Advertising 101 - Don't make buyers have nightmares of your products

So I was surfing around the interwebs today and came across a doll website named: http://www.charismabrands.com/. Ok, whatever.. Little ugly dolls a little on the piggish size.. ok.. Then.. This banner ad popped up.

WHAT THE HELL! Somebody save those kids! DEAR GOD! KILL IT WITH FIRE!!!!!!

They might as well have gone all out, like this:

I mean, my God... This is horrifying. I will be having nightmares for the rest of the week about this doll.

Review of Puss In Boots

I took my 4 year old daughter to go see Puss In Boots yesterday. Not the 3D version. I'm kind of done with 3D for now. I may go back to it, but after an hour I just want to take the glasses off.

Anywho.. We went in with no expectations and left feeling like we achieved that. The story was ok, but it was no where near as good as its Shrek counterparts. My daughter says it was REALLY long and asked if it was almost over twice. BUT, she also thinks that we need to buy it when it comes out, so I guess she liked it more than she thought. (side note: I don't care how much she begs, I'm never buying popcorn again. $8 and all she ate was a handful. For $8 she better throw up at least twice.)

Personally, I had a few chuckles and always enjoy the effort Dreamworks makes by putting in adult oriented jokes throughout the movie. I'm also oddly conflicted that I found Salma Hayek's character strangely attactive. I mean.. Its a cartoon cat.. Its that damn accent. Gets me every time.

So, if you have kids that like going to these movies, why the hell not take them. If you are just mildly interested in seeing it, definitely wait until it comes out to rent.

I'd give it 2.5 out of 5 "high-fives."

Design by committee

As we all know the best way to come up with a good idea is to have a dozen or so people give their opinions and then create a work of art that accommodates EVERYONE'S ideas and wants. WHAT COULD GO WRONG! I admit, sometimes a drawing turns out better after 50 revisions. But 99.9% of the time, I'm ashamed of what I've created and have to shower to wash off the ick. Then I have to make up a good reason why I won't include this particular piece in my portfolio.. "OH no, its cool... I don't want to confuse people. I want them to acknowledge this as 100% YOUR idea. It just seems more fair that way." What I really want to say is: "I don't want that Frankenstein of a disaster anywhere near my name or anywhere people might see it or possibly assume I had ANYTHING to do with it. BE GONE!" Then, I'll actually get angry when someone sees it and says, "I like it." NO YOU DON'T! It sucks. Shut your dirty, dirty mouth. It was good, now it is not. Don't encourage it.

Example. Not a real work, that would be wrong to post something I really did.. Right?

Hey Guy, I love your work.. Can you design a cute simple cartoon cow for our company? We love your style, so whatever you come up with would be fantastic I'm sure.

ME: Yea, ok.. What do you think of these options?


WOW! Great work. These are better than we could have imagined, we are going to look them over and get back to you. Again, fantastic work.

4 hours later: Hey, we got are looking them over and the CEO thinks we should take the head from A and the body from B and combine them some how. How soon do you think you can do this?


ME: Sure, no problem. Here it is, let me know what you think.

Again, Fantastic. Exactly what we are looking for. One small tiny thing. Can we add udders? Steve our janitor says that his little cousin thinks udders on cows are funny?

ME: Sure. I can do that.. What do you think?

WOW..  You nailed it!!!! I can't possibly find a way to make this better. ALTHOUGH. Timmy and Theresa from accounting think he needs a t-shirt with our company name on it. Can you do that really quick? Also.. Jerry from the legal department feels like the udders make him too feminine. Can we make his horns larger to show that he's a boy. I don't want to get rid of the udders because the proofreaders laughed a lot when we showed it to them.

ME: Why the F*** not.

GREAT STUFF. We are 99% done. The last TINY thing is, can we make him less happy? He just seems TOO happy. Maybe a smaller smile?

ME: No problem. I personally hate happy things anyways.

ME: There!! Run this through HR and see what they think about THIS!

Um... Hey, we actually decided to go a different direction. We will definitely think about you for future work though...So, be expecting that phone call.

ME: Yup.

THE END.

One place not to have your toys made, in my opinion.

A Little story about a place I don't recommend doing business with when making small toys.

A little over a year or so ago I began playing with the idea of creating my own toys from some of my cartoons. So, after some research I found a place called Binkley Toys Custom Plush Toys.

I emailed and explained that I am new to the business and am wanting to get 5 prototypes made, then work on selling them, then place my order.

To which they replied, "No problem. Lets start with your first one and go from there."

Now I'm excited. 4ish weeks later I get my prototype. It looks great.. I called them up and explained it looked great and we can proceed with the next 4.

To which they replied. Sure, we will make them once you place a full order. Wait... No, I wanted 5 prototypes then will make an order.  Them: No, we won't do that. Place an order for your first one, then we can talk.

Me: We discussed this.. Here is our email were we were happy and agreed on everything.
Them: No, we won't do that.
Me: I'm pretty sure that's what we discussed.
Them: No thanks.
Me: Nevermind I found normal people to work with, at 1/3 your price.
Them: ok.

