Marty McFly Safari Shirt - Back to the Future

[VilleLeskinen]

Lets get a count. Screen Used claims its real. Lets verify the lines

Well, unless the current owner of the shirt puts up more detailed shots, then I'm afraid that's as good as it gets. Can't make a small resolution image less fuzzy. I'm fine with the info derived from screencaps though seeing as the shirt is yet to be screenmatched. I'm sure someone out there has the time and energy for that kind of a job.

 

[TheNickFox]

Well, I had a few free minutes today, and grabbed a shirt I had with a similar-looking button and measured it to be 11.5mm. So using that scale, here is the size I worked up for the pattern printed on the shirt. Feel free to correct this if you can find a more accurate button or a better object to scale off of:




What do you guy's think?

-Nick

 

[Risu]

I agree with that scale and that's exactly how I scaled my print. At the time though I wasn't looking so closely that I counted the lines.

 

[TheNickFox]

Well, I had a few MORE free minutes and worked up a test pattern based on my scaling and a 16x16 repeat. There's definitely more of a "grey" look to the lines due to the increased whitespace. Take a look:



I could easily lighten it up. For instance, here it is lightened up as if it's already slightly worn and fuzzy, which looks damn close to my eyes:



I'm also still trying to work out exactly how each of the 16 hashes terminate on the shirt. (Due to the fuzziness, it's a bit hard to tell) But I think I'm close here. If anyone has any good shots that can confirm how the hashes terminate, whether they come to a centered point, an off-center point, or are rounded, let me know so I can put this to bed once and for all.

I DO think my intersection squares are too big, so I'm going to fix that first.

EDIT: I think I got the intersection squares dialed in. Now to redraw the hashes so they intersect properly:



I should have this done by tonight.

-Nick

 

[TheNickFox]

Okay, I think I've just about got this thing nailed. I had to make it at a ridiculous 2400 ppi because of the extremely precise tolerances required to make this work. (And those tolerances actually strongly indicate how the hashes terminate...otherwise they don't line up correctly.

Anyhoo! Here's my new and improved pattern:



And here it is overlaid and warped to closely match the angle of the shirt in this shot:



I'm going to just darken the intersections squares a bit, but aside from that I think this thing is DONE unless we end up getting some better reference images.

Thoughts?

-Nick

 

[Risu]

You just did pretty much exactly what I was going to do to mine this weekend, haha.

 

[ruscoe]

I would be happy to.

View attachment 441615 View attachment 441616

For comparison, here’s a photo of the shirt I bought from outatime.net in 2012, which was supposedly left over from the 2010 run and is definitely different (direction and number of stripes):

 

[MitasTouch]

Would it be possible to get an accurate pattern from the 2010 shirt? Say you took it to a tailor. Would they be able to give you a pattern from it? It would probably have to be taken apart, but it may be able to get done.

 

[TheNickFox]

Just ordered a swatch of fabric with my pattern on it.



As I know from working on Spider-Man prints, every printer is calibrated differently, so I may have to change how saturated the colors are to accurately match what's on screen. So hopefully getting this swatch will be a step in the right direction towards doing that. I'll post pictures when it comes in.

-Nick

 

[BTTF Forum]

I had a long discussion with Joe Butch today. I had some questions about what actually went on for the reproduction that Shah did in 2010.

I will share them here for the purpose of getting the truth out and clearing up "I got a friend who said" stories.

Joe Butch and a financial partner we will call CB here asked Shah Safari to do a reproduction run of the McFly in 2010. Joe Butch was the sole person that interacted with Shah to get this done. At NO time did he submit a design nor did anyone submit a shirt to Shah. According to Joe they sent him a picture from their archives, made a modern design and Joe approved it. The shirt went in to a limited production run of 300 to which he owned half. Joe was not aware that the design they gave to him to approve was a different line count than the original shirt he was shown as he didn't pay attention to that. Joe stated that he actually lost money on the project because he charged way to low for the shirts.

 

[ruscoe]

So did anyone else request or fund the post-2010 run of shirts which you’re now selling? Or did Shah Safari just figure that more BTTF fans would want more shirts? (Didn’t those shirts still include the tag with the bttfblog.com domain on it?)
I wonder how many of each type of shirt was made in total.

 

[BTTF Forum]

So did anyone else request or fund the post-2010 run of shirts which you’re now selling? Or did Shah Safari just figure that more BTTF fans would want more shirts? (Didn’t those shirts still include the tag with the bttfblog.com domain on it?)
I wonder how many of each type of shirt was made in total.

