Super Featherweight Champion by Zerobriant looks ready to stride off the canvas of its cream colored shirt. The textured fur seems to rise as you get near it, the dark tones enriched by the contrast with the light shirt, the colors natural enough that you expect the cat to wink at you. The shirt has a spare clean look amazing for the level of detail packed into it.
I love the way Zerobriant does motion. He has a design in his Freedom Fighters series (which Super Featherweight is also part of) called “Be Formless, Shapeless.” A beautiful tribute to Bruce Lee, it shows a martial artist kicking through gold paint. Poetry and motion both, the ability to capture these in a moment is one of Zerobriant’s strengths as an artist.
Super Featherweight Champion is the still moment after the victory, with its satisfied air and floating feathers. But there is motion and poetry there, compressed in all the muscles waiting to jump back into action under that finely textured, unbloodied fur.
Our Champion isn’t tired or done. No, this is the moment before he chuckles, shrugs the belt off his shoulder and steps back in the ring (or the alley) to handle the situation.
The cat’s expression, the colors, and the take on the phrase “looking like the cat that ate the canary,” (a friend would occasionally accuse me of that) put this shirt on my must have list. I wasn’t sure about the location of the image, but wearing the shirt convinced me. The placement puts the cat right there, standing by your side. It’s one of the few shirts I have that strangers will come up and talk to me about. Our Champion is a very popular fellow; people like the look in his eye.
