CREATUREEEE FEATUREEEE

I’ve been so busy with vacation, coming back, then going and approving all the new Electric Zombie stuff, and then going to Philly for Wizard World, and sneaking in this release, I really didn’t have time to talk about it.



Last fall, I had this idea to do a series of prints. I was always Inspired by those old “LET’S ALL GO TO THE MOVIESSSSS” commercials that used to play before movies and are still parodied today and featured in movie theatres. Not only that, but, I was also thinking of my own upcoming movie room.

I had designer friend, Casey, work on these goons. Casey worked on the Nukey Mouse design. It was a no brainer.



Originally, there were supposed to be 4 prints, but Casey was only able to turn around 3 and not to throw him under the bus, but was late, so it never made the release for the fall line on time. But things happen for a reason!



Due to scheduling conflicts, the summer line wasn’t going to make it’s usual May release. This opened up the new, and hopefully annual Legends Line, in April, which was an awesome limited release just in time for Wrestlemania. With the release date up in the air, I knew it was time to feed that need for new EZ product that I felt it was time to revisit and rework this poster series.



Although, only 3 made the initial 4, I decided to only roll with 2. Sizing was off, too much dead space and I just thought that it should be saved for series 2 next year. I tweaked the colors. Added some texture and a border and just made this work better as a poster print, where as before it was just a character and there was space to be filled.



I also wanted to do something special, other than this being limited and yes, sent by me. So I pulled out the 3D glasses and experimented and got this thing to work and BOOM, 3d variants! I love both versions, and it was super hard for me to pick a favorite. Regardless, I’m framing them both. But, let’s get back on point here! I was trying to figure out what else could I do to make this special, so I made stickers of both designs for the sets. This isn’t just a little sticker. These guys are big.



Last time I made something that was limited and sent myself, it was a disaster. You had to wait forever. Things were coming in wrong, or late. Delays, taking forever to assemble and ship, just grueling. This time, I learned and came into it prepared. These suckers are numbered, packed and ready to be shipped. They will be shipped every week with tracking in a crush proof mailer. Each are numbered, sealed and packed and shipped by meeeee. Limited to 50, and only 50. Printed on amazing watercolor paper. The 3D ones come with 3d stickers and a pair of 3d glasses. The texture and feel of this paper is awesome. I honestly thought they were screen printed for a minute. Will be using this paper / printing more often, so great.



Be sure to check them out and get your hands on them now! You won’t be sorrrryyyyyy! Get your munch on!

Vacay-Shun

Those who know me, or know anything about me, know that I am a machine. I’m always doing something, and maybe 1 - 2 days a week I’m not working. Even if there’s a day where I’m not technically “WORKING”, I usually do something that is productive, even though it might not be something that turns a profit. That being said, I decided it was time to take a vacation. I usually only travel if I’m going to Florida, or for a convention, or San Diego for a shoot. To me a vacation, is where you go somewhere new and explore. I haven’t done that since I believe San Diego for Comic Con in 2011, and that doesn’t really count, because I had been to San Diego many times prior. So, it’s been 2 years, since I’ve been on an actual vacation.



I was on tour with New Found Glory in the fall of 2011, and San Francisco was one of the places we spent a lot of time at. It was a super weird area, because everywhere (for the most part) closed at 7. I remembered staying at the St.Regis with the band, so of course that’s where I stayed. Right when I got there, I went and explored.



There were cool little alley ways, that didn’t even look real. Being from New York, you would think I would be used to them, but nothing this cool looking and well, clean. I stopped at cupcake place, which was kinda ehhh. I know lots of people don’t like CRUMBS cupcakes. To me, they are the MECCA of cupcakes, regardless if they are a massive entity now. I snagged, Cookies and Cream, Maple Bacon, Snickers, and Chocolate Cheesecake. Dry and blah. For fun, I trekked alllllll the way up as high as you can go to overlook the city (not counting the twin peaks)

The one thing I hated, was when looking into places to check out, there were hardly any places that weren’t seafood, asian, or brunch. The first place I checked out was Plow, which is in my top 5 favorite breakfast places to eat. This place was ridiculous. I got their signature meal, which was called, ‘The Plow”.



