News

Another one of those busy weeks here at Fretshirt HQ, with us all doing our homework - yes I put that in just to justify the header image - and as we prepare to make several announcement of new lines being added to our catalogue, plus the return of some older ones.

But I don't think I'll tell you about those just yet, but see if you can guess what's returning.

One of the new items should be easy enough, as there's been enough clues over the last few months. I mean just look at the title of this post!  The other one, perhaps not so much.

So, until it's time for the big announcement, what else have we been up to?

Well, our designer continued to work through his Blue Planet Live fixation, as mentioned in the previous blog, with some quite stunning ideas such as his shark and Killer whales made out of plastic waste. One of which can be seen above.

He also celebrated National Unicorn Day - no, me neither - on Tuesday by mashing the mythological horned horse into one of the most iconic album covers of all time, to give us Dark Side of the Unicorn. Why? Well, because we can. That's why!

But enough about us, what about our partners?

Well, the launch of our favourite Pirate Beardaggedon's 1500 Subscribers shirt, went so well, that it made it into our weekly best sellers twitter post - posted every weekend  if you want to see whatever one else is buying - making Wookies very happy. And everyone wants happy Wookies.

Meanwhile, Exor Studios - Zombie Driver & X-Morph Defense - had some very successful trade shows with their new project The Riftbreaker, so we let our designer loose on their concept art.

The results were, fantastic, and you'll be seeing more of those in the next few weeks once the full Riftbreaker page here on Fretshirt.com is launched. 

In the meantime, there's a little taster beside this paragraph of the game's hero, Ashley.

BTW: The Riftmaker merch page isn't one of the announcements I was talking about earlier. So keep reading.

Also making a big announcement - again not us - was Bob, the solo Dev behind Survivalist, with a Steam page for the impressive looking follow up which is now called Survivalist: Invisible Stain. 

No release date yet, but the characters from the original game won't be appearing as it is set ten years later. Still we like to think Joe is still wearing his suit in the zombie apocalypse as in the Survivalist Merch.

There's also a new Discord server for both Survivalist games run by a fan on Bob's behalf - where you can often find "Fretshirt" hanging out with other fans and players, from time to time, just as we do in the servers for all our merchandise partners.

Okay, I think that's probably enough padding time to get to the announcements. (Well done all of you who managed to read down this far!)

Firstly we are highly excited to be adding sublimation Mugs to product range. (You got that from the blog title, right?)

Two styles will be appearing shortly both standard coffee mug sized.

One in ceramic mug, and another in enamel so we'll have you covered - oh I haven't said that in a while - where ever you like to partake in a refreshing beverage. 

Oh and don't worry, the former will be dispatched in a purpose made protective box that the makes say can withstand being thrown down stairs - yeah, of course we did and metal stairs too! - to ensure we don't add to the sales of Superglue.

We're also, and somewhat randomly, looking into doing cushions too, once we are sure if there is a market for them, or not. Personally I'm guessing the latter, but you fretters tend to like what you like.

In any case, our merchandising partners will have first shot and then we'll roll them out in the general store, so look out for those.

As for the second announcement, that concerns some items that you may have noticed have been missing from our store for a few weeks. Namely those involving  embroidery and sublimation processes, be it Polo shirts, All over prints, plus hats and bags.

Well, we are pleased to say that finally all those items will be returning to the store, as we've sorted out our warehouse issues.

Not at once, as that would flood the store, but slowly over the next couple of months so all those items will no longer be "Sold Out" and many more that are currently hidden, will become live and available to buy once more.

Finally, here's a little something to keep in mind for our new range of garments and designs to celebrate all those that are legendary at what they do. But more on that next time when we'll be putting a band together. (Sort of!)

 Until We Fret Again.

Another busy week here at Fretshirt HQ, comes to a conclusion with a celebration. No, not just that is the end of another week but something far more worthwhile that that in the release of a special edition shirt for our pirate partner, the Real Life Wookie himself Beardageddon.

You may remember from several blogs ago - just nod if you don't I won't know the difference - that The Beaded One, recently went through the milestone of having 1500 subscribers to his twitch stream?

Well, since then his partner, Puzzle, and ourselves have been working hard to put all those names legibly onto a shirt.

This week we finally cracked it and all the names are perfectly readable on the t-shirt or sweatshirt of your choice. No hoodies, or child sizes, as the text just got to small on those.

It comes, naturally, in the pirate colours of purple and green along with the standard black and white, and yes, all the names are there. We checked and counted them. All fifteen hundred of them. 

 Or perhaps we got the office cat to do it?

No, that would have been stupid mainly as we don't have a cat, and even if we did, they'd probably spend all their time doing what the Modern Mouser is doing in one of latest releases. (Smooth product placement, eh!)

What else?

