Friday 28 January 2011

More Tees, Please

As some of you might already know, via other sources, all of the T-Shirts are now available for sale. Yeah I know, it's totally awesome! So here's is now the list of all of 'em, since I noticed they seemed to be a bit tricky to find through shotdeadinthehead.com's search. I figured instead of making you frustrated in maybe not finding them all, you could just use this nice reference list. That way, if I ever get more merchandise I could probably list them here too, and back link to this post. Or something. I don't really know yet. But I will link to this post from my soon to be released website (new design, new colours and all). Yeah, you read it. I invented some new colours so that I would be able to have colours that no-one has ever seen before.
Okay, I'm done being sarcastic now. Feel free to "browse" the T-Shirts and if you happen to actually buy one, do totally send me a picture of you wearing it and maybe I can make a thing out it, like a post called "Fans of Carlos" or something where I post the pictures. Or not.





Enjoy!

EDIT: T-shirts are no longer for sale from shotdeadinthehead.com. Links removed to avoid confusion. Sometime in the future they will be for sale again from carloseriksson.com. Stay tuned!

Freddy Krueger
Chucky
Alien/Xenomorph
Ghostface
Hannibal
Jason Vorhees
Bruce (Shark(s) from JAWS films...)
Billy (Puppet from the SAW films)
Leatherface
Michael Myers
Pennywise
Pinhead
Predator

Wednesday 26 January 2011

Excuses, excuses

Yeah, I know I haven't blogged in a while. I've been busy, and here's partly why..





Thursday 20 January 2011

Feed Me!

Yeah, this is totally the surprise you've all been waiting for. I'm a little sorry that I took until today, I really did plan for Thursday, but then I just obviously didn't. So yeah, there's that. But I hope my surprise will make it up to you.

-----------------------------------------------

As some you might not know. I'm totally a poor starving artist.

*silence*

No really, I totally am. Well.. the artist part is kind of true at least. But now you can feed me by buying a t-shirt. Yeah I know, it's pretty awesome isn't it! Of course I only get a cut of the profit so if it's possible, you should really buy like 50 of them at once. Nah, I'm kidding, it's okay if you only buy 10 at a time.





Again, kidding. Even though I'm being a self-promoting ass-hat right now, hey, who knows, you might like 'em. So on a more serious note, do go check them out. If you happen to like any of them (13 horror inspired designs) then awesome. If you happen to purchase one, even awesome-er! But even if you don't, we're still totally friends.

This is the only available design so far. Feel free to click the link and buy one right now.

Freddy Krueger


Sunday 16 January 2011

Have I Told You?

That I've actually been in some movies too. No, like seriously actually been in some movies. Okay, well.. I starred in a short movie about... hmm... I'm still not actually sure what it was about. I just googled it, read about it. But no, I'm still not sure what it was about. Anyway, here's a still from that short movie I managed to scrape out from the bottom of the internet. I do have it on DVD as well, I converted it from VHS some years ago. Yeah, blond hair.. I don't know what I was thinking. Also I spelled blond wrong, damn it!





So which other movie was I in, you might wonder? Well I'll tell you. Here you go, Bugi Fiction. According to the credits I'm a "Mafia's Hitman / Customer in Bar". So yeah, not a very big role, but it was a lot of fun nonetheless. This was eight or so years ago. But thankfully I had gotten rid of the blond hair by then, at least I wanna remember it that way. I might remember it wrong though. Hmm.. I feel like I could be up for being in some more movies though, they were always fun experiences despite my tacky choice of hair-colours. Or maybe I could have a minor role in a play or something? Yeah, that might be fun. Well see how things go.

And just to ease your mind, I know you're furiously thinking and wondering. No this isn't the surprise I had in store. I'm still saving that for tomorrow or maybe Tuesday, depending on how things go. Until then, I suggest you go out and try to find Bugi Fiction in a movie rental store near you, and enjoy the experience.

Flammable

I have a surprise for you people (I don't know yet if it'll be a good surprise or a bad one). I won't blog about it yet, because I'm still waiting for the opportune moment to tell the world. So until then you're all going to have to settle with this. No.. don't cry.. it'll be alright.. I promise.

Anyways. Many people (two at least) have commented that my character "Jack Jones" for Island of Eternity looks very similar to Vault boy from the Fallout series. So yeah, I feel like clearing up a few things, for various reasons.

The graphics you have seen have always been (unless specified) borrowed, inspired by and/or outright stolen for the purpose establishing a theme. The theme for Island of Eternity was always going to be a bit 50's Pulp. Hence it made sense to use graphics from an already established theme that fit nicely with mine. In hindsight, maybe I shouldn't have used any theme at all. So you thinking "Hey, that looks like the Fallout dude". My responds is, and will always be "Why yes, the character is partly inspired by Vault Boy from the Fallout series". But "Jack Jones" is inspired by many other character as well. Such as Felix the Cat (1919), Tintin (1929), Rich Uncle Pennybags (1936) to name a few.





