DubMissile™

Well, it's my favourite time of the year, i love Christmas sooooo much. So, I just wanna wish everyone an awesome Christmas and a badass New Year!! I got some sweet gifts too, which is always a good thing. Have a good un kids.

Well, I got my grubby mitts on the sample for my tee label today and all I can say is, AWESOME!! I was a little concerned that the coat of arms design would be too detailed, even for the high-def labels but I was gladly proven wrong. When you consider the label is 40mm x 40mm there is some serious amazing-ness going on right there. Big thanks to Steve at Bellwoven for hooking me up with these and coming to the rescue when I thought I was screwed getting quantities and quality from the same company, so he gets a buddy link for being great. So, I got some designs, got some tees, all I need is for a few production things to turn up (including the full delivery of labels) and we're off. Not in time for Christmas, which sucks, but save your pennies for the New Year...the year of the missile!!

Tomorrow should be a fun day, me and my best bud Benski are going back to visit our old College where we learned our craft, to give a bit of a design talk and a bit of tutoring thrown in for good measure. We both studied (and met) at Wigan College in 1996 and it was an awesome time in my life (I also met my girl there). We kinda like the idea that whilst we were there we nearly ended up being booted off the course for dicking around too much and told 'you'll never make it in the real world', but now we're all grown up we seem to be doing pretty well for ourselves really. Wish me luck.

This took me quite a while to put together, it started off as one of my earlier logo tee graphics, it will still be a tee design but not yet. I found some really cool heraldic designs that gave me what I was looking for and chopped out the bits I thought were cool, re-drew some bits, built one side that look nice and symmetrical, then flipped it all over and married the 2 sides together. I added the maltese cross in there too, which is a bit badass. Then I did some trickery and managed to create a positive version (for light backgrounds) and a negative version (for dark backgrounds). This can screw peoples heads up which is why sometimes you'll see designs that look right on a light tee but totally wrong and a dark tee, you can't use the same image and just re-colour it black or white. Anyway, that aside, it looks cool as shit so I'm using this for my tee labels (hopefully my guys can do the business on the detail side). It'll be around 40mm square and stitched onto the...

Well, I've been holding off and holding off on showing any work in progress because, well, I'm still sorting stuff out as and when I get the cash together to do it and I'm constantly changing how I want to style my first bunch of tees. However, I've had a few nudges from guys asking what the crack is and am I actually gonna design some gear, so I thought it best to show what i'm working on at the moment then at least you all know I aint blowing smoke up your asses. Basically, I designed a bunch of tees months ago, but, in true designer fashion I got bored of what I did (even though i had some really positive feedback from some of the guys) and have gone down a different route stylewise. Some of my other designs, which I will post up here at some point, had tweaked graphics I did of cars but they were based on actual car images, which meant that in theory i was just altering someone elses car, which aint what I'm trying to achieve...does that make sense? I'm ...

Are you sitting comfortably? Here's a little story of one car and its journey to getting the 'small' things sorted for the MOT test. First up, I changed all the lighting to MOT friendly lighting (ie. front lhd angel lights changed to standard smoked vr6 ones, and the red rears changed to stock smoked items), then I set about fixing my wiper stalk, which stopped clicking into place, thus being a failure item too, so off to the local scrappy I went with a spring in my step and a glint in my eye. I managed to find a god awful mk3 in the yard (wish I took some pics) which had the entire engine bay painted by hand in silver paint, anyhow, the stalks seemed ok so I got the guys to take it off for me, in their own unique skilled way...yeah right. I then took my pants down and was bum raped by the owner for the stalk (£25...WTF?!). Off I went to my little personal garage, a back alley near my house, and plucked up the courage to disconnect the battery (always shit scared of zapping...

Although I spent all last week drawing, scanning and messing around with my new designs I've had a weekend of late nights. Yep, Call of Duty4 came out on the 360 and it is f'kin awesome!! Bit of team deathmatch is alway good for the soul, blasting fools from the comfort of your armchair, pausing for brews, love it. Highly recommended, it shits all over Halo3 if you ask me and there aint half as many cock heads playing it. You need it in your lives.

Get it!? Ok, proper shit link, but I liked it. My pal Jezza from the VUU Cult has got himself a nice little line in tapped dice valve caps. These babies look the shit when on, adding a bit of Vegas flair to your hooplas. I got some red ones for my bad boys, as show here: But he has these other new sick colours to hand: If you want some, they cost £5.00 a set picked up or £6.50 posted anywhere in the UK. Visit vuucult and pm Jezza (aka: hardwork) with your details. You need these in your lives, but so do your local pikey scumbag kids so don't leave them on overnight or you might see em on the kids' bikes.