Which was 2 eggs, choice of meat, I got bacon, 2 lemon ricotta pancakes and these glorious fucking potatoes. I don’t know what they put in these things, but holy crap. Amazing potatoes. I’ve been to tons of breakfast places, and this place destroys everyone else’s potatoes.

I took a drive to Haight street and walked the entire thing, and checked out all the stores they had to offer. Nothing too crazy, but I did get to check out the SF Amoeba, and picked up some records. Once you get to the end of Haight, you end at Golden Gate Park, which is cool but holy crap are there hippies and dirty ass fucking hobos. I can’t tell you how many people were just faced down laying in the grass. After the long walk, I went back to the hotel, changed and guess what, ended up back on Haight Street, but this time, It was for “Off The Grid”, which is a massive gathering of food trucks.



This was right up my alley. I knew I was going to check out Bacon Bacon, a place I have been following for a few months now. EVERYTHING is bacon, amazing. I loves me some bacons. While standing in line, I caught a fishy smell. Not that rancid vagina or horrible bile smell, the holy shit, there’s some fish tacos around here somewhere. My big ol beak was right and I found the taco truck and bought the best fish taco I had ever tasted. I HATEEEEE onions, it’s the nastiest fucking thing in the world and even the onions were good. I fucking pigged out. Big ass bacon fried chicken bacon wrapped sandwich, bacon chocolate chip cookies and my delicious fish taco. It was some of the best food I’ve ever had.

Speaking of cookies, I scoped out Hot Cookie, which was in a saucy, gay street, which was hilarious, because they had gigantic cock cookies. I picked up 3 cookies. Cayenne chocolate, chocolate fudge, and oatmeal walnut chocolate chip. These things were good, but I wish they were like the name said “HOT”, ok the Cayenne one was hot.



My favorite place to check out that was the pier, There was just so much to look at and was a mix of amusement park meets flea market, meets downtown, meets beach. The sea lions were awesome too. If I had to pick 1 place to only be able to check out, it would definitely be the pier. So much fun.



Im not really a touristy type of vacationer. I like to eat and see things and check out stores I’ve never been to before. As far as parks and natural attractions. I see it and I’m over it. I’m not into taking a photo in front of a sign, or a bridge or any of that. I can’t even spend more than 30 mins at the beach. Maybe I’m just vacation A.D.D.



I was pretty disappointed with the lack of of course dinner places, but I was also bummed there wasn’t any comic book or toy stores. I mean MEGA bummed. I did manage to find a cool antique store, which was in this massive warehouse barn building. Everything was mega expensive or already sold, but man, just looking around this place was inspiring. It was a five star antique store. I wish I had more time, money and a way to get this stuff back, but regardless, it was a great place to check out.

I have 2 massive fears, and thats heights, and driving on hills. Driving on hills is fucking scary. The car in front of you can slide back, and you can roll back, you have to punch it to get up the hill. I can’t express enough how much I hate it. I’m getting chills just thinking about it. You can imagine how much I was freaking out when heading to the twin peaks. I was losing my mind and was ready to leave within the first minute.



One thing that stayed in the back of my head, was Dynamo Donuts. I remembered seeing them on the best thing I ever ate. The place was ok. The best thing they had, (No pun intended) was the Apple Maple Bacon donuts. This place is no voodoo donuts, but still worth checking out.

All and all it was a decent vacation. I almost got thrown out of the hotel because of the dogs, and me unleashing on management. I yelled at drunk ass 40 year olds, making a fuckload of noise. Walked a shitload of miles. Walked / Drove up hills. Said “Fuck”, over and over every time I had to drive up a hill. Saw a movie being filmed in china town. Ate a bunch of good stuff, ate a 60 dollar steak and then got sick the same night. Went to the dog beach and saw a dead baby whale. Took the dogs to this awesome dog bakery, and spoiled the crap out of them, (they even got to go inside an urban outfitters) Saw the red woods, saw the bridge, drove over the bridge. It wasn’t my cup of tea, and glad I experienced it. If you like food trucks, and brunch and seeing sights for 5 minutes, then this place is for you. Just don’t bring your dogs.

