Printing details of the Tee Shirts

The Tee Shirts in Crowtoon Studios come in three flavors. A few are silk-screened and these will be labeled as such. Tradional approach, very permanent and bright colors. These reside at my house and are shipped by me. They won't show up on the nice Shirt Cart at the top of the page as that's purely tied to the spreadshirt items.

The ones with more than three colors are invariably digital prints and will be indicated by the word "DIGITAL" on the description page. For these shirts, ink is printed onto and into the Tee Shirt fabric. The pro is lots of different colors. The con is that it will slowly fade in the wash. This is what you traditionally see from Print On Demand places like CafePress.

Finally, the most common shirt in the store is made with the Flex technique. This is a relatively new printing method, developed in Germany, and produces a very long lasting, very vibrant print. Hold one of these in your hands alongside a silk screened shirt and you'll be hard pressed to choose one over the other. The silk screened one will be a little tacky and rough. The Flex print will be smooth. The Flex is a bit more opaque (the shirt material can sometimes come through a bit with sik screen). The Flex can only be used for up to three colors, which is usually the limit for a silk screened shirt as well. As you might gather, I'm pretty impressed with the Flex approach because it's super flexible. I can easily put a design on any of a huge variety of shirts, jackets, etc and can also change the color of the shirt and/or the color of the design. So if you see some garment on the spreadshirt site that you'd like, and I don't have it offered already, just send me an email and I can easily and quickly put it up on the site. Same goes for colors, both of the shirt and print. All are easily customizable. Shirts printed with the Flex process will be indicated by the word "FLEX."

The least expensive Tee Shirts are standard Gildan Tees. They're fine but also not special in any way as far as material goes. The next step up are what are called heavyweight shirts and these are Gildan Ultra cotton. Notably heavier duty and a finer hand. The most expensive are the American Apparel. They're fitted shirts and feel great. But they also cost more. In addition, being fitted, they'll run smaller than a standard Tee. So if you normally wear a medium Tee you'd want to get a Large American Apparel.