Ok ladies and men-folk, I, like many of you who are "in the know", am a big fan of Don Hertzfeldt’s little insane animated gems such as Rejected! and Billy’s Balloon. I also like to wear t-shirts with things that strike me as amusing emblazoned upon them. Don has a line of t-shirts for sale on his site with art from the cartoons. The problem is this – Don is a decent animator and a funny guy, but can’t design a t-shirt for shit. His cartoons are simple and clean, but his t-shirts are either poorly laid-out, too cluttered or everything in-between. Trust me, I’ve done this for a living.
Here is my proposal. I am going to design a bootleg Rejected t-shirt (just one to start) for my friends, family and myself. I’ll design and execute all the artwork, printing arrangements and other fine details… all you guys have to do is give me money for them. I am not going to be making any profit off these, I’m just interested in getting a few cool shirts for my wardrobe without having to pay a fortune for them. The more I order, the better the individual price will be.
DISCLAIMER: I am not trying to take money away from Don, I just refuse to buy a product that isn’t what I want. I love his cartoons and fully intend on buying his DVD that’s coming out soon with all the cartoons collected on it. I am also not starting a wholesale Don Hertzfeldt bootleg t-shirt product line. I’m only ordering as many as I have orders for, only select people will be able to get these and no profit is generated… I’m only recouping what I’m spending on them.
Ok, now that that’s out of the way, I want to point out that this is still a hypothetical scenario. I want to gauge how many people are interested in this to see if it’s worth my time (which is at a premium these days). Also, if enough people are interested, all orders will be pre-paid – let me repeat that so I’m being very clear – all orders will be pre-paid, for a few reasons. The first reason is so I don’t get stuck paying for a handful of shirts some joker said he wanted and decided later he didn’t reeeally want. Secondly, I don’t want to have to chase anyone down and collect money from them. The third reason being that I’m not a rich man and can’t afford to bankroll this project. All in all this will prevent any hard feelings and make my life a hell of a lot simpler.
The proposed design is this:
Shirt Style: Single color print, front and back design. Black shirts with white ink and/or ash/heather shirts with black ink (with a possibility of off-color sleeves). All shirts will be 100% cotton heavyweight – I want these to last.
Shirt Front: The spoon man, all by his lonesome with only his bowl – no banana. It’ll be printed as big as I can get it -likely around 15" or so tall.
Shirt Back: The phrase "MAH SPOON IS TOO BIG!" nice and big – again, up to about 15" – in a very rough hand-written type of font, maybe tilted a bit to add to the effect.
I’m not going to pester my printer for a price until I’m sure this is a go. More than likely it’ll be comparable to a concert t-shirt price. Also, I have a few follow-up designs in mind for a future time – a banana shirt and a "I’m the Queen of France!" shirt, both in a similar style as this.
If you are interested in ordering one or several of the "Spoon Man" shirts, and have any suggestions for minor improvements you can email me here. Be sure to let me know how many you’d like so I can get a feel for what the first order will be like. Also, be sure to specify who the hell you are in your email so I won’t instantly delete it assuming you’re some random loser from the internet who I don’t know – nicknames are acceptable, considering a lot of people only know me as Stuff or DmentD. Friends and family only to make orders for these, folks.
If the response is good, I’ll move to the next stage and put together some artwork for everyone to see.