First off I'll be the first to admit I'm a relapsed pro wrestling fan. I watched it on TV as a kid when Dick the Bruiser and BoBo Brazil were big attractions. As I got older I stopped watching, but got back into it decades later at the dawn of Hulkamania when I accompanied my wife to be, Jean, to a closed circuit broadcast of Wrestlemania 2. After that I began watching the weekly WWF programming as well as the other wrestling organizations (AWA. NWA, and several others). I was hooked again by this "only in America" created spectacle.
Elbow Drop! was one of the first designs I ever posted for sale. The image of a pro wrestler about to deliver his blow to his downed opponent was originally done as a storyboard frame sample. The art was created from some photo reference I found in a pro wrestling fan magazine. I'm not certain who the person delivering the impact was , but I do remember the guy laying on the ground was Jerry The King Lawler-probably from his Memphis wrestling days. Of course I changed the wrestling opponents to my own characters. I drew the art in pencil, made a copy of that and colored it with markers.
I scanned the art years later into Photoshop, added the text, "Elbow Drop!" and posted it as a t-shirt design on my newly made CafePress store, Saytoons, in late October of 2006.
Much to my surprise with little or no promotion the shirt began to sell. Probably sold five or six before Christmas of that year. Eventually when I opened my Saytoons store on Zazzle, Elbow Drop was the first design posted on there.
I have done a few other wrestling shirt designs since then and plan to make this a series that will feature the best known finishing moves that wrestlers use.
I have been drawing and creating art for most of my life. My career is in the field of commercial illustration-art for advertising and publishing which has been wonderful, rewarding, and of course lucrative. A few years ago I discovered Zazzle and I found a whole new outlet for my creative expression. I was already familiar with the Print On Demand model that CafePress pioneered and in fact I had established an online store with them several years earlier. That was the original Saytoons store where I posted my first t-shirt designs. However what attracted me to Zazzle was the customized Keds sneakers. What a cool original idea! I also liked the feedback you got from other store owners and the TBA's-Today's Best Awards that gives your work wider exposure. I won a few which encouraged me to try to keep developing great designs. Now most of my efforts go into my Saytoons store on Zazzle .
Saytoons the blog will give you insights into how I develop my ideas, feature sketches, old and new product designs and occasionally the work of other Zazzle store owners whose work I admire.
As I say on my store home page, "Welcome to the Saytooniverse!"
