Interview With T-Shirt Artist Andy Hunt

A favorite artist here at TeeCraze is Andy Hunt. If you’ve visited here more than once than you have seen his pop culture inspired designs featured which have been regularly printed by every daily shirt site out there. TeeCraze had the recent pleasure to ask Andy some questions about himself and his art.

Please give us a brief bio, When did you first discover your creative talents and realize you wanted to become an artist?

I’m a North Carolina native, but I like to get out of the state whenever I have the time. I’ve been interested in creating art on some level ever since I was old enough to hold a crayon, and was lucky enough to have parents who encouraged me to create. Before I could read or write I was drawing comic strips about Superman fighting Jason Voorhees and the Frankenstein Monster. I’d write random letters in the dialog bubbles, and hope that I was lucky enough to make an actual word. Every once in a while I struck gold and wrote a “Go” or an “And”.

I took so many art and photo classes in high school that my amazing art teacher actually made up a couple of new classes during her lunch period so that my friends and I could continue advancing even though we had taken all the art classes they had to offer. I then got a BFA in Graphic Design from a fairly small university in the NC mountains called Appalachian State. A lot of people say college is worthless, but I couldn’t disagree more for art students. Getting to use someone else’s facilities to focus on learning and honing new techniques is truly invaluable.  Not to mention you get to hang out every day in a building full of creative people. That alone is worth your parents’ money.

Where have we seen your designs?

You may have seen some of my designs available at Threadless Why So Curious?, TeeFury, The Yetee, Tilteed and Shirt Punch. You also may have seen some of my stuff posted on Shirtoid.com, or on G4 tv (Chris Hardwick wearing Miskatonic Uni), NerdLocker.com (Jazmin Gardner wearing Lo Pan’s High Cuisine), or Revision3′s Totally Rad Show (a href=”http://revision3.com/trs/20110725_vs” target=”_blank”>Dan Trachtenberg wearing Lo Pan’s High Cuisine).

Is there anything that regularly inspires you and are there websites you
regularly visit for design inspiration?

I spend a lot of time browsing micro-blogging and image sharing sites like FFFFound.com, Tumblr, and Pinterest to see what other people are posting. I also spend time on the usual design sites like Behance, foalio), Mintees, etc. Outside of the internet, I like to go to a local bookstore, buy a huge cup of strong coffee, and browse all of the art, design, and pop culture magazines at the news stand. One of my absolute favorite places to look for illustration inspiration is the Spectrum fantasy art annual that’s published every fall by Underwood Books. It never ceases to make me feel like I have a looooot more to learn.

Describe the general process you go through to design and realize a
piece of work?

I keep several notebooks, sketchbooks and Evernote files full of the random bad ideas that flicker through my mind throughout the day. I ALWAYS have either something to write on or my iPhone (Evernote is the greatest app) within reach. I periodically go through the lists to see if anything might be worth digging deeper into, or if it’s all garbage. My most popular tee designs have all stemmed from finding a reference to a somewhat popular entertainment property with a strong cult following that hasn’t been totally done to death (at least not recently), and try to think of an original angle on the subject.  That’s the hardest part: trying to figure out what hasn’t already been done.

If you were to pick a favorite design you have created, which one would
it be and why?

That’s tough. I’ve seen them all so many times that it’s hard to be subjective about them.  I think it would have to be “Schrödinger – DEAD/ALIVE World Tour”, which I love because it isn’t a reference to any movie or book, it’s just a damn nerdy joke, but people still get it. I really didn’t think anyone would would ever want to wear it, but thankfully they do.

Any tips or advice for aspiring designers?

Spend ALL of your free time practicing drawing fundamentals, learning how to use Photoshop and Illustrator, and looking at other artists that you like and figuring out what it is about them that you like so much. If you already think you’ve mastered all that, then you’re full of yourself. You can never stop learning.

Any current projects you want to plug?

I’ve got a few designs in the works and a couple prints in the near future at both TheYetee and TeeFury, but no hard dates on any of that yet. Follow me on Twitter.com/andyhunt and Facebook.com/andy.hunt.art to get that info as soon as I have it. Other than that, I post most of my t-shirts on AHHHdesigns.com, so keep an eye there for new stuff.

What other interests and hobbies do you have when you’re not
designing?

Well, when I’m not designing shirts and prints, I work full-time as a web designer www.andyhuntdesigns.com. I pretty much stay busy with design of some sort. If I actually do have a little free time, I’m into loud music, dark movies, and video games. I read comics, but I’m not that into the traditional hero comics aside from an undying love for Batman. I love the old Conan comics, weird/funny stuff like The Goon and Hellboy, or outright batshit craziness like The Marquis or The Metabarons.

What can we expect to see from you in the future? Where do you see your
career going in the next few years?

Well, I’m relatively new to the whole t-shirt scene compared to most of my peers, so I don’t completely have an answer to that. Thus far I’ve been relying heavily on Direct-To-Garment (like RedBubble) and Design-Of-The-Day sites for my shirts, but I think in the nearish future I’d like to start getting some of my designs screen-printed myself and bring all angles of the business in-house on a smaller scale, so I can bring down some of my prices and maybe do some more interesting limited edition stuff. Time will tell, and I have absolutely no plans to stop working with all of the fantastic Design-of-the-Day sites that have been so great to me as an artist.

Short answer: More Cool Shirts!