Well, other than counting beards and Wookies we've been mostly all at sea. At least our designer has, after they watched Blue Planet Live, and got all (rightly) upset about the amount of plastics polluting the world's rivers, seas and oceans.

Naturally that set him off drawing with the first result being The Great Plastic Wave, you can see above, which illustrates the issue rather starkly, don't you think?

But the designer wasn't finished there because, well, once started on something, it takes designers quite a long time to get it out of their system as you may have noticed from the amount of Dog and Cat shirts that have happened recently?

This time a Mana Ray came to his attention, only one trapped inside a plastic bag - no he didn't do this to save having to draw the ray - but so he could use his latest rhyming couplet.

And, yes that's what he calls them - rhyming couplet - it's the sort of thing artistic people do. Apparently.

Either that or he's testing my ability to spell weird and wonderful words. (It's okay I looked it up!) just like X-Morph Defense and their American ways - even though they're Polish. (It's DefenCe guys!)

Anyway, no doubt there will be more designs on the theme of maritime pollution in the coming weeks as Blue Planet Live continues, so look out for those.

In the meantime we did attempt to distract the designer with a Golden Labrador Retriever pretending to be the legendary shark Jaws, and it worked.For a few minutes while he came up with the Paws design you can see beside this paragraph, then dived right back into the plastic filled ocean again.

Ha, "Dived right back into the plastic filled ocean" - Come on, that's good stuff.

Sometimes I just amuse myself without realising it.

Anyway.....

Until We Fret Again.

It's been a busy week here at Fretshirt HQ, what with Mother's Day coming this weekend, not to mention the switch from Greenwich Mean Time to British Summer Time on the same day, but mainly to do with the official launch of our Mashinky Merchandise range, by the wonder that is the Czech Republic's best Indie Dev Jan Zeleny.

And, if that wasn't enough - when is it ever? - we also expanded our surprisingly large range of Cat Shirts with a new theme "It's a  Cat Thing" range.

Now, that is shirts, sweaters and Hoodies, with cats on them. Not garments to be worn by the little furry critters although, what you do with your clothings after you've bought it is really nothing to do with us. We're not ones to judge our beloved Fretters.

Erm... So.... Anyway, where was I?

Other than getting weird images in my head?

Oh yes. Time changes...

Okay so that doesn't make that much real difference, other than having to get out of bed earlier, which is never a good thing.

Oh and for those of you not in the UK who I've now panicked, thinking you've forgotten Mother's Day, don't worry, it's pretty much only the UK that celebrates our Mums on 4th Sunday in Lent, most of you have until 2nd Sunday in May to honor your Moms. Unless your country uses International Woman's Day, in which case you've got some apologising to do. 

BTW: How did we ever manage to do anything before Wikipedia?

Anyway, we had such a great response to the Mashinky Merchandise from one particular country that we decided to make them a special offer:

There you go: Support Fretshirt.com and independent Game Development, and we'll give you something back.

If you want your country to be as special as the Czech Republic, then give us a reason to do so.

A National Holiday perhaps, a special event, or even something you've made up. We'll look at all the options. Just don't mention Brexit.

Now back to the cats.

Yes, I know, they get everywhere don't they?

Up trees, playing with wool, under blankets, noses into fish bowels, on computers or windowsills and that's when they're not sleeping all neatly curled up or totally supine on their backs.

In case you haven't guessed - was I too subtle - those are the designs in our new "It's A Cat Thing" range, not all of which are released yet, but if you pop over to the Animal Theme pages you'll see those that are.

Or you could just keep an idea on our twitter where new designs are often announced first along with retweets from our partners, so you'll never be the last to hear anything.

Of course, the FretDay blog is always better informed than the twitter team, so don't foget to come back each Friday, for the proper news. Not just some 280 characters of it.

You deserve so much more than that.

Until We Fret Again.

It's been birthday central here at Fretshirt HQ this week as our manager had one of those events that makes your age end in a '0'.

You know, those where the first couple of times you feel all grown up, but from then on just seem to make you old.

Naturally, I'm not going to tell you which one it was - although I may have just given you a hint - but it did set our designer off to create some new designs.

Okay, so it doesn't take too much to set a designer off - anyone who knows one will attest to that - to a point where you have to be careful what you say, or else they'll end up designing something around it.

Still on this occasion he's done some very cool designs, although we had to stop him at two, or else he wouldn't have been able to do all the other new stuff we have lined up for you lovely fretters.

Speaking of which, we have some new designs added to the Mashinky range which have been duly approved by the wonder that is solo indie developer Jan Zeleny.

Both feature a wonderful trio of hi resolution  captures of the in-game action from different eras of the transport tycoon game.

We start, naturally, at the very beginning of both the history of train and Mashinky, with a Steam Powered montage, that clearly shows the depth of Jan's vision, not to mention the his skill at rendering just a perfect landscape.

