The recent Burn Squad Pro Editions with Max Palmer, Andrew Wilson, Karim Callender, Johnny Wilson, Antonio Durao, and Cyrus Bennett got me thinking about what goes into a collection like this. Seeing signature graphics of the iconic Spitfire Bighead is always exciting, and there’s no better person to speak to this than Andy Pitts.

Thankfully, Andy was down to hop on a call to chat through anything and everything related to his work at Deluxe, and specifically the art for this Burn Squad. As a fan of Spitfire and someone who loves to talk about product, this was one of the most exciting interviews I’ve ever done. I hope you enjoy it and learn as much as I did.

🌀: What’s up, Andy! To start this off, can you say your job title and how long you’ve worked at Deluxe?

I’m Andy Pitts, the Creative Director at Deluxe. I’ve been here for 15 years, and I love it; it’s awesome. I get to make art for decks, trucks, wheels, etc. I oversee all of Spitfire’s art and help out the other brands’ Creative Directors. I wear a lot of different hats here at Deluxe, but it generally boils down to creating art and making sure other artists have what they need to make rad stuff for all our brands.

🌀: Thank you, that was a perfect intro! As you know, this interview is centered around this new Burn Squad. As a Creative Director, what’s your role in something like this?

My role in working on a project like this would be working with Damon Thorley, Spitfire’s Brand Manager, and John Alden Spit’s Team Manager. John to get connected with the individual riders on a one-on-one basis, so I can create the art they want for their wheels. And then working with Damon to put together the scope of the project and how it’s going to look front-facing, out to the world. 

“I’m going to do everything I can to make their
dreams come true in that capacity.“

🌀:  Got it. So you kind of touched on this, but once you know the crew of skaters that are getting a pro wheel in this example, what’s the next step for you?

Generally, for a pro wheel for someone specific, I really like to get in contact with them, either through Alden or if I already have a connection with them, just to get feelers going at the beginning. I like to reach out, touch base, and just open it up to them, like, “Hey, do you have anything that you would like for an upcoming pro wheel?” The nice thing about that is getting to feel a little bit like Santa Claus, because sometimes the pro doesn’t know they’re getting a wheel yet, and I get to say, “You’re going to get a wheel!” Which is a dream for most skateboarders, to get a Spitfire Pro wheel. And then the big question, “What would you like on it?” So that direct line of contact for me is really important. Whether the graphic is going to be something personal to them, something they’ve seen and are stoked on, or references some aspect of them. I put out those feelers and let them put as much input into it as they want. 

Some pros are very proactive and are like, “I want this, or I’m so stoked on thing X right now,” I’m going to do everything I can to make their dreams come true in that capacity. And some pros are the other end of the spectrum, where it’s like “I’m good with whatever you want. I trust you guys, just make something cool.” For this specific capsule, because it is a Burn Squad, we knew right off the bat that it’s going to be a take on the iconic Spitfire Bighead, which was lovingly drawn by Kevin Ancell, probably in the late ‘80s, I’m guessing around ’87 or somewhere in there. His original graphic is the root for all of the Bigheads that we’ve done since then; it’s the Bighead everyone knows and loves. So for a Burn Squad capsule, we already know that everybody’s going to get a custom Bighead, and that makes it really fun because it kind of limits the possibility of what it could be. The graphic is going to be a Bighead, but then you’re open to anything that the Bighead could turn into, as long as we haven’t done it before, which is a reduction of choice, but also expands into virtually anything at the same time. So it’s cool to talk with everyone right off the bat. People either start giving me their two cents on what it could be, or they’ll leave it in our hands. I think generally with the custom Bigheads and especially with this Burn Squad, it’s an easy in for the crew to think, “Well, what do I want my custom Bighead to be?” Everybody came back with a lot of really fun ideas, and we tinkered with a handful of things and ran from there. 

🌀: It’s really cool to hear about that process, especially with how iconic the Bighead is; there’s so much cool history.

There is, there’s been so many versions of it. Sometime in the early ’90s, long before my time at Deluxe, Spitfire did a 50 ways to burn, essentially they gave 50 different pros an ad, they didn’t have wheels with them, they just did 50 different pro Bigheads in an ad. It kind of set the stage for this; it wasn’t necessarily on wheels, but it was a way to highlight all the different people on the team and how diverse it was, and each person’s individuality. And then that happened again, I want to say 5 to 7 years later, there was another two-page ad with lots of Bigheads. After that, we started putting wheels out with custom Bigheads like this. So it has a history within Spitfire of tweaking the Bighead to be customized for a pro, and it’s fun in the current capacity to do it for pro wheels. We have a couple of posters around the office, and it just looks so sick with all of them together, like all these different versions of Bigheads. It really gets the juices flowing for like, what pros could do or what you can do to this little flamey face.