Little Travelers

Some of you already know this, but I am completely obsessed with my dogs. It’s ridiculous. Last October, I had this stupid idea while conversing with family and friends and talked about different plays on words, using the word “paw” in them as the next great dog idea. PAWSport was one of them. I take my dogs EVERYWHERE. There’s only been maybe 2 trips they haven’t been on. They’re small and can fit in 1 bag, plus it’s 50 bucks to bring them on the plane. Way cheaper than putting them in a kennel. Plus, who doesn’t want their little buddy (ies) to snuggle with while you’re away from home. I loved my play on words so much that I decided to make a real deal PAWSport. After digging through photos, I quickly became disappointed. I barely had any pictures. I’ve had Tuffy for 5 years, and Rowdy for 4 and I only had 15 photos. Such a bummer. But I took what I had and compiled them into this nifty little notebook. Ok, maybe it’s not little. It’s an 8x12, but so what… I asked a fellow designer to draw the front for me. He’s actually super good at the wood craving style of type. I knew he would immediately nail the look I wanted, and as I thought, he did, first try even.

Pretty excited to start filling this thing up and make it a point to take every stupid picture I can of these little jerks. I don’t know what’s more sad, all the chances I already had, or the fact that I have almost transformed my penis into a vagina by borderline entering the world of scrap booking. Ughhhhh….

NEVER DIE….

Everything I do is a plan. A long drawn out, well calculated plan. This particular idea, was 3 years in the making. In factttt if some of you guys sort of have been teased since last fall about the big picture of things. Where I’m leading and where I’m taking you on this incredible Electric Zombie journey. But enough of me being weird and cryptic. Let’s get focused! 3 years ago, I had a spoof logo designed by my pal Yardley, which of course is a parody of the classic 80’s / 90’s WWF logo. I never did anything with it but make a small run of hang tags. Other than that they never got released or even shown to the public. I waited for the right time to do something with it. I had all these ideas in my idea book for other zombie wrestling themed shirts and thought, you know what? Let’s just do a full blown line. I was already thinking of a way to sort of restructure the release for Electric Zombie anyway. Not that its a HUGE deal, but, the doing a fall EZ line at the same time as Grave Takers is hard to switch gears back and forth. So from here on out the lines will be as follows. Small Winter in January - February. Legends Line Wrestlemania week, Summer in July - August, Small special release in on Halloween.

So this is just the first in hopefully many. The first idea I had for this line, was a poster. The one thing that I remember most when I was a kid was the old Royal Rumble posters. Truth be told, I’m more of a Rumble guy than I am a mania man. Don’t get me wrong, Mania always has the top notch matches and you know you’re going to get a good show. But it’s the unpredictability of the Rumble. ESPECIALLY, in the internet age. People know shit sometimes before the Wrestlers do, even if it has no truth the the dirt sheet shit rumor. With the Rumble, you have no idea who is coming out win, who’s going to win. I mean yea, you know that there’s no way, FUNAKI or Doink is going to win, there’s always fillers. Sometimes you can say, “Well someone from Smackdown won last year, so someone from RAW has to win this time”, if you ask me the split is stupid and always has been, but whatever. Point being the posters. Back in the day lots of promos for events were paintings, or really awesome face off photos with awful lightning, or volcanos, or something over the top to somehow drive home that this match is going to be of epic proportions. They aren’t like they used to be. There were 2 posters that stood out the most in my mind, even though there were other glorious posters, nothing tops Royal Rumble 1991 and 1992’s posters. The pack of wrestlers about to fuck your shit up and their take no prisoners stance was amazing. I wanted to do a take on it so badly, might do another one in a few years, don’t want to recycle the same ol’ every year. It was hard because there’s so many good iconic and impacting wrestlers in my childhood that I had to narrow it down to a select few. I wanted to tease who might be coming up in the next line, a little bit of HINT HINTAGE if you will. Bam Bam Bigelow, Diesel, Razor Ramon, Macho Man, Hogan, Taker, Big Bossman, Piper (in a they live shirt of course), Bret Hart, VADERRRR, Legion Of Doom, Jake The Snake, and Adam Bomb. I know I know, why isn’t so and so on there, how come this guy is on there. PATIENCE creeps. In due time.



This is a massive and amazing piece, so of course I had to go big with the print size. This bad boy is an astonishing 24x36 and looks awesome framed and hung (lurk my instagram you’ll see) and Chris really outdid himself on this piece. I can’t wait to give him next year’s concept, which is way way way way toned down and not as nutty. I PROMISE!



