Marc Sokpolie

My friend Subalpin, genius graphic designer, asked me to do a t-shirt design for his Rumble Speed shop, a vintage bike restomod and tuning shop that also sells apparel, clothing, all overseen by Subalpin’s sense of style. ‘So… what would you want on the shirt?’ I asked him. Well, obviously a bike. And seeing how I have been obsessed with sasquatches and yeti’s since childhood, a yeti or a bigfoot should be riding it. What bike? He wanted a Yamaha XT, the iconographic off-road bike from the ’80’s. Every guy that had seen Sylvester Stallone riding one in ‘First Blood’ wanted that bike.

So I did some research and too my time for the design. I decided that a yeti between 9 and 10 feet tall would dwarf the bike. Also, I wanted the Yeti’s weight to slam the bike’s suspension down to the ground. And that would a be a problem. because a Yamaha XT only looks right with the telescopic forks fully extended.

I told Subalpin I would have to draw another bike. I wanted to draw the bike I used to own in 1989, a Honda CB750Four (from 1976, the time it was so uncommon to have four inline cylinders on a motorbike, that you had to mention FOUR in the name) because that bike would look cool slammed down like that.

So this is what i made. Subalpin didn’t like the spikes on the wheels so I took em off.

And this is the design I sent. We decided the yeti should be snow white and changed the colors. Subalpin reworked the colors for the screenprint process, and it turned out really nice. Of course you want the shirt. Get it here