ALL KYLE CRAWFORD DOES…
Let’s tackle this whole. Kyle Crawford only takes movie posters and slaps it on a shirt and calls it a day. COMPLETE UTTER BULLSHIT.
My whole career is based on just SLAPPING movie posters and putting them on a shirt. Want to see about 90% of my career, check this site out….
www.theelectriczombie.com/index2.htm
you can see practically every shirt I have ever done in the band industry. You can check out the rest of the stuff here….
www.kyleisez.com
Ever since the whole Red Dead Redemption thing, I haven’t been really doing any spoof shirts whatsoever. Unless they are bands I am friends with. Recently I did a Fright Night shirt for The Color Morale, and I did a shirt with Kuato from Total Recall, and I think that’s it. I’ve had band’s in the last 2 weeks ask me for 300 spoofs, and a Night of the Living Dead Spoof, and I’ve said no. What I do to get approvals is my business. Band’s are so damn lazy and/or don’t give a shit anymore that some times they just don’t have any ideas. Actually 98% of the time they have ZERO ideas. They say, “Do your thing” or “Your shit sells, make whatever”, I’m so sick of doing the same crap over and over again, that it drives me INSANE, really it does. To be honest, I hate my job most of the time. All I do is think, I go to work, no direction and become a think machine, go home and sit down to do freelance, guess what I have to think, Electric Zombie stuff, have to think. By the time it comes time to do Electric Zombie, I’m practically like, fuck designing, fuck this I’m over it. I’m sick of being a mind reader. I’m sick of being the marketing team for bands, I don’t get paid enough. It’s not my job. A hired artist is someone who can take one someones idea and bring it to life. But in band merch you’re a marketing team, creative team and babysitting service all in 1. You have to brand and label these bands and then you have to make the art, and then you send the art and wait what seems forever to get an answer from anyone. 3 weeks later, getting an email back scrambling for artwork files, THESE WERE APPROVED WE NEED THEM LIKE YESTERDAY! or they try and sneak in revisions, it’s just ridiculous.
So if a band comes to me and says, WE HAVE THIS IDEA…
I could give 2 shits what the idea is, I’m going to fucking do it. I’ve done some of the dumbest shit in the world for bands, and guess what if it makes them happy and they’re stoked. Fuck, taking that 1 tiny little brick off of a skyscraper to the fucking ozone is a little weight I can part with.
But let’s talk about just THROWING the red dead cover on a shirt. Let’s open that file and take a look at the layers. Here is the original file…
http://grab.by/8Rfd
now here’s if we took out every single layer except just the cover
http://grab.by/8Rfg
that’s what the shirt WOULD have looked like. I could have easily just put it on a black shirt, and put SILVERSTEIN on the bottom. But no, I did what I could to kind of put my own artistic flare on it, but apparently all I did was use a bullet brush and slap it on a tee. Give me a break, I haven’t used a brush since ANGRY BLUE put out that set in 2000 whatever, that Godmachine still uses. Brushes? yea ok…
I am so sick of you jealous little fucks, reaming me for this. I mean it HAS to be jealousy, because, to ACTUALLY be cocky for a minute. I am one of the MOST diverse designers out there. I can do it all, I’ve done it all, I have etched my name into the music industry as one of the best of my generation. Even if my art isn’t good, or great or whatever. It’s fact. Bright designs started to take off after the chiodos HOLLYWOOD shirt for hot topic,
http://grab.by/8RgH
suddenly, all hot topic wanted was bright designs on TEAL, look it up, it’s FACT. Lyric shirts. Misery Signals, IT’S NOT GOING TO STOP, BURN IT TO THE FUCKING GROUND. first lyric shirt of this scene that really etched it’s place in this new round and era of “lyric” shirts. That and the We Came As Romans “brotherhood” design. again, it’s fact. While hardcore bands like hatebreed and the million others out there have been doing it for years with a picture of them performing live on the back, when you look at the “scene” scene, it’s me. END OF STORY.
But to the point at hand. I have done and can do practically any style. Again, go to www.kyleisez.com and you can skim through at least 6-7 different styles. Me slapping “movie posters” or “video game” posters on a shirt isn’t what made me successful. It’s my fucking hustle and my diversity, the ability to understand a band and smash what the band is going for. Anyone with photoshop can be a designer, but to do a good job and crank out numerous styles that actually “sells”. That, is what makes me successful.
I am so sick of all these people saying, you take from this and you take from that, KYLE CRAWFORD STEALSSSSS. This is coming from the same group of people who are sitting at their computer screens, downloading music ILLEGALLY, and working on designs on ILLEGALLY PIRATED copies of adobe product, or painter or whatever fucking program it is that you use to make your “completely original” artwork on. It’s the most contradicting bullshit I have ever heard.
The same group of people who are google image searching, and tracing them, sorry “referencing” them, or the cut and paste designers who do the same thing but the second I use something “known”, I’m the bad guy. Give me a fucking break.
Unless you’re out there, with a camera, taking every picture, you’re on your computer, making every font, every texture, regardless if it’s free, stock, or royalty free, or not, you’re using someone else’s artwork, to make your artwork. PERIOD.
But by me saying that I am the most diverse, that makes me cocky, it’s so hypocritical it’s disgusting. Your holy than thou, I’m an illustrator so I’m the best nose in the air, my shit don’t stink mentality. EAT SHIT.
As far as what Electric Zombie does. It’s my company, my brand, my business. If I want to put a picture of your mom on a shirt, you can bet your ass I will do it. I have said from the start. I don’t just capitalize on taking a movie and making easy sales off of it. My entire life and career, style and aesthetic is put into my brand, what inspires me to be who I am. I make shirts I wished existed. If there was a nekromantix shirt, or a THEY LIVE shirt, I would buy that shit in a heartbeat, show me a studio based, 100% legal shirt of those covers and I will buy it, my shirts wouldn’t have and won’t exist. I make what I wish I had, what other’s were making, what other’s who enjoy like myself would like. That’s what makes me successful. Because I keep doing me, what I enjoy, what inspires me.
So if me taking some pictures off google, a poster website, scanning magazine covers and books and adding my own thing to them, makes me a bad guy. For me not making fake accounts over numerous websites, speaking my mind, and my opinion and most of the time the TRUTH, makes me a piece of shit. If me designing, 6 sometimes 7 days a week, all day every day. Running a brand by myself, doing everything but shipping. I hang tag, go to bamboozle, make goodie bags, and numerous other jobs I do 90% of the time ALONE, makes me and my company, TERRIBLE. Then you need to re-access, what makes a person those things. All I am is a hard working dude, with a passion for this and this business, just trying to be the best I can. If you want to hate me for using movie posters, fine. But keep your fucking jealousy out of my face, and have a valid argument. Take that energy and make yourself a better artist and get your name out there and stop worrying about what KYLE CRAWFORD is doing and how he’s a fuck face, and focus on YOU and maybe, you can have a little taste of that success.