🌀: That’s so sick! I want to jump into each skater’s graphic in this Burn Squad. Starting with Cyrus, I guess he’s a Sonic fan? What’s the story there?

This is a fun one. It was directly from his Instagram; he’s got Sonic on his profile picture, straight up; he likes Sonic. I was like, “How can I take the Bighead and tweak it into Sonic?” Sonic’s got, I don’t know if it’s hair or hedgehog spikes, but I played around with rotating the Bighead sideways and then building little ears out of the flames, and then utilizing the face of the Bighead to try and sit where Sonic’s face sits. One of the odd ones is that the Bighead doesn’t have a nose, but Sonic does. For a long time, there was an unspoken rule that you just didn’t put a nose on the Bighead because it looked a little strange. But this is one where it made the most sense to really convey that it is Sonic and not just some strange blue guy. 

I flipped the shoes to put some Nike’s onto Sonic’s body. Originally, I had him in black shoes, but it read better with the red shoes that Sonic tends to wear. So, yeah, that’s why he’s got the Sonic, and people are really stoked on it. It’s also one of those like, praying that it’s far enough away from the corporate Sonic hedgehog lawyer land that’s going to come after us and get a cease and desist for it. Like “How can we fly under the radar with this? How much do we need to change it?” All components of Sonic’s head here are absolutely parts of the Bighead, but it definitely reads as Sonic. So it’s kind of finding that balance of someone looking at the wheels and going “Sick! That’s Sonic The Hedgehog done with Bighead parts.” Verses a lawyer going, “That is Sonic The Hedgehog, and you have to cease and desist and owe us money.” So there’s a balance for that when you’re paying homage or interpreting something for one of the pros that might be someone else’s legal property. I think I did an okay job with this one. We haven’t had a cease and desist yet, so fingers crossed. 

🌀: Have you ever flipped the Bighead flames sideways like this before?

Not really. What tends to happen is ideas will percolate up and it’ll be like “Oh, sick, here’s an idea for the Bighead.” I’ll mock stuff up, make it, and just have it in a folder of possible Bigheads. They could be for future pros or for team wheels. I do have one version that is sideways like this; it’s a totally different thing that just hasn’t come out yet. So it’s one of the first times in my memory that it actually lives in like a weird sideways fashion like that, that has come out on a wheel or in anything.

🌀: That’s pretty sick that this is the first time ever!

Yeah, it just fit right. I mean, Sonic’s hair or hedgehog spikes, whatever they are, I was like, “Well, this thing’s going sideways because that’s how it’s going to make it look like him.” So yeah, it turned out pretty cool, stoked on that one.

🌀: Let’s jump to Johnny Wilson, he’s a cyclist, as you can see in the thumbnail of Johnny’s Vid. Did this graphic just come to mind for you, or did this come from him?

I think (John) Alden brought this one up. And that’s a great thing with John, he’s so close to a lot of the people, he knows a lot more about them. He said that Johnny’s really into cycling, and I was like, “Okay, cool.” And filming, those are big things for him. On my bike, I have a milk crate up on the front. I don’t know if he has one or not, but I made a little Bighead popping out of a milk crate like it would be on a bike basket. But in the end, we ended up with the bike helmet and the speed shades because it is so 100% iconic for a biker. That’s a bike helmet, and those are speed shades, and they work with Johnny, so we ended up with that. There was a little hesitation within here of like “Is it too far removed from skating?” And then you look at all the other ones, and every time you do a pro wheel like that, you start to veer away from skating or away from the Bighead structure in some way. So we were just like “Nah, it looks sick.” Anybody who’s into biking is going to be cool with it, and anyone who hates biking, question mark, just wouldn’t get that wheel.

🌀: I feel like part of the point is that the graphic is something that’s unrelated to skating, because it’s already a skate product, it’s cool to see what else they’re into. 

I agree, and that’s one of the beautiful things about doing a pro Bighead; you can tap into a unique aspect about a pro skater. It doesn’t matter who it is, not one pro skater only skates; they all have some other interests, other things that they’re passionate about to some degree. It’s fun to tap into those because it just kind of broadens your perspective on who this person is that you admire, and it builds out a more complete story of that person.

“Antonio actually took the time to paint his own Bighead,
and it is so endearing.”

🌀: Let’s jump to Antonio next; long hair and shrooms, this one seems pretty self- explanatory…

I can’t even express how happy I was with Antonio. He’s awesome, I love his skateboarding. And he’s just the happiest person when I see him; he’s always so stoked.  But Antonio actually took the time to paint his own Bighead, and it is so endearing.  I just reworked it in the style of how it would work best to be printed on a wheel. I was already hyped on his skating, but getting his painting made me 10x more stoked on him, because he took the time to actually paint himself with mushrooms in his hair; it’s awesome. It just made me so happy to see it, and I love how enthusiastic he was to have a pro Bighead wheel within the Burn Squad.

