Conditions, Myths and Cards

You ever have that wtf have I done moment? How about several of those in a short period? Welcome to my world.

I’m pleased to say nothing is broken. Creativity is flowing.

But I have butterflies the size of chickens in my gut because now I am also a TCG designer.

Classifications in The Canis: Characters, Tokens, Conditions, Entities.

Don’t Panic

As I’ve been building this sustainable streetwear world, I have been thinking about art.

Everything you see on garment or on a physical product, I have dawn myself. In a world increasingly filled with AI-generated imagery, authenticity matters.

Like everyone else, I use AI while developing ideas. The Canis is still young. A couple of months old, give or take. Honestly, I've completely lost track of time

The cards on the site are version one mock-ups. The final thing I know will take longer, I am not even sure if people care enough to want them, so a lot remains to be seen.

I’ve been panicking about TCG’s because, I’d like our cards to be really good.

I've spent enough time around things like D&D and trading card games to know how much work goes into them. I'm not trying to dethrone Pokémon, Magic and D&D. Far from it. If anything, I'm increasingly humbled by the ridiculous amount of effort that goes into building these worlds and systems.

It’s okay, like I said, don’t panic. But I am not going to try sell you version one mock-ups just so you know. Like I said, we’ll do them properly. The same goes for the comics.

Writing The Canis

Everything is completely intertwined with The Canis, I move when it moves.

From writing the mythology to character development, it genuinely has been unfolding.
Partly through my own reverse engineering genius, and partly through completely strange moments of insight.
Like at midnight last night, suddenly thinking, we have a sun eater, we might as well have a moon eater.

Don’t ask, I have absolutely no idea what that is. (Please not another worm)
Anyway.

Okay, bye

So much to do.

Building Streetwear Mythology

I grew up in the era of gaming magazines, comics, album covers, flags and posters. I thought Gerald Brom had superhuman abilities. Mythology and fantasy were my textbooks.

I can talk to you about stories, systems and art for days. The Canis is my attempt to build mythology, collectibles, comics and game mechanics into a streetwear brand.

What’s left of what was on my wall in the 00s.

Mapping game to garment

The first part was easy, ARG mechanics slot right in, designing the characters and mythology, however, can be painfully slow.

I just spent the entire weekend drawing a new version of Sun Eater and the villain, both of which were canned. I’m torn between game iconography and art and have not stopped testing concepts.

Comic books

Accompanying the core range and TCG’s are comics. This is where the story unfolds.

The next generation of art is in progress; provided I stop canning them.
The rulebook is done, version one. The first series of cards is done as well. As the visual language evolves, so will these.

Never thought that kid cutting art and articles out of gaming mags would be designing TCG’s but, there we are.

Star maggots

Sun Eater is part of The Originals; the first batch of my old teenage art I used to start the shop. Weird, misfit art. In its own right.

Reworking this doodle into a re-usable artifact of The Canis has been one of the biggest challenges to date. Raptor is on this list as well.

Due to an obsession with cosmology (Et Al) we have star maggots and axiomatic entities.  

Building worlds

I used to complain about my to-do list. Now, I miss it.

It’s been fun and challenging but it’s the start of mythology.

ARG game mechanics, rules, cards, comics, and an evolving world all mapped to our core range.  
Can’t stop now, this giant world keeps rolling.

How To Make Garments Entertaining?

Visual exploration of The Canis; story telling through comics.

One of the reasons I don’t do too much ‘me working on this’ content, is the bulk of it is,
me sat behind a laptop occasionally staring into space,
me on the bathroom floor at midnight scribbling notes or
me being dragged through the woods by two dogs while deep in thought.

None of this is very TikTok friendly. But a consequence of having a job, dealing with life and building mythology.

The Canis

How could I make clothing entertaining? This was the question that started it all.

Well, there were a couple of big questions I was circling; how would you talk about your brand if there were no social media. Buffering on the second.

Some days of thought later I started mapping Mongrel Logic’s core range to games.

I had already been thinking of the drawings as characters, some of them having travelled with me across continents for the past 20 years, and that world was somewhat born back in the 90s and early 2000s.

I had this idea of Mongrel Logic trading cards for the longest time and not found a home for it yet, these two ideas merged and I found myself on the bathroom floor at midnight, (running a bath I don’t just go sit there) and scribbling notes on Pokémon, GTA, Minecraft, etc.

What about those games made people love them?

The language

I’m very good at some things, designing and systems is one of them; I build side entrances and back doors everywhere to allow me to pivot story, language, etc.

I already had some ‘for those who’ language in there, it sounded cool but had no real direction.
It suddenly found a purpose, the world started forming behind my eyes.
At the end of April “The Canis” had emerged, although it was called “The Pack” for about five seconds. And “hunt the logic” was floating for a moment.

The next steps were figuring out which character/design played which role in a newly evolving ARG with garments.


A couple of days of arguing with myself later, everyone had settled into their new roles, and it was like a light switched on. Things started making sense again. (First time in months)

The Canes {F}

The Canes are modelled after gravity, electromagnetism and the strong nuclear force. I circled this like a vulture for days.
Kar, Mur and Torn have Latin origins. For no other reason other than it sounded cool and like it could be unearthed, ancient.

While I was forming The Canes, I was simultaneously working on Spineless; the design that nearly broke everything, I wanted the world to carry meaning.
Spineless represents the real-world issues infecting The Canis.
If it worked, The Canis could have a repeatable ‘condition’ which I only realised after was kind of perfect; because jellyfish only appear in unstable conditions.

The Canes were forming while this condition was spreading and testing the world.

We came out the other side, tested, triumphed. Protected by tokens. Governed by The Canes, three cosmological forces that fight against conditions like Spinless.  

Oh. The irony.

Sun Eater is next

I put that stupid doodle on a garment because I had had the store for about 3 months, I had no idea what I was building but I was showing up every day to build it, and this stupid grinning face kept staring at me.

I coloured him in grey; by the way; grey drawings don’t do so well on socials. Hahaha.

I put him in the store. I was working with GPT4 at the time. It used to have a ton of high school energy, it said and I quote, “bwaaaahahahahaaaa, I ate the sun but I’m sorry”

That’s how Sun Eater got his name. I used to have that quote on a tee, it may return. Right now, Sun Eater is traversing the universe, munching his way through stars, heading in our direction.

I have around 7 iterations of him, none of them are where I want him to be.

I was watching a video on dark matter the other night and have had a brain wave that I plan on trying later today. Look out for the comic on socials, if I’ve got it right, you’ll see him.

And if it works, then he truly is coming.

Comic book socials

 Finally, finally, after months of trying to define what the hell I want to do with my socials that doesn’t involve my face.
The Canis has finally taken over my feed.
The Canis speaks. The Canes are governing. And Logic is transmitting.