Check me out, all blog update crazy at the minute. Ok, so the MOT is around the corner and having LHD angel eye headlamps means FAIL, so I planned on borrowing a standard set of lamps just for the test. But, and there's always a but, I'm kinda diggin smoked standard headlamps at the mo, so I bought a set of nice condition standards (with the built-in side lights) and decided I'd split and smoke em myself. Can't be that hard surely....ish. Here they are at the moment, all nice and clean ready for me to break. I'll take step by step pics and post em up when they're all sorted. I did take shots when i prepped and tinted my rear lights (all red) and intended to post those up, but my phone broke and I lost all the pics. Anyway, like I said, standard lamps, ready for action. They only cost £30, so if I get £80 for the angels I'll have some extra fuel money.

This went through nearly 2 weeks ago actually but seeing as the Oxford Edition show is looming I thought I'd just mention it. A nice guy called Kevin got in touch asking for a large batch of mixed badges to liven up his bag range for the dub shows, so of course I olbiged, 200 of the little round discs of awesomeness. No pics as yet of them in place but if you're at the Oxford Edition show then keep your eyes peeled, in fact, if any of you decent dudes or dudettes out there wanna take a snap of these bags and mail me (al@dubmissile.com) I'll whack em up and of course you're name will be put up in lights for your efforts. Actually, send me a pic and I'll send you a pack of badges for your efforts (chosen pis only). Cheers Kevin, good luck with the show. UPDATE!!!! Kevin at Europl8 bags (I think that's their name) has sent me a couple of pics of the bags. Gotta admit, pretty cool, so do everyone a favour and BUY ONE!! The reward still stands though, any pics of pee...

Cheers to everyone for giving the missile 1000+ hits. I must be doing something right so keep hitting and keep looking as there's a bunch of cool stuff in the pipeline. I'm thinking of putting up some work in progress for opinions too but not sure. Whaddya think guys? You wanna see purely finished stuff or the stuff that is being worked on? Much love x

Thanks to Mike from Subtile blog (see the new link in my buddy's list) I've managed to toggle it for everyone to add a comment without having to sign up to an email account. Ok, not huge news but come on, at least I'm bringning you the news as it happens. plus, it means I should get more feedback as time goes on.

Well I'm getting older. Not necessarily wiser, or richer, but older. Today my friends I am 32 years young, nearly 40 as my supportive fiancee keeps reminding me. Getting older kinda sucks, but it'll be reet. I got some cool presents though which is really what birthdays are all about and my mum is having a bit of a family get together this weekend for me which should be awesome. Few brews, some karaoke and one of mums sick curries. Thanks to everyone who wished me happy birthday, special thanks to everyone who got me stuff and extra special thanks to the future mrs Woods for the sweet gifts, especially the pin badge book (expect a new bunch of pin badges to come up soon and a clearer buying method) which is amazing. Until next year.

Well I kinda half hooked up with Fletch through work one day and we've become email buddies, modern day pen pals ever since. This guy flat out owns it!! UK hip hop can be pretty hit and miss at times and it aint often you get decent rhymes with solid backing tracks from the same artist and Fletch has his shit down. Full stop. I got my hands on a bunch more of his stuff today as an early birthday gift (thanks to the future mrs Woods for asking ever so nicely) so in return i'm gonna do some sweet graphics for him to use on tees, badges or whatever. Big up Fletch for being just plain awesome, check out his steez HERE and HERE , I'll keep y'all posted on the designs I do. Holla!

Ha haaaaa, now this was some funny shit. Basically, a few of us used to play pro paintball together for a while and started our own team, K2. We did pretty well considering we were built from a bunch of mates, we got a heap of sponsorship, kicked some ass, won the European Indoor Championships 2 years running, I designed some awesome jerseys over the few years and we looked and played some badass pro ball. Our good pal and old main sponsor, Ledz (see planet eclipse link in buddys) organised a trip out for a day of airsoft in Peterbrough. Airsoft is basically dudes running around pretending to be real soldiers with what look like real guns, but firing small bb pellets...full auto though so pretty hectic. We turned up and shit ourselves as there were guys fully kitted out, headsets, full camo, loads of guns, sidearms, grenades the lot, which was pretty intimidating if I'm honest, I mean we just rolled up with our paintball gear on looking like some extreme sports street tramp rejects...

Well it's been a sad few months. The car that gave me the vr6 bug has finally gone to the scrapyard in the sky. My boy Gilly's awesome vr vento was badass, it sounded like a beast and went like a train until the fateful day when it had a bit of a CQB with a mk3 20vt. Bang!! Front end destroyed. Game over. Go home. The end. But Gilly is a man of means, a horse of a man and he wouldn't be defeated. So, the chassis legs were straightened using only the finest ghetto engineering, a golf front end was sorted, new inpro angels and a carbon bonnet added to make her look like a car again. Then the interior was stripped out, amazing how much shit mk3s carry in weight, did you know they have small factory sandbags in places to weight em? Anyhow, the 'gento' was born, for a bit, until he nearly went deaf driving it (no sound deadening you see) so he got bored and the chop up began. Now not being a pikey or owt but i like a bargain, so I decided to have away with the tyres, fk ...

