Well, here I am all suited up in purple with a million people to thank and owe so much to for now being a part of the shieldy people club.

I am well aware I'd only be a person with ideas spilling out of his ears and nowhere to store or complete them without all the endlessly talented and amazing artists whom have collaborated with me over the three years I've been here. It's the thing in this world that brings me the most creative joy and is most inspiring, as we work together from different angles to make a submission that becomes part of reality. That's the most important piece to me, the creative journey, and everything else after that is just double icing on an already yummy and satisfying quintuple-layered cake.

Enough tear-jerking, let's talk "Sees The Day"! This idea literally came to me on a dark and stormy night entering the hospital where i work. I was going by the reception desk when i saw an umbrella opened up to make it dry faster, but it was leaning against the wall in an upside-down position with specks of dirt and some watery footprints leading away from it. For some reason this sparked an image of a world that had been turned upside down to me, and as soon as I laid my bag down in the ER I drew this eyesore-ing representation of the concept, which I think you will all agree should have been subbed into Threadless as is and saved Buko a whole lot of time working on it:



As you can see, there is a reason why I stay 99.9infinity percent of the time in the background hammering out concept and details. I can't even make stick figures look presentable. But the concept was there, and from that I sent out this description of what I was calling "Up is the New Up" for over a year to several artists I thought would really bang the concept home:

Up is the New Up: At the bottom of the shirt would be three people (I’m not sure how we’d have them dressed up yet, but with flowing clothes), possibly photo-realistic holding umbrellas, but the umbrellas would not be made of material, but sticks with clouds on top of them! We would have a scenario where the sky would be the ground and vice versa. At the top of the shirt, there would be a forest of trees upside down conveying the sky in this scenario, with a bunch of the trees hanging by their roots so as to not coming tumbling down into the sky! Leaves, flowers, debris, and pieces of earth would be raining down on the three people below, but their cloud umbrellas would shield them from all the stuff flying down like rain from the ground but reversed!

I had a couple passing interests from some artists, and even had the idea reserved for another Alumni for almost half a year, even though we could never really get it off the ground.

Finally I randomly asked Buko if he would collab with me in the blogs. To my extreme eye-popping surprise, he was interested in hearing my brain thoughts even though Enkel is never one to lack the inspiration for making mind-shattering designs. He was instantly interested in "Up is the New Up", and within a couple days of reserving it, a first draft of what Buko thought the design should look like arrived in my email:



My first thought was "Oh." Followed by "My." And concluding with "God!" I couldn't believe how Enkel had tapped into the soul of the idea so quickly and with no guidance other than the original description! The realistic touches of dirt on the shirt raining down from above were fantastic, as was the blaring sun behind the piece giving it even more of an otherworldy nature and becoming the centerpiece that glued the concept together.

Enkel himself sums up his thoughts on the concept best:

"When I read Evan's original concept, right away it made me think of the African Sahara and the sun behind all of it, connecting everything together."

The animals in the main tree were also a Buko touch which we then adjusted a few times to get the feel of them right. When I looked at the Victorian gentlemen and how their luxurious coats and outerwear is so perfectly flowing in the breeze and gives a great contrast to the rest of the picture, I thought to myself "Wow, Buko got those Victorian figures so perfect from what I wrote." And then it hit me, I NEVER WROTE ANYTHING ABOUT VICTORIAN FIGURES FLOATING IN THE SKY! I had always the figures in those outfits, and somehow Enkel put them in there without me ever having to ask!

Two quick refinements followed with various experimentation on the second and third versions, with the second version being everything dialed up to see what worked, and the third version keeping what felt balanced and best visually as well as toning down or completely erasing the elements that crowded the piece or just didn't add anything but visual clutter.

Version 2:


The nearly-finished version:


For the presentation, I knew I wanted something that would be most eye-catching, and really wanted the image of the tree right-side-up to be shown first, then all the animals and characters appearing a couple moments later, with the whole image finally spinning around to really disorient and hopefully bedazzle voters of the design. I assumed he wouldn't have time because he gets eight thousand requests for help on submissions a week from us Threadfolk, but presentation mastah and mixed media extraordinaire Philip aka Pilihp made the presentation a reality and did it one hundred percent perfect in a very short turn-around time. Thanks so much man, the design wouldn't have been accepted nearly as well without your expert presentation input!

The final piece was re-naming the design, since most people in my life agreed that "Up is the New Up" didn't make much sense and could really be improved upon. I brainstormed for a day with variations and nothing quite perfect for the sense I wanted to give people of the feel of the piece, until right before laying in bed I thought about "Sees The Day", a cute little play off the old phrase "Seize the Day" but also referring to the day in a literal sense that you can see blazing in front of you in the submission's scorched sun motif.

So that's that! Thanks a million to the voters of this design for giving it so many wonderful comments, Threadless seeing fit to print this design, Buko for letting me submit this under my name in the slight chance it was printed, and of course the blogging community that keeps all of us going and filled with creative energy. You all helped my purple-mounted dream come true!