Another Poster came to mind while I was lurking the interwebs for reference for the poster, and I remembered the battle of Hogan vs Slaughter, Wrestlemania 7. I actually have a postcard of this event, and it had quite the image for it. It wasn’t the faceoff image. It was Hogan, on top of a moutain, wielding an american flag. Coincidently enough, this piece was also done by the same artist who did the Rumble posters, did this poster. Joe Jusko, a man who has created a few remarkable and also influential comic covers that I own (Nightmare on Elm Street) and does a ton of Fantasy art pieces. Dude is a monster and I will actually have the chance to meet him this year. Any way. I wanted to do a take of this, and sort of revisit the old zombie hogan I did way back when. My strong suit is obviously photo editing and collaging, so I figured, this would be the way to go. After spending grueling hours, I made this beast. I am super proud of being able to zombify him the way I did. The ripped flesh, tights, THE BOOT! Man I love this thing. It’s honestly my favorite piece (besides titan) of the line, and I HATEEEE my own work for EZ.



Those of you who know me, or lurk me enough, know that I am OBSESSED with my dogs. I sing to them, take a bunch of stupid pictures of them and spoil the crap out of them. What you don’t know is the boy dog, is actually named after a wrestler. I got Tuffy Butt (Tuffy for short) just before I moved to New York 5 years ago and just after I moved, I knew I wanted another dog, but a black morkie (Maltese Yorkie mix). I also knew what I wanted to name him, long before I even had a candidate in mind. Rowdy Pupper. Named after one of the greatest wrestling legends, Rowdy Roddy Piper. Or for you non wrestling fans, “That dude in They Live”. I go to Wrestlemania with my dad every year, and while he was getting ready to go out around town with me, I was googling places to find a Black Morkie, and alas, I found one. This place had pictures and videos, and he was awesome. He was stealing toys from his puppy brothers and whipping his head around ripping that shit to shreds, like dogs do. It was Wrestlemania Weekend, he was going to be named after a wrestler, he had to be mine. So I bought him and 4 years later, The dude got his own shirt. Of course with a corny twist. I couldn’t leave tuffy out, and American Apparel, had just put out the baseball shirts for dogs. So I took the titan design and made it for Tuff. I’m hoping to do more dog shirts the next line. Have to think of some good ones and not just ones to fullfil stupid dreams of mine.



The last big inspiration for this line was the old Hasbro / LJN toys from my childhood. They always had the BEST packaging. I wanted to create a box that held all these items, and sort of mimicked that style and look. I remember they used to have WWF cereal with LOD and Ultimate Warrior masks on the back you could cut out. I also remembered that back in High School, I used to backyard wrestle and we had shitty belts made out of cardboard. So what better than a cardboard championship belt?! I tried my best to get the look down perfectly and replicated the Wrestlemania logo the best I could.



One of the best things about the early years of wrestling, is that everyone had a simple icon or logo to go with their character. I placed those on the front to sort of fill up the space and I couldn’t be more happier. I also loved that WWF would make things with cartoon versions of the characters and put their signature on it, as if you were the coolest kid who was walking around with Honky Tonk Man’s autograph. Hey, we were kids, we didn’t know any better! I did the same with the back. You have to see this thing for yourself. It truly is awesome.



This is one of my favorite releases to date, and I really put my heart, and my childhood into it. I folded every box, assembled all the awesome new barf bags, which is made to resemble the old Wrestlemania Arcade Marquee and its filled with loads of goodness. Lots of little secret gems in each design. The Legion of Doom one, even glows in the dark! EVERY T-SHIRT comes with a WWF spoof logo sticker hang tag as well. SCORE! This release is bigger than the MEGA POWERS themselves.

You can now officially check out everything in the store. I hope you enjoy. Be sure to look for me at Wrestlemania with a MASSIVE ez wwf logo spoof sign. Be sure to follow me for pics from mania this weekend on instagram and twitter, username kyleisez

I’ll be posting another write up about Wrestlemania, next week. So be on the look out and be sure you like EZ on facebook (click the word facebook to go to the page) and keep your eyes peeled on a contest thats happening THIS SUNDAY to win FREE STUFF! Now I need to take a breather and figure out what shirt I’m going to rock at mania. ENJOY!

MARCH NOW!

