a little bird told me

Hey anybody reading this, I know it's been slow on this blog, but it's all for the best. We're getting ready to make some big changes in the Motmot - Cheetahs Never Win universe.
There's some big changes coming up at Motmot, which should be totally awesome. Stay Tuned.
Cheetahs Never Win # 3 is well on it's way! It's roughly half finished! It's gonna be around 32 pages this time, and I'm looking forward to it! I've got some other graphic design and Illustration jobs in the pipeline. Which are keeping me busy.
I just wanted to stop by and say hello to anyone who might be reading. We haven't dropped off the face of the Earth, we've been keeping busy!
Stay Tuned!

We're also on twitter!
http://twitter.com/motmotshop

You can be our fan on Facebook!
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Motmot/63984428006?ref=nf

Home For the Holidays!

Wow! What a Christmas, we were so busy it wasn't funny, we were really busy. No days off in December, just show up to the gig and perform like your life depended on it, hardcore, man! We were primed to optimal print performance, I was like a screenprinting machine, with hinges and ink and squeegees....
...Oh what, huh wait a second, sorry, I'm still totally zoned out from Christmas, I was beginning to sound like Henry Rollins or something.

But, man we were busy, and now we're taking some time off!
So the Motmot shop is closed for the holidays, and then uhhh, closed a little bit longer?
We're taking the month of January off! And we will re-open February 10th 2009!
We're a small two person operation, and we've gotta take a vacation!

But we're not just sitting around watching T.V. We're going to travel around, and look for new and exciting ideas and objects. We're traveling, looking for inspiration, and maybe some new things for the Motmot shop.

2008 was a great, busy, demanding, eventful, and exciting year. Not just for the Motmot shop of course, but for the world!
2009 is looking good, to quote James Brown, "we've got a funky new president" and Motmot has already got some things cooking!
We've got about 7 new designs up and ready to rumble; available at the shop, and online in 2009! In the comics department, production of Cheetahs Never Win # 3 is already begun, available sometime in 2009?!?!?!?!

And before I forget, our ETSY shop is online!
So, why don't you stop by and add us as a favorite!
See you next year - Steve and Anna!

We are the Robots

Things - Make a Button with Steve of Motmot from Bre Pettis on Vimeo.

Hi Everybody! The last few weekends we've been making the rounds and participating in local markets and festivals. One Festival we have participated in for the last few years is Roböxotica - Vienna's annual cocktail-robotics festival. While we're not exactly cocktail robotics experts, we have some robot themed shirts, we print the Roböxotica shirts, and we do live screenprinting. It's a lot of fun!
Roböxotica always has some really cool and interesting guests. One of the guests we've been lucky enough to meet is Bre Pettis: video producer, thing-maker, blogger, champion of all things D.I.Y., and all around great guy!

Bre makes all kinds of cool videos showing people how to make-and-do things themselves, and he was cool enough to stop by the shop and make this quick video of how we make our buttons.
And yes, I make all the buttons myself!
Enjoy the video, and thanks again Bre!

Ready to Rumble!

Hey everybody, I just want to make a quick update.
We have been busy, busy, busy... not a spare moment to sit down and get to bloggin!
We've got some updates.

First, I want to say thanks to everyone who came by our block party, it was great, it was a smash, it was fun! All the other shops on Kirchengasse that participated had a great time, and I have never seen the Inoperable Gallery so crowded! Wow, who drank all the beer?

Second, we will be closed this weekend (November 28th-November 30th) and we will be at the Christmas Market at the Muesums Quarter in Vienna!
We are hauling our shop down to MQ and will be there all weekend! Special prices too!

Third, we did our big renovation of the shop, it's great we no longer have to play "box Tetris" to find something, it's a whole new shop! I really need to put up some pics.

Fourth, we have some new choice goods, we've got our sticker set, a new supply of Yummy Belts, and our very own Motmot ceramics set. We are super stoked on the ceramics, we have our designs on some porcelain cups and plates, made by Mano design, here in Vienna. I'll put some pics up, because our cups and plates are groovy, man.

Fifth, we've got about five new t-shirts ready to go, just in time for X-mas! What a coincidence!
The pic of Disco Giorgio, up above, is a sample of our newest designs; Wolly Mammoth, Punch Drunk Robot, Chimps are People Too, Disco George, the Bremen Town Musicians, you get the idea...ready...set...go!

BLOCK PARTY

Welcome to the Motmot Blog Party!
Friday, Nov 14 starting at 7pm we invite you to a party in our shop. Our neighbours Sixxa, Schmuckladen, Common People and INOPBERAbLE are also joining. Stop by and find out about new Motmot products: we are not only showing you the latest t-shirts, but also posters, stickers and postcards. Together with Mano Design we produced a series of cups and plates. Don't miss the party. It will be fun. We play some Giorgio Moroder :-) for you. Free drinks and food is waiting too! Hope to see you Friday - the Motmots.

Print Liberation!

Just so you know, at the Motmot shop we screen print all of our shirts ourselves: someone can come in pick a design and we print it on demand! It's just like ordering a pizza, or something. (You can also pick a design online and we'll print it on demand too!) I've been screen printing since I was in high school, trying to print my own Clash and Sham 69 shirts! Later on, both of us studied art and learned screen printing in college. Now, we have a shop where we print our designs, and we do everything ourselves. So, you could say, we've invested a lot of time and energy in learning the finer points of screen printing. And we get a lot of people asking how to screen print, and other people needing some help from time to time, which we're more than happy to oblige.

Now we've been thinking about making a MOTMOT guide to srceenprinting, for some time now, but we would need to sit down and actually write a book, and do the graphics, which is a daunting task. But until then, we've found an excellent resource, PRINT LIBERATION: The Screen Printing Primer, by Nick Paparone, Jamie Dillon, and Luren Jenison.

A lot of screen printing guides are either boring or difficult to understand because of difficult printmaker technobabble. But not this book, no way José! This book looks fantastic, with some really great illustrations and graphics. The book is well written and has many photos which actually show you how the process is done, which can really helps you understand the process. The book is aimed at beginners, but I found a few new things that I wasn't aware of, so it's got tips and tricks for the intermediate and advanced printer too! It's got a great list of resources and suppliers in the back! That said, we may, or may not, be carrying this book in our own shop in the near future, depending on, oh you know, this and that and which way the wind blows, but it's definitely worth picking up if you're thinking about taking up screen printing. Highly recommended.

Pedal Power to the Parrots!

Here's our newest creation from our graphics department, it's a riff on our bike shirt, it's everything you need to cruise and with a nice traveling companion. When was the last time you saw a crazy person riding a bike with a parrot on the handlebars or on their shoulder? It's been a while, I better go to Venice Beach the next time I'm in California.
This poster is currently on display at the new and improved Inoperable Gallery, as part of the Art Cycle exhibition, which runs from October 10th until November 1st. If you happen to be in Vienna, you should check it out!
The poster is a 2 color screen print 50 x 70 cm (that's 19.7/8 X 27 1/2in.) Printed in an edition of 15. Although we will certainly be printing up a few more of these in the future! After the exhibition, this poster will be available in the Motmot shop! (Just in time for Christmas!) This poster won't be in our online shop for a while, but if you're interested in purchasing one send an e-mail to: info(at)motmotdesign.com and we can arrange something by paypal.

Squawk!

INOPERAbLE
Gallery and Specialty Items Shop
Burggasse 24
a-1070
Vienna, Austria