Gimme The Loot Release

Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays. Growing up, I never got to truly experience Halloween as a kid. I mean, I did vicariously through my friends (mainly due to family beliefs growing up) so all of my memories of those days were watching everyone else dress up and talk about going door to door with pillow cases full of candy. As I grew up, the whole vibe and aura of Halloween connected with me. The warm dim lights of street lamps, the fall leaves on the ground, the extended dark evenings and even my Middle School and High School colors were orange and black.

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Hell, the town has connections to some of the most famous horror films of all time. John Carpenter's Halloween.

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That's right! The house is right on Meridian Ave.

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Discussing movie locations or even just film as a whole is one of my favorite things to do but besides that I wanted to create something unique for a Halloween release. As you can probably tell one of my favorite colors to work with is black. Everything jumps off a black background much more and seems to grab you. So with that decided, it was fairly easy to get started. The spirit of Halloween also allows me to experiment with different treatments that might not work for other holiday releases like Christmas (putting out a glow in the dark hoodie for Christmas doesn't have the same feel as it would with walking the streets during Halloween).

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"Everything jumps off a black background much more and seems to grab you."

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Creating the Garments

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I wanted a few items to help make this special. First and foremost, a t-shirt. Not just any t-shirt, but I wanted a premium heavyweight garment that really makes you feel the work that's been put into this release. I try and do this with all my products and even try and live by the phrase "less is more". Less quantity, more quality. I wanted the shirt a deep black and although the photos above seem to have some of the light bounce off the shirt, the shirt itself is absolute black in person.

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Next I wanted the garment to be a boxed tee. The current style and market says box shirts are back and I've always had a love for oversized box t-shirts. Lots of people tend to love these too since you can use them as fashion forward or even because of their oversized style they're great for lounging around in at home. I had decided from the get-go that I wanted one big large version of the artwork somewhere and most would suggest the front, but as I've gotten a bit older I've started swaying away from having huge large graphics on the front of shirts. Something felt right about having a little monogram on the corner chest area and then allowing the whole back of the shirt to really display the full graphic.

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I had an idea of releasing a glow in the dark shirt, at the same time, glow in the dark garments only work for a short time when outside, once the glow is gone, it doesn't help to explain that it "glows in the dark" when it's dark and not glowing. So that was out of the plan. Instead, why not just make my enamel pin glow in the dark?

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That's right, the pins are glow in the dark! I had always wanted to make a special enamel pin that wasn't just great looking but had a unique feature to it. I think going forward, even incorporating them on chains or bracelets would also be a fun idea but I'm just happy that these pins glow in the dark. It'll also make it extra fun for the kids when they receive their pins.

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Promotional Materials

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With the products squared away and in production, it was time to switch over to promotional materials which is always fun. I knew exactly what I wanted. Movie posters! Coming from South Pasadena, what better way to tie it all together with a slasher film vibe and there's none better than John Carpenter's Halloween. I mean, it's literally in the title. "Halloween". Even the line "Gimme The Loot" fits as some call to action for the poster "Give Him Your Loot" and using an old paper bag, it just seemed obvious to work this into repurposing one of the classic film posters.

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Promotional Materials

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I wanted to create some sort of package. Pairing a T-Shirt design and a enamel pin would be a solid start in my opinion. After I had created the initial design, it was time to figure out a plan for the pin. I wanted the same design, but what should i do to differentiate it from the clothing? Ehhh, make it glow in the dark! Obviously... This also gave another idea to me. Promotion! How am I going to promote this stuff?

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What seemed to fit the best was creating an animation that took into account of using the glow in the dark as the main point for the enamel pin. How do I show that? How do i make it simple? I love simple and straight to the point. My first initial thought was to think about how I'd make it in After Effects but I also realized I could just as easily make the animation in Keynote and export as a movie that I could then sit down and edit in Premiere. So, here we go!

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I thought the animation turned out just fine. Added a light click in there for the on/off for the lights and then a nice slow fade for the title text and glow. Simple, yet makes it known that it's a release. I don't do this much for a lot of my releases. Usually it's just word of mouth and before I know it, I don't have anymore and it's back to the drawing board for the next product.

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