It’s that time of year again! MARCHHHH NOWWWW. it’s the biggest sale of the year. The cheapest, biggest deal you can get. There’s so many things on sale, not just Electric Zombie and Grave Takers. There’s thousands of bands and clothing brands taking part! I even saw a shirt on sale for 99 cents! On top of that, shipping in the U.S. is 2 bucks, 2 FRIGGIN DOLLARS. Load it up, as big as you want, no matter what you get, how big the order, its 2 bucks shipping. You could have 2, 5, 50, 90, items in your cart and shipping is only 2 dollars! It’s insane! Of course there are some tricks and rules to everything, so that being said, here’s the scoop.

ELECTRIC ZOMBIE ITEMS

- All t-shirts are on sale for $13 (there are some that are a more, I think 1-3 shirts, but thats because they cost more, duh)
- All hoodies and crew necks are $25
- Custom Jackets are $30-40
- Grab bags (sleeved and regular t-shirts) are on sale and restocked
- Accessories are $5 - 15 dollars

POSTERS AND SKATE DECKS ARE NOT ELIGIBLE FOR THE FLAT RATE SHIPPING! THEY ARE ON SALE, BUT YOU CAN’T TAKE PART OF THE SHIPPING DEAL. THEY GET THEY’RE OWN SHIPPING BOXES OR TUBES AND IT’S TECHNICALLY 2 SEPARATE PACKAGES SO YOU CANNOT USE THIS TO YOUR ADVANTAGE!

GRAVE TAKER ITEMS

- All t-shirts are on sale for $13 
- Baseball shirts are $13 
- All hoodies and crew necks are $20 - 30
- Custom Jackets are $30-40
- Accessories are marked down and priced to move ( these will not be brought back )

Now here’s the fine print stuff…
You can ONLY use the flat rate shipping items on CLEARANCE ITEMS. The second you put anything in your cart that ISN’T CLEARANCE, the option goes away, please make sure you go to MERCHNOW.COM and pick the clearance list, its a massive list on the main page NOT THE DROP DOWN NAVIGATION, and you will be taken to the clearance items.

YOU MUST LIVE IN THE US to take part of the shipping discount. YOU STILL GET THE SALE PRICE, but you will NOT get the shipping discount.

YOU MUST order from merchnow.com, you can’t use theelectriczombie.com or gravetakers.com to take advantage of the shipping discount. MERCHNOW.COM ! MERCHNOW.COM ! MERCHNOW.COM !

I think thats everything. This sale is a month long, so do not wait to purchase your items. Most of this stuff is either low print, not being reprinted in the near future, or not coming back at all. LOADS of these items are final print! some of them that aren’t even marked yet! Keeping that secret, so I can say, IT’S GONE FOREVER YOU JERKS! DON’T ASK WHEN IT’S BEING RESTOCKED. Evil, I know…. Do not miss out on this sale. It’s literally the biggest and best sale you can get, $2 dollar shipping? Are you kidding me?! DON’T BE STUPID! go buy something! BUY…OR…DIE!

Your Fiend,
Kyle

The New Old

Late last year I talked about this release and if you aren’t aware or recall, tough poo poo, I’m going to talk about it again. In October of last year I did New York Comic Con. I brought a bunch of horror based stuff to the show, there were a few exceptions, such as Oddity (The Head) and Numbskulls (Beavis and Butt-Head) and I had lots of people ask me, “Do you only do horror stuff?” I had to explain how I’m more pop culture but horror usually gets the better or longer end of the stick. Looking back, I put most of that stuff on final print. So I went back, skimmed through, and brought some back. (before you get all stupid and suggest, why didn’t you bring this and that back, this would have been awesome. Trust me there’s a plan for everything. Gotta be patient!) While browsing, I saw a good amount of designs that would look awesome with the sewn on tags on the bottom. Those got added as well. I also like the concept of “RECHARGED” last year as well, so I tweaked out some colors on a few. In time, people grow as artists and learn new techniques and little tricks along the way. The original street sharks design was 14 colors and now it’s 7. The reason why Good Guy got the cut was because it was a pain in the butt to print (Sorry Felix). I ran into the same problem with another one of his designs, the famous Snacker shirt. So I went back and re-separated the Good Guy design the same way, and it came out great.