Then, it's into Diesel Powered times where the locomotives may not have been as pretty, but were still majestic as they ran down their metal rails through three of the four seasons depicted in the game.

Leaves brown on the trees in autumn, snow covers the ground in winter, and the sun causes shadows to lay across the land as Spring turns into Summer. How cool is that?

What else?

Well, you might have noticed, we tried a new thing on our twitter feed this week - of course you knew we have a twitter feed? - where instead of showing you four garment variations for each design - as you can see for the new Netflix Time sweatshirt to the left - we are just showing three, and the actual designs in close up.

These are the exact same files we print from, albeit much smaller and in the highly compressed .jpg format, as we figured you wouldn't want to wait for several multi-megabyte files to download before you could get your weekly fretness.

What do you think? A good idea? Or would you prefer the to see the designs depicted on mens & ladies T-shirts, hoodies and sweaters as we have done in the past? Just let us know, on twitter or here in the comments section below this post.

One thing about the comments section. Please note those of you with spam intentions, that comments are moderated, as we don't want to inflict any of your "growth" products, dodgy "financial opportunities", or, somewhat randomly, Russian Baby Buggies, (no really someone keeps trying to post adverts for pushchairs from Russia on our Contact Us page) on our beloved fretters.

Finally, good luck to all our merchandising partners who are starting - or have started - the yearly round of Trade shows.The floss dancing dog is just for you because it's cute, and you probably need to chill out.

Next week: It's feline time, as we launch our new "It's A Cat Thing" range but sadly no previews are available yet, as our designer is still "tinkering" (a technical term as I understand it!) with them.

Until We Fret Again.

After last weeks slightly rant-y (is that even a word?) post you'll be please to hear that normal service has now been resumed here at Fretshirt HQ, with the start of Dog Week as the official Fretshirt twitter previewed our new "It's A Dog Thing" collection of designs.

You'll have seen the first of them at the wagging end - see what I did there? Tail end. Wagging. No! Nevermind - of the Anti-Knife Crime post, and another in the header of this post but don't worry there are still more to see as we work our way though the latest Fretshirt news.

Pretty much any dog owner should recognize one or more of the classic aspects of your furry friend's activities that may seem strange to us mere humans, but are second nature to them. After all, that's why they're "Dog Things."

From the impossibly long stick being carried with pride whilst clearly everyone else from the path.

The rapid soaking for all around following a good shake, and the apparent "pleasure" of rolling around in something that stinks to high heaven, and the annoyance that follows during the bathing to remove the said stink.

That latter design coming in both a male a female version which did cause someone on twitter to suggest depicting the lady in an apron, apparently in a kitchen, but not the man was "sexist" rather than a design choice.

However, as we pointed out, firstly there is no "kitchen" - and who would take their stinky dog somewhere they make food - but that far from insulting women, the wearing of an apron, in this situation would be the better idea to do. Making the man's actions the less sensible.

Either that or they are over thinking a humorous image?

Anyway, we hope everyone else likes the series of perfectly "normal" dog activities, so delightfully captured by are hugely talented artist, along with a couple of less likely events such as the dog cleaning up after themselves and the yet still to go live canine version of the floss dance.

And yes, before anyone asks, there will be a "It's a Cat Thing" series coming up in a week or too, despite cats being evil. (Wait was I meant to type that last bit? Well they are, so there. Dogs rule!)

Moving on... before all the mad cat ladies hit the comments section...

Of course, funny dogs wasn't the only thing happening in the UK this week, so, alas I have to bring up the B-word and talk about Brexit.

Yes, I know, I don't want to either, but apparently it's quite a big thing now, and not about to be over any time soon, so, of course, we had to do some designs.

Naturally, we are not going to be taking sides, because, well, there's enough of that going on right now and, as with the dogs above, & the anti-knife crime issues last week, there really needs to be something to lighten the topic, which is where we come in.

Once more are artist has come up trumps, converting the ideas from our team into fabulous designs, many of which may appear to take sides in the debate, but once you look closely, actually do no such thing.

Don't worry though, if you don't want to spend time thinking about your t-shirt, we've also done some that are a little more blunt in their opinion, whilst staying away from the more derogatory language that Brexit appears to bring out in people.

Remember, if you disagree with someone, attack their arguments, not them personally. That is, after all the first rule of debating. Not intimidation, or shouting louder than they are.

Okay, moving on swiftly before I get all rant-y (still doesn't look right!) again. with some fantastic news from one of our merchandising partners.

Those wonderful people at Exor Studios have announced their exciting new game to follow up from the wondrous Zombie Driver and X-Morph Defense  with the base building epic that is The Riftbreaker [link goes to Riftbreaker Official Site] which will be available "sometime in 2020" and we can't wait.

Until We Fret Again.