🌀: Wow, that’s cool to hear. Like you mentioned earlier, some skaters are more involved in graphics than others, and to each their own, but stories like this are awesome. 

Yeah, this was 100% involvement. I’ve never had anyone else physically make what they want for their wheel, especially with such care. It was a fully painted, full-color Bighead. It’s always fun seeing people’s versions of the Bighead, especially bad tattoos, or people’s hand drawings of it. Antonio’s is awesome; it’s his version of the Bighead, and it’s really endearing. And the fact that he actually took the time to paint it is so rad, it made it extra special for me. Chris Colbourn makes a lot of art, and he’s sent a postcard to me; he drew up a bunch of Bigheads just for fun. He was like, “I’ve been drawing these, here!” And I was so stoked on that, it’s hanging by my desk. When people care like that, it makes me really happy, and Antonio took that to the next level, because it was for his own wheel. It’s my favorite Bighead of this Burn Squad, but don’t tell anyone else that.

🌀: Haha, that’s awesome. Next, Max. I’ll give my guess on his graphic and then listen to your explanation: a concrete Bighead with rebar in it, a broken Bighead?

That’s exactly what it is; it was a take on his concrete art. I admire Max so much, and I have this secret wish to have an art space like he has. I’ve never been there; I’ve just seen it in his interviews. It’s a creative space, and I’m so stoked on what he puts out and what he does from an art perspective. It was really rad to reinterpret his art into a Bighead. We’ve done a wheel for him before; it was based on a specific piece of art that he had, so that was sort of in my mind. The spiked one, it just fit on the wheel and made perfect sense. So I really wanted to keep that spirit within his Bighead. He sent me a couple of photos of his artwork, and I just took the challenge to be like, “How can I make the Bighead feel like it’s a piece of concrete that is split apart with rebar?” Like the art he provided from a different art context. I admire working with other artists because they’re making stuff as well, and it just feels symbiotic in that way of like, “This is your art that I’m reinterpreting as Spitfire art.” Just kind of fun in its own way. 

🌀: Yeah, that’s really cool. Andrew Wilson, is this inspired by Darth Maul?

No, it is not Darth Maul. Man, if it were Darth Maul, I would have gone full face paint and red and stuff. It’s funny. Andrew had sent me some photos of him in a Balaclava, the full head covering with just the eye window, and he really wanted that; he’s skated in those a little bit. So I mocked up some Bigheads that just had the eye window; they were in a Balaclava. It was ok, it just didn’t feel like it read like that, it didn’t quite have the juice that a lot of these other ones have. 

But then he sent me some images of an executioner’s cowl. It’s something from medieval times that an executioner or some sort of witchcraft person would wear, that’s what the actual hood thing is, with the little tie on it and stuff. I put it together, and it just kind of looked evil. This one actually became a t-shirt as well. There are a couple of the Bigheads with a seance-type look, with “Spitfire” written a little bit metal, a little bit medieval, a little bit gnarly. 

🌀: It’s funny because I wasn’t sure what the inspiration for this Bighead was originally, then I saw Kevin Bradley comment something about Darth Maul and tag Andrew Wilson, so I was like, “Oh, maybe that’s what it is.”

Maybe for Kevin Bradley, if he’s stoked on that, it’d be easy and fun to make up the Darth Maul paint on a Bighead, kind of tattoo red and black. It’d actually probably look sick, but it wouldn’t live in the world very long, because Star Wars is pretty tough (re: cease and desists). Back in the day, like when I first started, you could get away with that. With the rise of Instagram and how information is shared so quickly and so easily, not just by word of mouth or by a catalog that’s physically printed, but on Instagram and anywhere else digitally. 

When you do an homage graphic like that, it would pretty quickly get back to people that would send a lawyer to your door to say, “Stop.” It just happens so much faster now. There’s so much more to riff on, but also, it’s easier to have people stop you for doing that. That would be a fun one just to make. You can not put things on product, and then you’re fine, just print it and stick it on the wall here at Deluxe, and people get stoked on it. 

🌀: Maybe we’ll see that one one day. Alright, the last graphic of this Burn Squad; Karim. This looks like a perfect rendition of him as a Bighead. 

That was him, he was like, “I really want a backwards hat.” I did some internet digging, and so many times he rolls the brim of the hat so low over his brow, so I was like, “Cool, we’re going to do that right at eye level.” He’s got such a great smile, I wanted to see how big I could make it without it getting weird on the face. It’s much larger than a normal Bighead. I kind of put his cheeks out on the side, but I really wanted to convey how his smile shines and how happy a person he is. So I extended the Bighead smile as much as I could and then gave him a little bit of scruff; he’s always rocking a little bit of a beard. He wanted the NY on the back of the hat, so we went through a few renditions of that, a couple of color changes on the hat, and then it was like “That’s him, there we go.”

