When participating in shirt design competitions, there isn’t much time to think. There is only time to design. Shirt.Woot derby themes are announced at the end of the previous derby and artists are given 24 hours to design before the next derby starts. Since I am at the office during the day, and I spend the evenings with my family, I really only get to design late at night until I absolutely must sleep. But during my time away from the physical design process, my mind is racing to produce a piece that fits a theme and is within my artistic abilities to complete in a reasonable about of time. I know I am not alone in this scenario, but it really makes you appreciate a derby when your ink color options are limited to 1 and the shirt colors are limited to 3.

With that said, I spent a great deal of my day trying to come up with a design for Shirt.Woot Derby #49: Independence. When I think of the word and meaning of Independence, I think of freedom and liberation. The most memorable experience I have of freedom and liberation was the moment I became legally able to drive my own car, as I am sure other youths feel as well.

Receiving a drivers license is such a milestone experience in one’s lifetime that most people I know can tell me the exact day, time, car, teacher, clothes they were wearing when they could press their foot to the peddle and legally wield a motored vehicle. It is truly an epic lifetime experience, and I wanted to visually capture the way I felt February 11th, 1999 at 2:30PM in my 1987 Dodge Lancer. Oh, and I was wearing a maroon long sleeve t-shirt and jeans.

Back to the design… I looked for movie posters that caught my eye as being epic. Conan the Barbarian, Indiana Jones, Army of Darkness, and National Lampoon’s Vacation to name a few of the posters I drew inspiration from.

I positioned a young man clasping and point his car keys to the sky with his license in hand. His girlfriend at his side, mesmerized in his glorious moment of freedom. His banged up, hunk of roaring junk ramping in the background. It is the pinnacle of epic teenage independence.

Original Sketch

After the design was completed, I entered into the derby as EPIC Teenage Independence.

The design took off and was in the fog for the entire first day. After falling out of the fog, it remained in the top 10, but by the end of the week it finished in the 10th spot.

Honorable Mention

The design and epicness of it was enough to garner an honorable mention from the staff of Shirt.Woot. EPIC Teenage Independence made a second appearance in the second double-take derby, Shirt.Woot Derby #53: Double-Take Derby #2.

First Submission

Printed

The design hadn’t been seen for over a year, but amazingly someone remembered it. During my shirt design downtime I was contacted by a friend/curator of the online shirt store, RIPT Apparel. I was definitely caught off guard, especially since I hadn’t made a shirt design in nearly a year. Quickly, the excitement of seeing my design in print flooded me and at first chance I took a look at the year old design and made some improvements.

The design went on sale on Black Friday, November 27, 2009. It was a special honor to be printed on that day that I will never forget!

Available at RIPT Apparel

Worklog