Sorry guys, been hella busy the past couple of weeks so not had chance to post any updates. Got a couple of vr updates to follow as I've done a few more bits to her (self tinted all red rears and a set or kamei fog ducts, painted by my own fair hands), plus the final days of my my boy Gilly's vr vento, now in the hands of mr. scrapman, sad days, although I managed to salvage bits for mine so she still lives on in spirit. Oh, we also went for a blast at airsoft last week which was some funny shit, more on that later. Stay tuned kids.

Well it was my first Edition38 event this year and all I can say is what an awesome weekend I had. Hangin' out with my mates, camping, loads of barbeque action, beers, laughs and insane cars. We camped with our manc:union bretheren as our first club get together away from our meets and it was great being around a good bunch of guys and gals who didn't seemed to mind our warped sense of humour too much. Big props to the union and here's to more of the same for next season. Those guys at E38 really know how to organise a great event. Here's a few pics i took of some sweet rides and a few of us being leathered walking around in the dark. 'pics' Here are some pics taken by my pal and fellow manc:union rep 'Walker' . Bit better than my camera phone efforts.

Before and after... Well it took some doing, in fact it took about 10 months, things take a bit longer when you're skint don't they. So the cack OZs have finally gone to the basement to be replaced by the 17" BBS Monzas (mk5 gti) and the worn koni suspension kit made way for some sweet FK Konigsport coilovers. Nice. We basically loaded my boot up with all the gear: shocks, adaptors (the BBS are 5x112 pcd as opposed to my 5x100 hubs), brakes and rims. As with anything to do with cars, nothing really went to plan. Removing shocks was surprisingly straightforward, but when we came to fit the brakes....it turned out the so-called 288mm discs I bought were actually 280mm, which aint any use really, so that had to be scrapped. Secondly, fitting adaptors was a cinch but when we came to fit the rims it turned out that the wheel bolts I'd been driving around on where wrong. The bolts were slightly too long and the seat was too deep. None of this mattered on the old rims as they...

It's been a hectic week at the missile base but I managed to get one of the many jobs on the list finished. After a slightly too dark and religious looking first attempt I managed to hit the nail on head with the second design. A bit more badass and hot-rod looking which is where these guys are coming from. Expect to see the Vuu Cult crew looking totally awesome real soon. Enjoy guys.

The next club targetted by the missile for a design project is the cool collective known as VUU Cult . These guys, based in the North (Leeds/Huddersfield way) are a great bunch with a certain outlook on the dub scene. Their club forum, vuucult run by Jez and Sarah is a dark but relaxed place to be with a lean towards the hot rod inspired way of dubbing. Pay em a visit, have a good time. Watch this space for updates of their new club graphics.

As a promo for the missile I handed out little cards with a free badge on at this years GTI International, which semed to go down a storm. I've now compiled all the badge designs to date and am selling these as 'pick your own' packs. Simply pick which 5 you like best then email me with how you wanna pay and where you want them posting to ( orders@dubmissile.com ) and I'll send you the pack (as pictured) for £3.00 (posted).If you want more than 5 then each additional badge will be an extra 50p. I accept paypal or can arrange to hook up with you at any of the big shows for a cash on delivery job. If you choose to pay by paypal then please add an extra 25p for charges. Enjoy.

Well she's been sitting high on her OZ Volcano stand-ins for a while now, just waiting for me to get enough cash to finish off the rim plans...and now, we're nearly there. 17" Monzas repainted in graphite, 20mm ProjektZwo 5x100-5x112 adaptors and a set of heavily treaded 205/40/17 Yoko rubber all waiting to be hooked up with a new set of VW valves this week (£11 a piece...ouch!!). Also got an almost new set of fully adjustable FK Konigsport coilovers wiating in the wings to complete the rims and stance, bit of nose down badass action. Should be the only mk3 on mk5 gti rims that I know of, all going well she should look sweet. Also gonna replace the front splitter (coz I kinda bust it up) and sill strips, all to be colour coded to match the rest of the trim. Aiming to be sweet by E38, watch this space.

Well, I was gonna wait until I had everything up but to be honest, people wanna see progression so I made the blog public knowledge today on manc:union.com and edition38.com. Hopefully it'll attract some visitors and I can provide what we've needed for a while, some decent clobber. Keep visiting.

Ok guys, the dubmissile web site is still in progress but should be sorted within a couple weeks, just got a few host and programming issues to iron out until the big launch. Once up, you'll be able to check out and buy all the fancy ass cool threads you could ever dream of to keep you looking uber fresh along side your water cooled ride. In the meantime, hold tight and I'll try and keep you entertained with this blog.

New Manchester dub crew, manc:union , sign up dubmissile to produce their club wear. Tired of the usual bland logo'd tees, the union wanted something with bit more punch so the missile stepped up and created a new logo tee and hoody with cooler garments. Check the manc:union forum and take a look for yourself in general chat or if you just wanna see what we're all about. Keep an eye out for manc:union this year at the dub shows (if they don't all get rained off), there should be a good turnout at the edition38 monster show 31/08/07 - 02/09/07.