🌀: It’s so good. For pro wheels in general, once you’re happy with the graphic, does it then get shared with the skater for them to give their approval/feedback, or what’s that process like?

Yeah. So generally they have an idea or something they would want, which I mean, I’m looking at these (this Burn Squad), and everyone had an idea of what they wanted. So once I get that feedback from them, I’ll go to work doing a rough, and I’ll try and get it about 80% right. Then I’ll share it with them to be like, “Hey, this is what your pro Bighead’s going to look like.” And I’ll mock it up on a wheel, that’s a good time for us to have some back and forth because there’s something to see. Pretty much with everyone here, we had a handful of back-and-forths to tweak them to the final. So I’ll get two cents from them, I’ll get it mocked up to about 80% and on a wheel as well, send it to them, let them know any changes that I think, they’ll give some two cents back, and then I’ll go and I’ll make those tweaks. 

We just have a back and forth until they say they’re stoked or until we’re out of time, then we have to get the wheel to production. Those are the two limiting factors. We do drops here every roughly every 6-8 weeks, so we’re turning stuff over really quickly. For these Burn Squads, it’s a lot of graphics at once. In addition to these, I’m sure there were some team graphics and other things for the drop. It’s just more art that needs to be done, in the same amount of time (as a usual drop). But, I do want to say for the most part, we almost always hit the “I’m stoked on this!” We never run out of time; that was the case with these as well, where everyone was stoked. I heard a lot of each of them being really stoked on each other’s wheels, which makes me really happy. They’re a crew; they skate together and they do their thing. When they’re all psyched on their own and each other’s, that’s the goal. 

“It’s never not awesome to see someone riding something
that I’ve made; it’s always rad.“

🌀: Yeah, that has to feel good. You touched on production; what’s it like to work on art like this and watch it go from your computer screen to a wheel that you’re holding in the office? Eventually, it’s in skateshops all over the world, and people are skating them.

It’s never not awesome to see someone riding something that I’ve made; it’s always rad. When you see that end product on someone who purchased it, who’s skating at a spot, and you’re like, “Damn, they’re riding thing x.” The Stoke is always there. It’s always been there. We have a running joke in the art room: any time we see someone else’s stuff (product that someone else in the art room worked on), we jokingly say, “Oh, check it out,” and point at it, and then go, “Job security.” And it happens a lot, especially here in San Francisco, because it’s so heavy with Deluxe up here. But, it is very worldwide. When I’m out places and I see someone wearing a t-shirt that I’ve done, it’s always awesome. It brings back that Christmas morning feeling from when I was younger and got a new skate thing; a new deck, new wheels, a new pair of shoes, like “Wow, this is such a gift and a present.” It really brings that feeling directly back to me when I see someone riding something that I’ve worked on.

This capsule is no exception, and it makes it even better because all the pros are stoked on it as well. It just feels awesome all around, it always does. To make people happy with something like this feels like a gift that I can give. 

🌀: Seeing people stoked has to be a great payoff for you.

Yeah, and I guess I didn’t answer the whole question, I went right to the end. But when they come into the warehouse or we see a sample of them, it’s just so, so cool to see something that you worked on be physically on these products that you love; wheels, trucks, boards, skate shirts, or hoodies. It’s such a good feeling to go, “This is a real thing that I did, made tangible on this product.” And it’s heart-warming every time, it’s awesome. 

🌀: Obviously, fully up to you if you want to answer this one, but is there a crew that you’d like to do a Burn Squad capsule for next?

You know, I’m just going to say I’m excited for whatever comes next. Ryan Lee’s was just awesome, everybody in it was so cool, and all their Bigheads turned out great. And this one with Johnny and his crew, so stoked on how it all turned out. I know whatever we do next is going to be special in its own way, and I’m stoked for that.

🌀: One last thing to close this out; earlier, you touched on some Bigheads from before your time, then I’m sure you’ve made so many in your 15-year window at Deluxe. Is there one that stands out as a favorite? Whether you worked on it or not.

Alright, think back to the hundreds and hundreds of Bigheads. I’m looking at one right now, and I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite, but I really enjoy this one. For Halloween this year, I dug them up and printed them. I did all of the characters from Hellraiser.  I think it was a Peter Ramondetta set of wheels. Each of the four different wheels in the pack were different Bigheads; they were the cenobites. That was an exceptionally fun one, because it’s fun to take stuff like characters from Hellraiser and see how you can build them into a Bighead. I wouldn’t say it was my favorite, but it was a fun one.

🌀: Well, thank you for sharing all of these stories. It was so cool to hear the process of what goes into a wheel graphic. Your work is amazing, stoked to see more in the future!

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Watch the video that goes along with this Burn Squad capsule, by Johnny Wilson, here. The edit’s amazing, we’ll be posting loops of some standout clips on our IG.