Tell me a little bit about yourselves and your company?
We originally started our company back in 2007, individually printing t-shirts from the spare bedroom of our apartment. I have been into art my entire life, and Aldora has always been the business savvy one. Both of us work seamlessly together to create what you see now as Akumu Ink.
What made you decide to get into this business?
I was illustrating children books for a publishing company in Montreal at the time. Aldora and I would walk our Scottish terrier, Tiny, every night while thinking of different ways I could use my art skills to make a little extra money. After a weekend camping getaway we stopped at an outlet mall and made an even quicker stop at a Hot Topic. On the ride home after buying a ton of Hot Topic merchandise, Aldora suggested that I could easily put my drawings on shirts. I thought she was kidding so I didn’t think much of it at the time. We taught ourselves about the silk screening process, and six months later we released the first six designs at www.akumuink.com.
What is the vision of your company? What do you hope to achieve?
Since the first day we started this company it has always been a way to get my art out there. It’s grown into our creative outlet and we’ve found a strong customer base that has been extremely supportive of us. We simply just want to keep creating art, whether on t-shirts or other products and merchandise.
What is your favorite design? Why?
My favorite designs are of sad skeleton characters just sitting alone contemplating their lives. I have one skeleton sitting in a red wagon and the text reads “Play with Me,” or I have another one called Lost at Sea of a skeleton sitting in a little boat wearing a pirate hat with a bite taken out of it as a shark fin circles around him. I just love the imagery of these cute big-headed skull characters giving up on life (because their dead) and admitting defeat. If I could only draw those characters on shirts I would, but they’re usually not as popular, so I try to only introduce one of those designs per season.
Tell me about your Kickstarter Campaign and how it came about?
Last Halloween we were working at a comic convention in Los Angeles. The night before we had gone to see Danny Elfman perform music from Tim Burton’s movies with a full orchestra and it inspired us so much. We got to the con a little earlier than we should, so we had some time to hang out. I always carry my sketchbook with me so I asked Aldora to improvise a story with me, for fun. We started throwing out ideas and kept making it weirder and weirder. In the end we both stared at the pages and were impressed with it. The convention got busy and we put it away and forgot about it.
A few weeks later I found that Aldora had started doing research to see if we could actually make it into a physical book. We decided the only way we would make it would be through taking preorders. We put it up on Kickstarter and within the first day of launching we reached 50% of our goal, which we couldn’t do without the strong support from our current Akumu Ink followers.
Will there be more in the future?
As we’ve been working on this book, we came up with a completely different story idea that we are shelving for now. We’ll have to wait on the reaction for this one. If this is the only book we create we’ll be happy with that, but if the demand is so strong for another one, then we’ll see what happens.
Our priority is always going to be to consistently create new t-shirt designs. You can always count on us releasing 3-4 new t-shirt designs every month.
What is your website? Contact information?
Our website is www.akumuink.com
Facebook: faceook.com/akumuink
Instagram/twitter @akumuink
Thank you so much to Joey from Akumu Ink. Please take a moment and check out their Kickstarter at Just Another Birthday Kickstarter. Check it out and show some support for this awesome company.
Post by Vikki
Twitter: ProfessorWhite
Facebook: Fangirl Review
Twitter: ProfessorWhite
Facebook: Fangirl Review
No comments:
Post a Comment