Sun City Girls for Graphics Geeks

When I had the idea to approach the Sun City Girls about making their official t-shirts, no prior thought went into how I was going to make the graphics. Bottom line was I, as a fan of SCG for decades just wanted to wear a cool t-shirt of one of my favorite bands. The band themselves don’t sell clothing merch on their official site, searching the web brought me to bootleg t-shirt websites who were profiting off the hard work of musicians and not sharing the wealth.
Once the concept was agreed to, Alan and Rich pretty much said I am on my own from this point. I would dream up t-shirt designs, they would approve them and pre-sales would determine the quantities and sizes. I was not surprised to find out that neither of them could provide me with any sort of master artwork, computer files or at least a sketch of some of SCG’s album artwork, which to me is the undeniable identity of the band.
For most bands, entire discography album art including inserts and labels is usually readily available somewhere on the net in high resolution which us graphic hacks love. Of course in SCG’s case, their records are so rare, hardly any usable images exist in Googleland in order for me to re-create art at the standard the Bishops expect. The scarcity of their material created another challenge since I couldn’t just buy their massive back catalog with some gems going on eBay for $150+ PER RECORD! To save the day, in steps Mr. Michael Pistrui – fellow band member in my imaginary band with Al Bishop called Free Candy, front man of local musical workhorse Fat Gray Cat and architect of the groundbreaking Beats The Hell Out Of Me. Mike is a total skate nerd and even better this fukker has THE ULTIMATE record collection of Arizona music. Pistrui was kind enough to bring a stack of super rare, original Sun City Girls vinyl for me to scan in high resolution.
Scanning the album art in high-res was just the beginning of the process. Prepping art for print is not just a few clicks of the mouse and done. These designs cross three software platforms before physical screen print films are produced. I have poured many hours into these designs to ensure they screen print exactly how I want them to and not to disparage the original art. Each design is a challenge in it’s own right but I gotta say I am very happy with the results (I am my own worst critic so they must be good). Working with Alan and Richard has been awesome and their input has been invaluable to the project which I am proud to say they are as stoked as I am to make this happen. In the 1980’s going to SCG shows I never imagined I would have the opportunity to produce official endorsed products of an Arizona musical legacy.

Below are some detailed images of the finished product. Of course I am an idiot and didn’t bother to snap pics of the finished Self-Titled tees.

LIMITED SUN CITY GIRLS SHIRTS FOR SALE