How's that? Well.. I do my research. And I do it well. In trying to make a game, which is to be themed as partly 50's Pulp and such, I researched character design of that time, of course with a bit of artistic freedom here and there, but in the end, with one single goal. Design a character that feels familiar and aged. A character that feels like it's existed since circa 1937. So there. The final revision of "Jack Jones" will still feel familiar, but rest assured. It will very much be my design. Not stolen. Not borrowed. But definitely inspired by.

Any questions? Feel free to comment. Until the surprise though, like I said, you are going to have to settle with this. And one card illustration which is complete, though I haven't decided if I will use this illustration yet, since that might mean that "Break á Leg!" would have to be renamed to "Flammable!", and I kind of still like "Break á Leg!" so I'm torn. So why do an illustration for a card I might not use? Well, to get some practice in using Adobe Illustrator for one thing and besides I could still use it in some promotional use even if I don't use it as a card.





Until my surprise, I hope this is okay for now.

Saturday 8 January 2011

Mind = Blown

"Colour your drawings with emotions, after you've done the outlines with logic"

So in the spirit (vaguely) of that. Here's the head of my character Jack (for the board game) drawn as Shakespeare. Excuse the roughness of it, it's just a quick sketch and it's not something that will be used in the final game anyway. I just did it for the lulz.


Time: From sketch to final PNG - 1 h

Yeah, it's a bit random. But then again, I've only slept 3 hours or so last night.

Saturday 1 January 2011

Welcome to Another...

... reflection of the nature of my cynicism. Most likely your new year wont be any better than the last one. You're going to continue to commit yourself to the same mistakes you did last year, use the same lame ass excuses for why you did it and feel the same way you used to after wards. Yeah sure, things change and people do change. But not nearly as much as you'd like to think. People don't want to change, they wanna stay the same stupid way they've always been regardless whether it works or not, regardless whether it's good or not. People don't like change even when it's for the better.

The sad truth is that in most cases, people couldn't even care enough to consider that somethings wrong with them, because we are not all God's beautiful children. Some of us, are assholes with no noticeable excuse for being that way. Some of us, are pushovers that in wanting to be respected by others, forget to respect ourselves. Some just walk through life unaffected by the things that happen around them, untouched by words and actions that would offend others. Who of these have more of a right to exist? Who should be pitied more? All of them or none? We could easily say for arguments sake, and most people might be likely to agree with this, that assholes have less rights. Or at least, they should have less rights. But the twist to that story is that we've all been assholes at one point or another, sure some more than others, but not even the saintliest of people have absolutely no skeletons in there closet. So maybe, the reasons for being an asshole should define who has more rights. Maybe the "why" is more important than the "who". I would say it is, but that it also lacks the required depth.

Pain, both emotional and physical are very subjective. Just because your most painful moment isn't on the same level as mine on an objective scale doesn't invalidate it. Your most painful moment in life is still comparable to my most painful moment, even if yours is a broken nail and mine would be parents dying at the age of 6. No, it's not a real example, and at that, it's a bit of; from one extreme end of the spectrum to another. But it serves a nice point. Pain, or rather the experience of pain is subjective, making it objective helps no one, but it's still important that the objective scale is present is some cases.

What am I trying to say with all of this? I don't really know. Is it better for the other person that you're self-aware? Some people think that ignorance is more forgivable than other things. I tend to disagree. Ignorance, stupidity or whatever you call it means that person never made a choice how to be. Because they chose to not choose. Someone being aware is always making a choice, something I forget sometimes. It might not always be the best choice or the nicest choice, but it is still always a choice. Which brings up the question of why again. Why make a noticeable "bad" choice if you're aware of the consequences and reactions of that choice? Are there reasons under the surface you're missing? Bits of information you don't have that makes a seemingly "bad" choice in fact, the lesser of two evils. Probably sometimes, other times, not so much, other times it might actually be ignorance/stupidity, because even the most self-aware of people will not always be self-aware. Awareness is not a constant state of mind.. or well.. it is in one sense, but awareness is more of a steady flow of varying levels of self-study.. self-doubt.. of trying to objectively observe a subjective state of mind, whilst it's happening.

So what am I saying? I'm think, I'm saying that people don't change, don't expect them to change. If you're displeased with your life, stop complaining and do something about it. It's not on anyone else's responsibility to fix it for you, or even to listen to you for that matter. But be thankful that some do. When you've been an asshole, say that you're sorry. Listen to people who try to tell you your worst features, they're probably right. Don't assume that people are evil, don't assume they're nice either. Give them the time to show you instead. The best present you can give anyone is time, not stuff. And last but not least, love like you wanna be loved and not the other way around.

..Welcome to Another..crappy year, it wont be any better than what you make of it. So make better than the best of it.