With the release of the new Grave Takers line and using a new crew neck blank. I realized I would be a dumb shit to not use it on some EZ stuff. This is the comfiest, most form fitting garment. I just love them, especially in this cold ass New York weather. The wash on these things are as if they’ve been washed a hundred times. Too good. I had to make up for a lot of complaints from people who didn’t like that I didn’t come out with any hoodies in the Fall, even though only 1 came out last Fall ;)

I plan and have a good amount of shows booked this year and feel like I’m way prepared with a good mixture of designs and themes. JAWesome (Street Sharks), Takeout, Black Out (Lord Zedd) and Freak Show (Freaked) for the more pop culture / comic shows and Good Guy (Chucky), Dome Splitter, and Brain Dead (They Live / Powell mash up) for the horror cons, and Sacrifice and Sorrow, lookin’ schnazy with their tags. My favorites are hands down the Domesplitter and Widower Crew Necks.

You can get everything in the store as we speak, now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go keep warm and cozified in my new crew necks.

Your Fiend,
Kyle

Done and onto the next one

It’s a tradition that people make lists, goals, and resolutions every year. Most of the people out there don’t even go through with it, and just list the same goals for the next year, and the next year, and so on. I’m also guilty of that as well. This year I actually conquered a good amount of last year’s goals. This is what I had last year. The ones in italics, are the ones that I accomplished

pay off my car
look for a new car
buy/design a custom desk
add new names to the client list
do trade shows
do horror conventions
do more custom garments for both Electric Zombie and Grave Takers
See lots of movies (even the bad ones)
cut back on band design and possibly ditch one of the 3 “jobs” I have to focus more on my brands
start packing my own orders and hiding treats and notes in them?
design and print more posters for Electric Zombie
More Accessories DAMMIT!
Play the drums more
buy an arcade/pinball machine
pay off my debts / pay ahead on bills to where all I have to pay for is my house every month
Finish Movie room attached to my office
Buy a new tv bigger than 60 inches, the 50 inch isn’t cutting it
start collecting new toys
buy more books
take more pictures
travel more
vacation with Adam Elmakias
get a passport
be a little nicer (maybe)
eat more pizza

Not too bad I must say! This year’s goals aren’t as long, but still massive goals. Lots of them are personal and not really work related, as I feel like right now is where I want to be with my career and the pace I am taking.

- Finish off the fence in the yard
- Finish movie room / attic
- Look for a van for shows
- Do way more shows
- Pay off most if not all my debt
- Work with new bands/companies
- Make the New Found Glory, Pop Punks Not Dead Tour book
- Book of my design work over the years
- Electric Zombie Book
- Be more active / work out more
- Go on toy hunts (thanks toy hunter!)
- Save more money
- Work on more packaging and extras for Grave Takers and Electric Zombie
- Buy more toys
- See more movies, if it looks decent, see it
- Look for a new car
- Get a pinball machine
- Buy a 60+ inch tv
- Take more pictures
- Get a passport

I would have to say last year’s biggest accomplishment was getting new clients. I can’t remember the amount of shirts I did last year, and client’s I worked on. Both years in a row I took a bunch of time off. Last year I took off 5 months total, this year I took off 4. I accomplished quite a lot, compared to last year. This year, I had 298 shirts approved, this isn’t as much as 2010, but I’ll take it! I worked on 70 clients this year, and 45 of them being new clients. 45! that’s over half. Insane! I’d say I demolished that goal I placed for myself.

This year was a super critical year in my life. I took the freelance plunge and decided to focus more on my brands, do more shows and conventions. For the most part it’s paid off. Most of the conventions I’ve done have been flops. But you live and you learn and I’ll be more prepared next year. I let my guard down and trusted people, only to feel the need to go back to the Stone Cold Steve Austin mentality, DTA, all the way. Don’t Trust ANYBODY. I will be doing things more on my own and relying on nothing but myself. It got me this far, and I let that guard down a little this year, and I definitely paid that price. NOT AGAIN! As far as the shows, it’s a huge learning experience and you really don’t know til you try. Just like riding a bike, you gotta fall and scrape your knees a few times before you really get the hang of it. I will be focusing a lot of my time on that this year and most likely the next.

This year I was able to sort of create myself a new style that I am very excited about. I am known for a few different things and styles and techniques and I was able to take 4 of them and merge into 1 killer style/ look. Texture, color, the obeyish style, and typography and BLAMO! Usually my pieces are focused on 1 maybe 2 of these elements. These designs are super time consuming, but way worth it.

