Here’s the latest and greatest from the robot-lovers over at Terratag, this time around they’ve got Tokyoplastic to do the designing for them, and I think he’s done a pretty tidy job. The mix between the halftones and the solid-colour blood splashes works really well.

Costiness=£20 Buy it at Terratag

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Tags » blood • robot • robots • splash • splatters • T-shirts • terratag • tokyoplastic • UK • white

To me, the character design on Tokyo Massacre is pretty cute, yes, she’s holding a chainsaw, but at the same time, its a pretty cute style. Maybe I’m starting to get a bit dark if I think that anyone wielding a chainsaw can be cute, please shout at me if the blog starts getting too gothy (”dudes, this glow in the glow in the dark tee would go great with my pentagram necklace, ring, and belt buckle!”).

The second design that Akumu Ink released this month looks like someone decided to put a chess board on your chest with a razor blade, and even gothy old Andy thinks that this may well be a little dark, but I do quite like it. The tee is called Shukketsu, any chance a Japanese speaker in the audience could enlighten us?

Oh, and they promise they’ll have hoodies on sale next month, huzzah!

Akumu Ink

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Tags » akumu ink • American Apparel • black • blood • Canada • character • dark • New Designs • releases • T-shirts

Before I talk about Electric Zombie, may I just applaud myself for what I think might be the cleverest post title I’ve written in a long time?

Electric Zombie have got some really cool designs, many of which can be seen in the gallery above, which vary from downright gruesome bloody faces to the hilarity of cartoon-y body parts emerging from some kind of green ooze. You couldn’t accuse them of being shrinking violets either, almost all the designs have an oversized print, which I think really works well with their style. The prices are decent too, never topping $20 and a couple of tees are just $6.13.

Electric Zombie

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Tags » black • blood • electric zombie • horror • merch now • oversize • T-shirts

I have to make a little admission about this tee before I get to the meat of the review. Usually, when someone e-mails me and asks if I’d like a sample, I tell them my size (although I do tell people to send whatever size they want), my address, and I don’t pick a design to be sent to me. I didn’t do that with Akumu Ink, I asked them to send me this design (I didn’t insist upon it, it was just a request) because I really liked its look, and I thought that a detailed print like this would test AIs mettle.

In what seems to be a recurring theme, I wore this t-shirt on a night out with my friends so that I could get the opinions of people that don’t spend all their time writing about t-shirts, thinking about t-shirts and talking about t-shirts. They all liked it, hell, even my mother liked it, which surprised me since a t-shirt with a horror theme could be a bit heavy for some people, I think that the print is a genuinely arresting image, and printing it in blood red could make a few people a bit uncomfortable. But if you’re into this style of design, which I am, it is very easy to like, especially with the use of negative space being used so effectively.

Like I said in the first paragraph, part of the reason why I asked Akumu Ink to send this t-shirt was because I thought that the print would be a decent test of their printing skills, or at least the skills of their printers if they get some other company to do it. They passed the test with flying colours, although I guess that in the case of this tee its just flying colour, but they still did a damn good job anyway. The print is pretty thick, ensuring that the colour is solid and vibrant, so I guess there could be some cracking issues down the line, but it would be a long way down the line, so you probably don’t have much to worry about. The t-shirt itself is of AA stock, so its fair to say that you know what to expect there. One cool little extra for this tee is the toe tag that has been attached to the hang tag. It is customised for each order, stating your name, place of death (your address), what caused your death (the name of the t-shirt) and a case number (your order number presumably,mine said ‘666′). One word of warning, there’s a pretty large logo print on the lower back, which I’m sure some of you will hate.

Costiness=$21 Link

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Tags » akumu ink • black • blood • horror • negative space • red • review • Reviews • T-shirts

I could go in for a lot of eastern-inspired stereotypes, and point out that HYA could be pronounced like that sound to make when you pretend to do a karate chop, but instead I’m going to let Shaolinen explain their ethos themselves:

It is high time a sense of realism came about to give martial arts a better standing in the market. Skaters, hip-hop sports wear, football and rugby all have their urban following, but martial arts has yet to be represented. A lot of our designs are based on martial arts and oriental themes with a view at more authenticity and perhaps education. A lot of people don’t even know that the words “Kung-Fu” actually means “hard work” (because it takes a lot of hard-work to become a master).

We aim to produce the best martial arts orientated teeshirts around. Since there aren’t many out that we liked, it made sense to make our own to wear.

There are currently six different designs on sale, and whilst they’re only available in a medium size at the moment, Weng from Shaolinen e-mailed me to say that they hope to offer a wider range of sizes soon. They seem to be having a bit of a sale at the moment, with tees costing £15 (UK) and £23 (overseas), with delivery included.

Their flash site is really slick, although there is also a HTML version for those of you on dial-up, or just with Flash-phobia.

Shaolinen

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Tags » black • blood • fight • matrial arts • Shaolinen • splatter • t-shirt

Feels like a fair old while since I raved about a track-jacket, so let’s get back on track, you don’t want a hood all the time, right?

Strhess clothing, run by a guy called Derek Hess (who appears to be rather a busy man, a tour and a fest? The UK tour happened to swing by my city last month but I missed it), has some rather nice items for sale at their store. I did find many of the same items on sale at another webstore for almost 50% than the prices at the official Strhess store, so if you ever see anything of theirs on sale at another site, check if it’s in stock at their store, hopefully you’ll get the best deal that way.

Anywho, onto my pick of the bunch, I like the hemorrhage line of hoodies, it’s in keeping with Derek’s artistic style, no soft shapes here, there’s a certain amount of energy that can be found in his sketch like designs, it certainly does make for an interesting print when it’s on clothing rather than paper. The trail of blood kicks-ass too…

It comes in three different colours (a white zip-up, dare I?), sizes up to 2XL, and costiness=$40.

This is probably the first time I’ve ever written about something from Cleveland (Sthress HQ), but it’s not a prejudice thing, I used to enjoy the Drew Carey show, and Halle Berry can shake her wobbly bits at me anytime.

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Tags » blood • derek hess • green • olive • strhess • Track Jackets