Gorilla t-shirt ready

Mailman stopped by and brought me something I have anxiously been waiting for (NO, it's not that yellow object).



By the way... the design without texts can be found in Spreadshirt. Check the links below.



Spreadshirt Marketplace product
gorilla (nega)

Who is more likely to be the Santa Claus?

It's only couple of days to Christmas. It's time for magic and excitement, but it's also time for disbelief. Yes, about Santa Claus.

There's a lot debate about his existence, whether his real of just a mythical creature. I'm not saying Santa Claus doesn't exist. I guess it's just his physical qualities that makes me slightly suspicious... Well, think about it. A dude carrying a huge bag of presents here and there around the world flying with a band of reindeers, making his way through chimneys, visiting billions of children... and all this action during one night. Not an easy exercise, I think.

So let's be honest. Which one of these two characters are more likely to get the job done?

Death to pennies

As the big boys (and girls) of the Europe are currently having tough meetings to save the euro currency, there are also money related problems in USA. In his blog Daniel Pink brought up a noteworthy problem concerning money: the smallest unit of USD - annoying and useless penny.

Even though I don't have to use pennies (... or similar... luckily here in Finland our smallest unit of money is 5 euro cents) in my everyday life, I can easily understand the hate against that useless unit. That's why had my tries to solve the penny problem.

"Death to pennies", as the title goes in Daniel Pinks post, is a pretty ultimate request. So I start my brainstorm with destructive thoughts - let's kill the pennies. I believe nearly everybody has seen old western movies. In those movies there are some gun heroes, who can shoot through a coin tossed in the air. That's the end of pennies! And who could fit in this job better than mr. Lucky Luke? No one.



As there may be quite some of those little bastards and shooting them one by one may take a while, there must be also another solution. Let's put them out of our eyes - Can't see, can't be. And there's one hiding place above others - the mother and father of all hideouts: under the corner of a carpet. There are some valuable benefits of this trick: carpets are easy to find and there are billions of them. Not to forget that most of the carpets have four corners.



The next trick to get rid of pennies is a bit foxy... and may not be fair for some... It could be worth trying to pay penny manufacturer's bill with pennies they have just made. And as that's not enough (because it's more expensive to manufacture a penny than one penny is worth) there's still some more to pay... and that sum can be paid (I know you already guess it)... with PENNIES! Ordering pennies helps actually get rid of them.



This idea bases on trading pennies for something more valuable. It's a bit like doing lotto and may be quite hard to utilize for collective good. Okey, there are some wishing wells every here and there and people tend to toss their coins in them and make wishes. As far as I know, the value of the tossed coin doesn't correlate with odds a certain wish comes true, so why don't we use only pennies? Use pennies for wishing and wish BIG, so that the wishes that come true makes more than is the value of pennies that are tossed for unrealized wishes. Some lose, some win, but all in all pennies are traded for bigger value.



The last idea is my personal favorite. As the core problem of the penny is in it's value, why don't we just change it? The lousy value of the penny is something we have agreed, so we can also change it. Even though it sounds easy, it's not something just anyone could do. It wouldn't help a bit if I would try to do it. It needs someone with real credibility. There are certainly some others, but my personal suggestion is Rocky Balboa.



All ideas to solve the penny problem are welcome. I may even illustrate some of them :)

Self-made-souvenier from NY

It took a bit more time than I thought, but better late than never. I have already posted some sketches (part I - part II) for this little project of mine... but now it's finally finished.

Even that it's calendarwise closer to a x-mas present... here is my self-made-souvenier from my last summer's vacation in NY - a t-shirt design inspired by the BRONX ZOO.


Let's wait and see whether my upcoming trip to Lisbon has anything worth self-made-souvenier to offer.

...and the shirt itself..?
Ordered.
Waiting for the mailman to knock on my door...

Another set of spot illustrations

A set of spot illustrations for a project I've been working on lately. It has been fun to play with poses.