As some of you following this blog may have noticed, a couple months ago, @godfish and I kicked off a fun and quirky little passion project, which we called the Dead Pets Society. The? Is it just Dead Pets Society? Does that sound more cool? And whoever said I was cool? Anyway, before we amble down to another editorial meeting (about one in a year, which considering that we live together, is something, no?), I thought I'd show you this nifty little thing I got busy with recently.
I made us merch!
And before you ask "who do they think they are?!", it started innocently enough with a T-shirt I printed for Fish as a gift at the beginning of the summer. We've obviously been working on this for over a year now, and we thought it'd make a sweet little celebration, eh? Meanwhile, I also printed my own little Yogi Death shirt that I have yet to wear on account of dying of heat.
And we thought, hey, wouldn't that be kinda something?
We also made NFTs for our main characters, more as a fun little experiment on Magi than anything else, and we even recently sold two! Thank you @tibfox and @condeas ! And if you're craving one, we still got a few up for digital ownership, so go for it. And while designing the NFTs, I started thinking, wouldn't this be a nice little design for merch?
So off to the thinking laboratory I went. Turns out, putting your art on stuff is really easy online. I mainly used Printify for the actual merch creation. And I had loads of fun doing it. Setting up prices and figuring out production afterward, less so. But look what neat things came out:
Check Dead Pets out on Etsy!
As you can see, so far we only have three of our ten characters on the e-shop: the Yogi Grim Reaper, Lady Pandora and my Good Boy Angus, as we thought we'd first test out the waters before making more. We're currently offering:
- T-shirts;
- Mugs;
- Tote Bags;
- Stickers.
Dare I say, the T-shirts and mugs are the best deals, as they also include free shipping (at least in the US, still wrapping my head around how this works). :) But if something else appeals, you know, feel free. Also, since all the characters have been revealed by now, if you have a particular soft spot for one that isn't featured on the e-shop yet, drop us a line, and I'll see what I can do to get them up and running. Mum's the word.
What's the point?
As two people who've spent almost a decade on this platform, not to mention made rather radical life changes thanks to it :D, we started Dead Pets in a haphazard attempt to popularize Hive outside.
We figured if amateur artists (or rather random people with artistic aspirations) like us could get an audience and make a buck, that could be a strong inspiration for others outside the blockchain who might be harboring artistic aspirations of their own.
Now granted, we haven't seen many newcomers thanks to that, we do make sure to tell them and plaster "HIVE" on every platform we use outside of here, including everywhere on Etsy. So who knows, maybe this is the way people find their way onto here.
Would you be intrigued if you read about a platform that welcomes and rewards would-be artists? I know I would. Let's see, anyhow.
How are the Dead Pets doing so far?
All in all, we're doing rather well, for an assembly of critters past their expiration date. We're publishing strips bi-weekly, not only on Hive, but also on:
If you're active in any of these communities and enjoy our stuff, we would appreciate the support, of course.
Frankly, I've been surprised and a bit overwhelmed by the response on the other platforms. Each strip gets hundreds, if not thousands of views and quite a bit of random appreciation all round, which we've of course been immensely grateful for.
But honestly, we think the designs might appeal even to people who aren't familiar with our beloved bony ensemble.
What do you think?:)