Fast forward a year.
The head guy of Binkley emails me about ordering bobble heads. I've pasted the following emails:

From Me, to: Binkley Guy:
 I've worked with your company in the past and was less than happy with your customer service. I found your reps fairly incompetent. I told them I needed 5 prototypes made of plush characters and would then order based on my order numbers for each one. After the first one was received, it looked great and I wanted the other 4 prototypes. I was told no, I can't have any more until I make a large order. When I resent the email about needing 5 and getting an ok, I got a reply back that it didn't matter and you don't do more than one prototype. I took my business elsewhere and will not be doing any business with your company. I've had much luck with a better company.

Thanks

Reply from Binkley Guy:

Yes, I remember getting a similar email from my plush toy list. Thanks for the reminder.

I focused on inventors for a few years there, and that was a mistake. There are so many people who have 'big' ideas and no money. So the rules you experienced was based on that.
I have split my company now, to focus on Corporate accounts, and if an inventor sneaks through, then they probably have the money to do so.

I'll be blunt and say with how I'm set up now, you would still get flagged, since you email from a free yahoo account. I'm sure from where you're sitting, that may not make sense, but when I get 2,000 - 3,000 inquiries a month, I need to filter out the Corporations, from the tire kickers.

Obviously someone saw more in your communications then my staff did.

I wish you well.

Thanks.

 Here is a big banner across his webpage.

"and if an inventor sneaks through, then they probably have the money to do so"

Hmm.. That seems odd.

In case you are looking into making your own plush, you don't need companies like this. You can go straight to a manufacturer yourself, usually for quite a bit less.

This is all my opinion from the experiences I've had. You have to make your own decisions and maybe this company will work differently for you. Good luck with your toy making. Don't get bullied. :)

Zazzle.com week 3

So just an update on zazzle.com. So far I have about 6-8 different designs on there and have so far sold nothing.. I think I may need to do a little more work on my designs. So far they are just simple characters in a sea of other characters and knock-offs. I think I may need to get a little more nitty-gritty.

Dadd'ys first weekend alone with the baby

My lovely wife decided to take our older daughter on a little trip to attend a friend's graduation in another city. How bad could it be? We would go to the mall, cruise for chicks, teach junior how to be a lady's man. THAT IS NOT WHAT HAPPENED.

I decided to do a quick illustration to showcase my lovely first weekend alone with my son. It went a little something like this....

 

 

What i really wanted to say is: "WHAT?? Babies LOVE graduations! How am I going to have fun when you're all out of town if I have a baby??? " But I didn't..... :(

  

He may not have ACTUALLY been flipping me off, but I could tell he would of, if he had the necessary control over the movements of his fingers.

 

Alright.. time to teach junior how to scope out the ladies.

 

/fun

 

 

   

 

It was my wife.. The conversation went like this:

ME: HELLO?

Wife: Hey! How's it going?

ME: WE ARE COVERED IN POO!!!!!!

Wife: What?

ME: WE WERE IN THE MALL AND IT JUST STARTED HAPPENING, AND IM COVERED IN POO!!!!!!

Wife: Don't get mad at me, I didn't do anything..

ME: I'M COVERED IN POO!!!!!!!!! GOING TO STORE FOR WIPES!!!! GOOD BYE!

Wife: ugh, goodbye!

That about sums up my weekend. Covered in poo. We stayed inside the remainder of the weekend. many more poopy diapers, but they all miraculously stayed contained in the pampers.

Playstation Network's temporary release of my soul

So, I've been getting a LOT of stuff done lately, and its mainly due to the fact that the PS3 Network has been hacked and I'm forced to convert back to the stone age and entertain myself. WTF? All of a sudden dropping cable to go balls to the wall on my "super dependable" PS3 doesn't seem as smart. I dropped cable about 4 months ago and picked up Netflix streaming video for the PS3, Hulu Plus for the PS3 and a New online game to pass the time with friends online.. Oh wait.. What's that sony? You're making it so ALL OF THAT IS COMPLETELY USELESS? That's cool.. No biggie. I'll just....sh*t. What do people do after their wife and kids go to bed at 9pm if they don't have tv, video games, or movies? My wife quickly stopped me when I said, "I'm going to the bar, they close at 3am". What does she want me to do? Read a book? NOT BLOODY LIKELY. (said in my best australian accent). So.. naturally I go downstairs and draw. SUPER.. I've always said there is never enough time. WISH GRANTED.. DAMMIT!  So anyways, I was super excited the PS3 was "back" tonight. Meaning, they flipped a switch and hoped some sort of fairy goshdamn magic happened.. It didn't. I still can't get on and I'm back in the basement drawing, LIKE A BOSS. Thank you PS3 for granting me all this unwanted free time to actually get some work done. And by "thank you," I mean "GIVE ME BACK MY ONLINE TIME DESTROYER YOU *#@!ing *#$hole M*#@$R *#@$ers.