If Aliens vs. Predator were a sitcom...

Came across this on a message board and I lost my shit I thought it was hilarious.

New Team Hayastan-IMB MMA Shirts.

Well, these babies are final, and over the next few days they should be hitting the silkscreener. Sensei Paul Booe and I went over the intial designs and worked out some final modifications regarding the sizing of the graphics along with the usage of color and narrowed it down to what you see here. I'm really pleased with the final result, and I cannot wait to get my hands on these shirts. I have to admit, I've got several school shirts that are pretty rank, I feel bad rolling with people cause as soon as the sweat hits, people might wanna tap so they can switch partners.

Hayastan-IMB MMA "The Modern Warrior" | Click on the image for a larger view

Here's the first design, we called the "Modern Warrior" shirt. I covered the thought process behind the design in an earlier post, but one addition we made on this shirt, along with the other school shirts is the addition of crossing swords on the back with the full school logo. With it I added a quote I found that I thought seemed appropriate that states, "We do not rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training". I thought the quote seemed fitting as a motivator. I read it simple as, 'Don't assume you'll succeed at something, because you'll only be as good as the preparation you put in'. Paul made a good ppoint that it may be misinterpreted as being negative, but I think if you really read into the words, the meaning is there, and it's meant to motivate. We had limitations on the actual size of the graphic on the front, I would have preferred for it to be larger, but it simply wasn't possible for this run, but I still think this is a great shirt, and I'm excited about it.

Hayastan-IMB MMA "Samurai" | Click on the image for a larger view
This shirt has easily been my favorite. Wasn't hard, the Samurai art was a stock clipart I found, and I added the school logo into the helmet and added some degraded effects into it. The back of the shirt has the same quote from the other shirt, and overall is the same design, just for this shirt, the colors were changed. I love the design simply because I love gray Tees, so this one is exciting and I got a lot of feedback from people saying this one was their overall preference. It will be interesting to see of the two, which one will be the popular seller.

Hayastan Grappling Challenge "Heel-Hooked" | Click on the image for a larger view
Lastly, here is the final design for the Hayastan Grappling Challenge shirt for the upcoming tournament coming up on March 19th. We tried several different designs, but we finally ended up with the "Heel-Hook" dig. I actually found a great image I was able to posterize and trace into a simple graphic vector. I'll give you props if you can make out who the people are. I know it might be somewhat obvious, but still. Kudos to you if you can.

Well that's it, hope you enjoy them. Make sure you buy'em up with you see them at the schools.

SICHON-T-Shirt-DESIGN-er | Some T-shirts I've been working on for my MMA school

Hayastan-IMB MMA "Samurai"
I was recently asked by my Sensi Paul Booe and owner of Hayastan-IMB Mixed Martial Arts to try to do a few t-shirt designs for the school. I was more than happy to oblige. I've never designed T-shirts before so I was anxious to try it out. Obviously because of cost and silk-screening limitations, I could only work with 2 to 3 colors max, most cases just 2-color would have to suffice. I came up with a few different options. All of these designs in this post are still in concept phase, we're all still working out the details and figuring out which ones will get printed. I'm hoping for the "Samurai". The helmet is a piece of vector clip art I came upon that I thought would make a great shirt. MMA T-shirts as you know are generally very gaudy and over the top. Mostly donned by douche-bags, but if you're wearing one, and you're actually standing on a mat, sweatin' it out with other guys trying to hurt you, you can't be called a douche-bag for fear of a knee to the face. It's that fat guy ordering a cheeseburger at Wendy's in a yellow TapOut shirt. He's a douche-bag. So when I was designing these, I thought generally about if I'd wear this out, and yeah, some of them are pretty over the top, but in general, sure, I'd wear'em, fuck yeah.

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I'm back, and I'm a Martial Artist.

Well over a year ago, I stopped updating my personal blog, for various reasons, some personal, some professional. But now I've decided it was time to start up again... again for various reasons. Wanted to share again that for the last 3 years or so, I was introduced to submission grappling and jiu-jitsu. I started training at Hayastan-IMB Mixed Martial Arts out of curiousity and out of the need to try to really get into shape. I loved it, and it did get me into great shape, in some ways choosing that path changed my life, because it made me really keep up with a healthier lifestyle. But during that first year or so of training, I never really took it very seriously. Some weeks I stayed commited, other weeks I would attend classes sporadically. A lot of people go through some of the same motions, some take to training like crack, others love it for a while and get disinterested. I fell a little more into the latter category, some of it was due to a hectic work schedule, some of it out of laziness. One thing that didn't change thankfully was that in between not being at the gym and rolling on the mat, practicing with the other guys, I still stay commited to working out, so I still maintained a reasonable amount of fitness — for me anyway.

