The Temperature’s Rising At Hotlife

admin    T-Shirt Reviews     Frankie Says, MikeC, band tees, emptees, funny t shirts, hotlife, illustration, livingthehotlife.com, punk, skater, skater tees, t-shirt design

Recently MikeC of www.LivingTheHotlife.com contacted me and demanded to send me a couple of sample tees, as you might or might know I am one of the few t-shirt reviewers who doesn’t require freebies, but he was pretty insistent, he wanted to make sure I knew first hand exactly how high the quality of his products stands up, and I’m telling you, it’s up there with the best. It’s not just the100% organic fair trade tees he prints on, which are incredibly soft by the way, but the designs themselves are incredibly well drawn and fantastically ‘clean’. Mike is obviously an old hand at illustration, I took a peek at his biography on his rather hilarious FAQ page and found a few gems to help warm you to this relatively underground label:-

So HOTLIFE is designed exclusively by MCHC Art/Designs? Absolutely, 100% hand drawn by MikeC himself.That way you know you’ve got an 100% original design. Lots of “designers” like to take clip art and add a photo shop filter and pass it off as a design…we would rather make something thats unique and rad.

I’m pretty sure 90% of my wardrobe is made up of designs by MCHC already, what bands and such has he worked with? Thousands of bands, too many to mention, but Thinkfast! Records, Victory Records, Acacia Strain, A Day to Remember, Hawthorne Heights, Madball, All Shall Perish, Mychildren Mybride, Between the Buried and Me, Salt The Wound, Bishop, Emmure, Catch 22, & Kill Your Idols, just to name a few.

Now that’s a lot of bands! Hotlife have a strong connection with the music scene, if you fancy upping the stakes and making your own band’s image a little more hardcore then you can commission Mike’s talent as a t-shirt designer via his Myspace page. He even helps promote the bands he works with by graciously featuring their latest gigs at Hotlife’s news page.

It’s difficult to categorize Mike’s style, his illustrative style is strong, very strong, and even though there are reminders for me of punk and thrash, biker and tattoo imagery, there are two distinct qualities to his work that makes it rise above the competition. Firstly, as mentioned earlier, his drawing technique is fabulously clean, he actually draws everything by hand as you can tell, his line is fluid and flowing, the compositions spot on, I’m sure this guy must have been doodling throughout every spare minute of his life. Apart from the trained eye and hand co-ordination, there’s the humour, his sense of fun is infectious, one of the first tees to jump out at me was his interpretation of Frankenstein’s Monster in Frankie Says Relax. Which for me is hilarious, as was the original band that came up with that tune, although the latter wasn’t entirely intentional.

I’ll start by reviewing the tees Mike sent me, I’d have got my cute GF to pose but she’s up to her neck in work today, so I’m afraid you get the ugly guy instead of the babe. Still the designs should more than compensate!

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