Cool Stuff: Zombama: Brains T-Shirt

The Zombama: Brains T-shirt is now available for the next 24-hours only on TeeFury.com for only $9 (plus $2 shipping and handling. The design by Jared Moratis created the art as a commentary about rabid Obama fan-mania coupled with his missteps as a new leader, as well as a commentary about appropriation art. The artist assures us that while some may assign "sort of racist, hate-filled vibe to it", that was not his intention at all. It's also worth noting that the design is not a photo-manipulation of the famous Obama piece, though it's obviously based on it — it's completely hand-drawn from scratch, then rendered in Illustrator.

"I wanted to do an Obama piece (along with everybody else on the planet, evidently), but since my brain has been irreparably warped by cartoons and pop-culture nonsense I simply could not realize this intent with any level of serious meaning or maturity. I was looking at some of the parody images out there, several of which were based on the popular Shepard Fairey piece" ... "Most (if not all) of the parodies I came across were a bit obvious, choosing to rely on simply basing their ideas on words that rhymed with "hope". I wanted to run in the opposite direction, so I chose to parody the parodies (as well as Fairey's reputation for using appropriated images in his art) by turning Obama into a zombie at the risk of coming across as an Obama-hater and attracting the attention of the FBI. Also, zombies are teetering on the edge of being overexposed in pop-culture (if they haven't already tumbled mindlessly over the edge of that pop-culture precipice). The slogan was easy, cuz what other slogan would a zombie choose for his campaign? Also "BRAINS" does not in any way rhyme with "HOPE", yet it somehow totally does. Think about it..."

You can see more of Moraitis art on his Pop Monkey blog. You can also buy a remixed version of the design as a framed print in PopMonkey's CafePress store .

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