Then something happened. I got hurt. Actually I twisted my left knee on a takedown defense drill in class months prior, but it didn't swell and I was back to normal in a coulpe of days, and then I went on with life. But several months later, I suddenly woke to find my knee swollen, and my abiliy to apply weight on it was impossible. MRI reveal an ACL tear, and it needed to be replaced. So training stopped. Life got slower, and I was in recovery mode. Over the course of the next 2 years post surgey, I stayed in shape. Worked out regularly, and practiced some moves at home while lifting. I went back to Hayastan months later, and I decided to ease back into shape by taking a strength and conditioning class 2 days a week. It's kinda their verison of a boot camp and fight readiness conditioning because a lot of the movements are specific to combat sports. I loved it. But everytime as I left, I'd watch a lot of the same guys I trained with come in and get ready for their classes and I wanted to be among them. Sweat with them, get mashed and do some mashing if you will. So yesterday was my first day back as on official Martial Artist again. I started back with fulltime classes of Kickboxing and Submission Grappling, to go along with my Strength & Conditioning class. I'm back in the Adult Grappling program with a full belt system based on a modified teachings of Gokor Chivichyan's training organization. I'm starting back on square one. New fish. What I learned before gets relearned. What I know now is meaningless. What I'll learn in in the coming months is the only thing that matters. This time, I'm pledging as a Martial Artist with a clean white belt, to apply myself and remain focused and commited. I want nothing more than to be a capable Martial Artist, like anyone that steps into a gym or dojo. Wish me luck.

BTW, I weighed myself this morning... 190.8. Lowest I've seen in years. My goal is to be a hard and lean 185. I have a lot of work in front of me.

Wow... I've been neglecting this place.

For reasons that are just way too complicated to explain, and even if I did, you'd be compelled to pour lighter fluid on your face and burn it off. I've been unable to post updates here on my blog. But in the coming days, I'm going to rebrand, and reassess my place on the blogosphere. 

I know you guys give a rats ass.

By the way, I really should have at least updated the page AFTER I finally saw Terminator Salvation. THAT MOVIE SUCKED BALLS.

OMFG... need I say more?

NIN is always a nice touch. Can't wait til the end comes.

Armageddon Shopping List

So its 2012, Rapture, the flesh eating dead rise from the ground, a super flu leaves everyone shit-faced except for a handful of idiots that keep dreaming about Aunt Jemima, nuclear suckfest, angry rage infected Britains with bad teeth, or Al gore and Roland Emmerich have the last laugh and the planet's weather system is screwed forever — what are you gonna need on hand to make the road agents and zombies to run for cover? Me? Well I've made arrangements to send my family to planet "It's Way Better Here", so no worries for my loved ones, it'll only be me, the Lonesome Dove left here on Planet Zero to have all the fun — but I need to go shopping...

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3D movies might be the way to go.

Took the family to see Coraline today... family entertainment is hit or miss sometimes, sure movies like Ratatouille and Shrek can be great for everyone, but then you have to sit through shitty klunckers like Meet the Robinson's or Bee Movie. Coraline looked pretty good right away because I know it was produced by Tim Burton, and his interesting visual style and dark undertone makes family movies all the more interesting. One thing I wasn't too prepared for was the 3D aspect, and I have to say, I'm a total convert. I thought the glasses and the blurry screen would piss me off, instead, it really did enhance the experience. I'm totally psyched about the potential of the medium. Especially Dreamworks' Aliens vs. Monsters, and James Cameron's Avatar. Fuck those blue and red paper shades, I think 3D is here to stay.

My Xbox 360 Fists Me Again.

I popped in Fallout 3 after weeks of neglect, was just looking to download the patch so I can continue my current game quest (game kept freezing in the Jefferson Memorial during the Waters of Life quest) and low and behold, screen freezes, RED RINGS OF DEATH ensue. I have to ask Microsoft, What The Fuck? Honestly, I know all hardware has a failure rate, but when it becomes a certainty that your $350 game console will at some point encounter this fatal problem just under normal use, its inexcusable in my book... and not only that, THIS IS THE SECOND TIME it's happened to me. Luckily, I my repair was inside the 3 year warranty from the last repair. Should I just accept this as a consumer? It's total bullshit if you ask me.

I think I'm the last person on Earth using FreehandMX.

And you know what. That sucks. Because Macromedia Freehand (Well now Adobe Freehand? -- so weird) is a do everything you pretty much need it do do but maybe not perfect but still very good overall and superior in many different ways than Adobe Illustrator (Phoey) -- although I must say that Illustrator is a great program — if I can ever figure out how to select the item I actually want after "Ungrouping" endlessly with "Command U", Illustrator is just a cumbersome f**king program... for me anyway. Now I know Adobe aquired FreehandMX from Macromedia when they aquired well... Macromedia. Look I'm not an expert on the subject of mergers and aquisitions, but I can tell you though is that event signaled the end of a great program in Freehand. Sure it's a couple years now, but its starting to come to a head. I'm gonna have to bite the pillow and learn Illustrator. Even though Freehand I always felt was more comfortable to manipulate — I know some of the pen tools were a little clunky and unprecise, Freehand allowed a lot of...freedom. You could set stylesheets to text attributes — fuck you could design and print a book! With pages that had different sizes. Never understood how Illustartor could now never have multiple pages, so weird! Blah-eh!

But I gotta realize that as a designer, the tools need to be updated, the trend has to evole... as I. F**k!