Here are my top 12 designs I did of 2012 for bands. There were a few that I wish I could add, so many designs I am super proud of and into this year.

There were so many bands I loved working with this year. Some of my best and favorite clients were; Young Guns, This Or The Apocalypse, Heartist, Glass Cloud, Deftones, Alkaline Trio, Anberlin, Asking Alexandria, New Found Glory, Yellowcard, We Came As Romans, Tonight Alive, Motionless In White, Silverstein, Miss May I, For Today, The Devil Wears Prada, Paramore, and Fright Rags. I hope to do more work with them next year. Or Tomorrow, or, whatever, haha.

I’m hoping that next year will bring me some more work from bands I’ve worked with in the past and just haven’t in the past year or so. Bands like; The Word Alive, Transit, Texas In July, Set Your Goals, Sense Fail, Rise Against, Protest The Hero, Oh Sleeper, Norma Jean, Coheed, Chiodos, A Day To Remember, Alesana, As I Lay Dying, Bad Religion, Blink, Between The Buried and Me, Our Last Night, Conditions, Dance Gavin Dance and HIM.

People always tell me that I work and design for everyone. There’s still a pile of bands I haven’t worked on yet. I’m hoping that next year, might change that for me. I ahve yet to design for the following; AFI, Amity Affliction, Bring Me The Horizon, You Me At Six, Architects, As Cities Burn, Bloc Party, The Chariot, Comeback Kid, Crosses, Dashboard Confessional, The Dillinger Escape Plan, The Early November, Further Seems Forever, The faint, Flood Of Red, Face To Face, The Get Up Kids, Gideon, Green Day, Jimmy Eat World, Say Anything, Linkin Park, Make Do and Mend, Misser, Manners, Marilyn Manson, Muse, New Politics, Now Now, Pennywise, Parachute, Periphery, Russian Circles, Moving Mountains, Sleeperstar, The Starting Line, Sum 41, Walk The Moon and Weezer. SEE! There’s a lot I haven’t worked on!

Next year, like this year, will be a crucial year. I was able to put out some of the best custom items for both brands, as well as designs. Bringing the brands out in the public more, and took a bunch of time to start being more hands on. I set the bar on many different levels this year, and I need to continue to do so. Set the bar and raise at the same time. It’s going to be a rough and rewarding one, I can feel it. Or maybe I just to poop. Or maybe both? TIME WILL TELL!

Your Fiend,
Kyle

BOX SET GOODIESSSS

Those of you who have been living under a rock for the past 3 weeks, Electric Zombie turned 5 on the 2nd. To celebrate, I made a limited edition box set, which you can read all about on the post before this one, or on the main page. It comes down at 9am tomorrow. So, I took today to get all the prizes and goodies together to the lucky winners. I split all the freebies into categories and themes and Got them ready for the lucky winners/fans. So this is a little write up to sort of show off what you mayyyyy get in with your box sets.



So muchhh stufffff. A pizza thrower, random posters and personal art I’ve created. A New found Glory Numbered tour poster, A box full of random open toys, trading cards, dvd’s, just a ridiculous amount of stuff! here’s a better look / FYI on a few of the items



This is an ez duffle bag with a puffy vest, a snapback hat, socks, and the grave takers johnny leather jacket. Downside is, this is only for someone who is a size small! OH NO!



This is a collection DVD’s I’m parting with. Once movies come out on bluray, I put them in the box of random stuff, that made these goodies today. Pretty good titles, If I say so myself. Is that a bootleg Hitman Hart Wrestling with Shadows bootleg DVD? IT SURE IS!



This is just a massive pile of EZ posters and prints from the past year. I think there’s at least 20 posters. If not more.



This nutty little bag is a massive pile and collection of badges from shows I did, socks, stickers, pins, barf bags, patches, just a gigantic mess of randomness. So much shit. It looks like a rich kids trick or treat bag!



WHOA! YOU’RE GIVING AWAY A GHOST TRAP?! no I’m giving away a box, that came with the ghost trap and inside isssssssss A BIG OL’ BOX OF RANDOM TOYS! spiderman, venom, land of the dead toys, hasbro wrestlers, so much fucking memory lane garbage toys. Nostalgia in a ghost trap box.

