters, like Leia in a balloon bikini.

By far one of my faves was just this cute little pink bear, giving me either the double-bird, or two thumbs up (I hope the latter.)

Even better, I got some new super-fans! I saw this one sporting her new Fuzz tee the day after she bought it, and (shocker of shockers) experienced seeing someone I don’t know walking around with my stuff on for the very first time. I imagine it’s a lot like hearing your song on the radio for the first time. The Beatles>Jesus, Me=The Beatles…am I a god? Probably only when facing Gozer the Gozarian on the roof of an apartment building. Baby steps!

All in all, it was a great experience, and I can’t wait to do it again next summer. To fans new and old that came out and said hi, you guys are awesome! And especially thanks to Adrienne, Tony, Lauren, David, & Andrea for helping me man the booth and pimping my wares throughout the weekend—you’re all the second-best friends a guy could ask for (the wife wins that one every time!)

Things are gonna start happening for me now!

Related Designs:

So there’s a lot of new stuff coming your way from Ex-Boyfriend. We finally got around to posting my two newest designs, Eight vs. Ate and Transylvania Is 4 Lovers. I’m hoping to get at least one or two more up by the end of the week; I know it’s been a bit quiet in that regard lately. Don’t worry, though. I’m on it!

I also put the finishing touches on a new site design this weekend. Still a few minor things to do before that goes up, but I’m hoping to have it up later this week as well. The pitfalls of running a business with just two people!

Anyway, here are the new designs:

And just so you don’t think this post is all about MY shizz, here’s a pretty cool art blog I discovered via Thrillist.com a couple weeks ago: It’s called Ten Paces and Draw, and the concept behind it is that the blog contributors come up with a conceptual theme and then invite artists to work collaboratively on a piece that reflects the given theme. One artist starts off and creates a sketch inspired by the theme, and then passes it off to another artist who completes it. It’s a very cool idea. One of my favorite recent pieces is this collaboration between Kyle Fewell and fellow Baltimore-based illustrator Ariyana Suvarnasuddhi. Check out their other stuff; it’s very good!

So after a quick diversion into the robotic realm last week, I thought I’d wrap up this two-part series about my recent European escapades!

Previously I posted some pics of the cool art to be seen in Oslo, Norway and the choicest selections from Berlin’s East Side Gallery. This week’s focus is a bit more on Berlin’s excellent street art scene.

This awesome Japanese woodcut-style portrait decorated the side of a hotel across the street from the East Side Gallery facing the Spree River. We really loved the economical use of color and elegant contours and just thought in general it was great art AND marketing for the hotel; it’s hard to miss AND hard to forget.

After a couple of mis-steps seeking out the cream of the art scene crop that we’d heard so much about before arriving in Berlin, we asked the proprietor of Big Brobot, a very cool book/toy/comic/t-shirt shop in the Friedrichshain section of the city, if he could recommend any good galleries that exhibited more street art and pop art (as opposed to the truly awful installations we’d seen up to that point.) He kindly pointed us in the direction of the NeuroTitan gallery and shop.

After a couple of missed turns, we finally were pointed in the direction of the correct alley leading to the gallery. Once we stepped into the alley, we were greeted with some really wonderful pieces of street art, from spray can art to traditional media to paste-ups.

The alley then led into a courtyard that featured this very cool steam-powered sculpture of a steampunk bat-creature with flapping wings, roving eyes, and flailing proboscis. I really wish I’d switched on my video camera to catch it in action!

Finally, to get to the NeuroTitan gallery, we had to climb a few flights of stairs to enter the shop area before checking out the exhibit. While the exhibit was pretty “meh”, the trip up the stairs was awesome, with the walls just COVERED in really cool graffiti and street art. One of our favorites was the “Fashion Chimp” ad paste-up, done in the style of a 1930s-40s women’s magazine. Who wouldn’t want a giant, life-sized “fashion chimp” for their home?

That pretty much wraps up our 2011 European adventure. Sad as we were not to be able to make it to Tokyo, it was an excellent diversion none the less, and hopefully the planet is done kicking Japan’s ass for a few years and we can make it over there soon.

In OTHER Ex-Boyfriend news—AT LEAST two new designs are going to be up by the end of this week. If you or someone you know is into vampires, kitties, and/or kawaii-style art, be sure to check back!

ALSO: Be sure to tune into The Daily Show on Comedy Central tonight at 11pm. Our good friend Jackson Galaxy from Animal Planet will be sporting our very own Fuzz Aldrin this evening during Aasif Mandvi’s segment! Woot! Be sure to spread the word!

UPDATE: The Daily Show segment featuring Jackson Galaxy wearing Fuzz Aldrin tonight has been postponed thanks to some big political news today, but I’ll keep you guys updated about when it really airs!

First things first: many thanks to awesome artist D. Billy for his help in getting this design done. I had a bit of a blockage when I started it, and was trying to force it to be something it wasn’t. He talked me off the ledge, and inadvertently inspired me to steal a bit of his style to take it in a different direction to complete it. You should really check out his work here.

Now, onto the shirt. Here’s a close-up of the art:

Check it out on an actual shirt!

Now, without further ado, on to the kittens! These tiny balls of adorable were guests of ours for a few weeks until they’d beefed up enough to get adopted out at the MD SPCA. Say hello to Heidi and her brood, Biff, Cali, Gorby, Gary & Pepper!

Have a great weekend, guys! And if any of you are in or are going to be in the Philadelphia area with some time to kill next Saturday or Sunday, stop by the Art Star Craft Bazaar at Penn’s Landing to meet me at my booth—I’d love to meet you guys!