The Surly Process

Just two dope boys in a Cadillac!!  One of my very first shirts.   When I first started I had a lot of requests from people asking me to do something that represented their city.  I had previously done one for the Chi with Yeezy which the people got behind so other cities wanted their turn.  But whatever I'm from the Chi and I was really only focused on shirts I wanted to create.  However after much encouragement from the homies from the A (O, Moham, Jamario ) I decided to try to come up with something for ATL.

This one is pretty straight forward.  I arrived in ATL in 1996 to attend the greatest school on the planet, Morehouse College, right about that time Outkast was blowing up with Elevators.  So began the introduction to music in the South.  This was a year after Outkast won best new rap group and let the world know the music scene would be changing.  So aliens in a space ship leaving the planet Georgia was a no brainer.  I think anyone who takes a look at the design knows exactly what it means.

The design was actually pretty easy on this one.  Drew the faces first as I believe in get the hard stuff out the way and go back and do the rest.  Big Boi's glasses, so I want the mirrored look but didn't know how to achieve that look.  Somehow I stumbled on to the some of the effects buttons and I found one that worked.  I was early on in the printing game and I just found out that each different color cost money so this mirrored look wasn't going to work for print.  (more on that later)  The next thing I worked on was the ship.  The hardest part was the Caddy symbol, each piece by hand.  I had not yet learned how to use the image trace function so I did the whole thing by hand.  GA was just a tracing of the state but the ring around it was my new favorite toy , effects, this was a distortion effect which made a solid line blurred.  The biggest challenge, outside the symbol,  was the reflection on the ship, more tools I had no clue how to work but figured out thanks to YouTube.  Overall the design came together the way I wanted it to look.

I learned that printing is different from creating.  I can create whatever I want but when I go to print there are limits.  Colors cost money when silk screening.  So I had to strip this one of colors in order to get it printed. The mirrored glasses had to go and become one color.  I think in the end I did 4 colors using the shirt as black.  Green, Dark Green Grey, White.  This was still an expensive shirt to make compared to the others I made to start.  BUT its by far the dopest.

I also learned to listen to the homies.  I am not a super music fan so I don't know that this shirt ever gets made without folks pushing to me to make a shirt for ATL. 

So how did it do?? It's one of my best sellers.  I bought a box of like 36 initially and sold all but 1.  That's right there is small on the sale tab that is from the original batch.  After that first box I linked with my new printer and he does direct to garment printing and I was able to add the colors back.  This one still moves units.