Long overdue update, and a blast from the past!

Phew! Its been a while. We had to leave the internets to lie dormant while we've been busy gearing up for the next couple of shows and reorganizing our print space. It's good to see the old www is still where we left it.

There's been a lot going on. We officially launched the T shirt printing studio in Popidiot's basement and we can't wait to print up a few new shirts! We have tons of projects coming down the pipe line, but the only one I can leak to the public right now is the revival of a Team Eight classic, HORN. If you don't remember it, prepare to be perplexed:



This one was one of our original shirts from way back, a collaboration between Russ Gautier and Matt Deans and they disappeared fast. This time we're printing plenty of them on American Apparel shirts, so there will be enough for everyone. Besides, my old one has holes in it and doesn't fit quite like it used to.

So watch out for this shirt as well as new prints from Barry Bruner, Frans Boukas, Matt Deans, Spencer Hansen, Patrick Godfrey, and oh yeah, we heard a viscous rumor that THE Brian Ralph is working on something to please your hearts, their minds, and our vacuum table.

Team 8 Press gets Press!

Check us out in today's issue of Brick! Page 13, or go here to read it online. Brick did a great job with this article. They are also a reliable place for quirky opinions on current music, movies, comics, and other art you may or may not have already heard of. And who ever heard of a Richmond weekly with current online content?? These guys are really getting their act together.

And a very special thanks to Dwayne Carpenter and Bird Cox.

Screen Printing tips and tutorials

Download a tutorial I did about screen printing and building your own vacuum and light tables:

click here

Heroes, NC

Got back from Heroes last night. It was great to run into old friends and make a few new ones. Here's a sampling of some of the cool stuff we found:

Brian Ralph Illustrator, comic creator, and fellow silk screener.

Evan Palmer This guy really stepped up and put down a sweet panel on the jam comic.

Josh Latta Check out Josh's mini comics, and buy a couple!

Brad McGinty Super nice guy and accomplished mini comic artist.

store101 Jason does some amazing silk screened t-shirts

Erik Jones Erik is a snazzy illustrator of some gorgeous girls.

Tender Loving Empire Real nice guys doing all kinds of things in Portland, OR.

2008 HEROES Convention

We'll be setting up all our work at the Heroes Convention in Charlotte, NC on June 20-22. We'll also be debuting a couple new posters and the Mini Comics Series 1. And all our friends will be there! Look for us at table SP-29 (its in the back!)

Kelly Alder prints!!

Kelly has been been jealously eyeing the squeegees in our studio for a few months now. It was starting to get a little creepy, but don't worry he finally got his chance to pull swipes on his very own poster. Here's his take on the experience:

"Spencer was nice enough to include popidiot in Team8press' ongoing silkscreen poster series of local RVA artist's/illustrators. If I had known at the time that I had to follow it up with some writing I may have reconsidered but it's too late for that now so here goes.

Having not done any silkscreening since my one and only attempt at it way back when I was a sophomore at VCU, needless to say I was a bit rusty and remembered virtually nothing from the experience. Spencer had his hands full trying to get me up to speed on the process.
The thing is he made it look so easy and in a sense he did make easy. Like Meg said in her post about her experience, Spencer basically did all the hard work. Could I now make a slikscreen print all on my own? Probably not. But the cool thing is I won't have to. It was so much fun watching my image evolve one color at a time that I'm definitely going to be making some more, a lot more, with Spencer of course. And who knows, maybe after my 6th or 7th poster I'll be familiar enough with the process that I'll be able to take the training wheels off.

Not only did Spencer hold my hand through the printing process, he also did the coloring of the drawing for me and as you can see, he did an amazing job of it. Is there nothing this kid can't do? This was a collaboration of the best kind and hopefully Spencer and popidiot will be collaborating on many more projects in the very near future. Stayed tuned for exciting updates."

-- Kelly

POPIDIOT!!

Here's a preview of the poster we're working on with Kelly Alder. He is responsible for the snazzy illustration and was excited to let Spencer have a shot at the color. Way to go, now we have a 25 x 19 in, 7 color poster on our hands!