I could go on and on about the prizes up for grabs, butttt I’d rather make it allllll a surprise. If you want in on this action, you have until Tomorrow 12/24 9am EASTERN TIME TO GET ONE OF THESE box sets, and after that it’s gone forever! I have loads more free stuff to give away. I put a bunch of it on ebay, and if it doesn’t sell, IT’S GETTING GIVEN AWAYYYY! I’d buy thatttt for a dollar!

Here’s the link to the EZ ebay - http://myworld.ebay.com/kyleisez
and you can get the box set here - http://www.theelectriczombie.com

BUY ONEEEEEEEE DOOO ITTTTTT! FREEE STUFFFFF!
Your Fiend,
Kyle

A positive complaint…

I am not one to censor myself or worry about what people might say, think, or feel, or perceive me and what I have to say. I am always 100% vocal and true to everyone in my life, including my fans. That being said, I just want to talk about the Box Set for a minute. I was completely dreading making this thing happen. I felt like this was the ABSOLUTE WORST time to launch this thing. Right before the holidays, pretty stupid of me. The price point was the other thing that scared me. I am hardly making ANY money on this. I didn’t just want it to be the shirt. I wanted this thing to be huge. I wanted this thing to be pretty special. I mean to me, I think it’s pretty cool to have the person who creates this stuff, and runs this brand (and another) and designs for tons of your favorite brands, interact with you. Not always in a positive light, but still. There’s tons of people who have employees, and friends and family work for them, Not me. I have a company print and ship my stuff and I hire out to pals and artists I massively respect and the rest is all me. My ideas, my brainchild. To me, that’s pretty fucking awesome. I have tons of people who complain about Merch Now’s shipping, prices, all this stuff and I am giving you the chance to eliminate that, and have the person who makes this stuff, ship it to you. Hide goodies in there, and I’m not talking about mints with a logo on it. I am talking about DVD’s, toys, posters, packs of old trading cards, original art, there’s tons of stuff getting put into these things. A personalized note. Each box is hand numbered. This thing is great. The reasoning for my rant? I have Thousands of followers on twitter and instagram. I have thousands of orders go out every month (this is no exaggeration), I have 36,000 fans and likes on facebook, and I’ve sold 32 box sets. I realize that all those that’s on social networks are just numbers. It’s a statistic. I am completely fine with the number sold. It’s not about money. I’m just trying to wrap my head around why it isn’t doing as well. It’s not crappy to me by any means. I think it’s a great deal and is only offered once. Those 32 people, are practically guaranteed to get something awesome. I have been collecting mass amounts of crap for over a year now. Those 32 people now own something massively rare and special to me, and obviously to them. It’s a big eye opener, because I have tons of people say, “You should make this and that. Why don’t you just ship it yourself?” I have spent Hundreds and Thousands on custom jackets and garments and jeans, and those have all been successes, I just don’t get why this isn’t. This box set is for you. And as much as it’s a wake up call for me, to never go too much outside the box and do something “Limited”, it’s a wake up call for you. You have 6 days to order this thing, and when it’s gone, it’s gone. Just like everything else you’ve complained about. Oh man the Freddy Sweater, awwwww man, the Christmas shirts, when are the Ninja Turtle shirts coming back? You’re going to get the same exact answer, it isn’t.

Thank you so much for those of you who have ordered this thing. It means a lot that you have supported my company for so long and continue to love and grow along with it/me. As I said, this isn’t really a wahhhh pity me and buy this. It’s more of a, Hey you people that ordered it, you rule and you’re most likely getting something awesome, because it’s not going as bananas as I hoped, and this will be a big deciding factor, to anything “Limited” from me in the future.

Your Fiend,
Kyle

the top 12 of 12

Man this was super super hard. 2012, to me was a great year for music, album wise. Movie wise, not so much, haha. I bought a lot of albums this year and it was super hard to narrow them down to 12. I went back and looked at the albums from last year I picked, and it’s completely off from this years. I have a weird taste in music. It’s allll over the place. After much deliberation and thought, I narrowed it with the following criteria. Catchiness, longevity, how good the music was, the good track / bad track ratio, and of course progression from their last albums. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you my 12 of 2012.

I have high hopes for next year’s music and theatrical releases. Super excited for my ears and eyes in the upcoming months.

Your Fiend,
Kyle