October 2012

This shirt began as a strange little bridge I couldn’t unsee: the way Van Gogh’s Starry Night and Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas echo each other, both thematically and visually. They share that same weather of emotion, beauty with teeth, wonder wrapped in unease. I wanted the design to feel like it was born in that overlap, not as a mashup, but as a quiet “of course” moment.

I started with hand-drawn concepts, exploring swirling night-sky rhythm, crooked storybook geometry, and a sense of motion that feels alive even when it’s printed flat. From there, I moved into the final piece using a digital tablet, painting the artwork with a focus on high-contrast readability and silk-screen friendly shapes, while keeping that haunted-lullaby energy intact.

Before it ever hit cotton, I made handmade silkscreen mockups to pressure-test the composition and ink behavior. That physical step mattered: it’s where the design stopped being “an illustration” and became “a shirt.”

Threadless’ Nightmare Before Christmas challenge selected a set of winning designs for print, and the collection was featured in press at the time. 

The tee was produced and sold on Threadless from 2012 to 2013 (production window per my own project records).

Press: Slashfilm, Miss Geeky