Good question. I did not fund a post 2010 run. So I am going to assume that Shah decided to do this on their own. The first two shirts I had in the box had the old blog label on them. The rest do not. I think this had become a pain to them. They are not a retailer and don't have the set up for retail, and the sales were very slow due to no advertisement. I offered to solve this problem when I approached them to make a batch. Part of my deal with them ties into a deal with MJF Foundation that a cut from each shirt sale goes to the Foundation. When I sell out this will produce 1,000's of dollars to MJF. This all really happended bacause the deal to purchase Class-5 fell through. If that deal had worked I would have been making vests, which I think would have been in much higher demand.

 

[TheNickFox]

Well, thanks to the weather, this took a day longer than it should have to be delivered, but here is my first swatch of my reproduction of the fabric used on Marty's shirt. There's not much more to say, other than: ignore the fact that I rotated the fabric, so the hashes are going the wrong way, but I was just in such a rush to post this, I didn't notice until right now.

Let me know what you guys think. (I threw some spare buttons on it for a sense of scale)



-Nick

EDIT: the pattern looks lighter in person than in these pictures, but I'm thinking I should lighten it even more to better match the "worn look" of the screen used one. Thoughts, opinions?

 

[MitasTouch]

Well, thanks to the weather, this took a day longer than it should have to be delivered, but here is my first swatch of my reproduction of the fabric used on Marty's shirt. There's not much more to say, other than: ignore the fact that I rotated the fabric, so the hashes are going the wrong way, but I was just in such a rush to post this, I didn't notice until right now.

Let me know what you guys think. (I threw some spare buttons on it for a sense of scale)

View attachment 446942View attachment 446941View attachment 446943

-Nick

EDIT: the pattern looks lighter in person than in these pictures, but I'm thinking I should lighten it even more to better match the "worn look" of the screen used one. Thoughts, opinions?

Great work here. Are you looking for a shirt pattern as well? I feel like we're really getting somewhere here.

 

[TheNickFox]

Great work here. Are you looking for a shirt pattern as well? I feel like we're really getting somewhere here.

Thanks. It nice just to sit here with the fabric in front of me and ogle it. Haha

And due to the weirdness of the shirt with the additional seams on either side of the placket, I'm definitely looking for a pattern. If you or anyone else has any good resources that might help me out pattern-wise, by all means, get in touch. I'd love to be able to get an accurate shirt out there. (I even have a seamstress I'm considering for this, but it depends on her schedule and last I heard she was very busy)

-Nick

 

[MitasTouch]

Thanks. It nice just to sit here with the fabric in front of me and ogle it. Haha

And due to the weirdness of the shirt with the additional seams on either side of the placket, I'm definitely looking for a pattern. If you or anyone else has any good resources that might help me out pattern-wise, by all means, get in touch. I'd love to be able to get an accurate shirt out there. (I even have a seamstress I'm considering for this, but it depends on her schedule and last I heard she was very busy)

-Nick

If you want to take a small business risk and buy one of the shirts from ebay and reverse engineer it to get a pattern you could do that.

 

[TheNickFox]

If you want to take a small business risk and buy one of the shirts from ebay and reverse engineer it to get a pattern you could do that.

I've considered it, but I also question the accuracy of the pattern, if they didn't get the print right. Maybe I'll grab a bunch of reference images and see if I can compare the released shirt with the film shirt and see how close or far it is.

-Nick

PS: I think I've nailed down identical buttons for this shirt. So at least that's one more thing checked off the list.

 

[Jedifyfe]

Be careful Nick...Shah Safari will come after you...:lol Sorry, I can't say that with a straight face...

 

[TheNickFox]

Be careful Nick...Shah Safari will come after you...:lol Sorry, I can't say that with a straight face...

Just one more reason to make my own pattern: so they don't strike down upon me with great vengeance and furious anger.

In shirt-related news, I've now got a swatch of my lightened pattern on order. I'm getting it printed on a slightly more appropriate fabric too, since the stuff I got the first time was a little too translucent.

I also have what appear to be the proper buttons coming to me. The bad thing about buttons...the shipping ended up costing more than the buttons. So hopefully after I get through my busy work week next week, I'll have some fun things coming in the mail to look at and can start working towards a prototype soonish.

I'm also working on a paisley print, but that's a topic for my other thread.

-Nick

 

[TheNickFox]

Small update:

My new sample came in, and I'm out of town on business, so I got someone to take pictures of it for me...since I'm impatient like that.



I don't know about you, but I'd say that coloration looks pretty spot on!

I'm not sold on this material either just by how thin it looks in the pictures, but I'll wait until I hold it in my hands to pass judgment.

-Nick