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ZOMBAMA BRAINS

About the artist

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jimiyo

Word from Jimiyo: BooYeah! YouCanHazAwesome!

Tell us about this design.
There are many possible meanings and interpretations of this design, but if you're assigning some sort of racist, hate-filled vibe to it, then I suggest you take a long walk off a short pier.  This is a commentary about rabid Obama fan-mania coupled with his missteps as a new leader, as well as a commentary about appropriation art.  I'll leave the details up to your imagination.  This is not a photo-manipulation of that other Obama piece, though it's obviously based on it -- it's completely hand-drawn from scratch, then rendered in Illustrator

Tell us about yourself.
The son of migrant shoe-shiners, I was being raised to follow in my parents' footsteps when I began to draw little cartoons on the customers' shoes instead of polishing them (shoe-shining is just so boring!).  My parents banished me from the family business and I wandered through the wonderful, mind-numbing world of factory work for years.  Too many cartoons and comic books had permanently warped my psyche, however, making me unfit for normal jobs. A near-fatal accident involving a radioactive pencil becoming lodged in my brain shook loose the cobwebs in my head and caused me to realize I needed to pursue a career in art, leaving the factories far behind.  I graduated from the Ringling School of Art and Design several years ago and have since been slowly hacking out a life in the freelance artscape.  I pull my influences from comic artists, classic illustrators, pulp-art and pop-art.

Are there any ongoing art projects you would like to promote?
I've got a shirt design coming out from Jinx.com (should be out by now) with more to come.  Also some prints and shirts in development with Gorilla Riot.  Been working on concept art for an online game that's probably too early (and secret) to announce.  I'm always developing new illustrations for prints, buttons and shirts that I sell either at my cafe press shop, artistful.com, or are available directly from me (see links on my blog).

Mad Max, Terminator, or Aliens?
Aliens, definitely.  Though Mad Max comes in a close second.  I saw the original release of ALIEN when I was 5 years old (it was at a drive-in movie and my parents thought I was asleep in the back of the station wagon).  It gave me nightmares for life, and made a permanent impression on me.  My dad had the giant Alien action figure and the Heavy Metal comic book adaptation and I would sit around drawing aliens all day.  By the time ALIENS rolled around, I was such an obsessed fan that I peed in my soda cup rather than get up to use the restroom at the theater and miss crucial minutes of the movie!

You are on Death Row. What's your last supper?
Either bread and wine (hey, it was good enough for Jesus), or a fat ribeye with baked potato, asparagus and a greek salad.  I'd wash that down with the darkest beer they've got.  Burp.

Any shout outs?
This goes out to ma 'n' pa.  See, I told you I'd make it!  Ain't no websites devoted to shoe-shiners, are there?