I’m sure most of you have noticed the pretty drastic changes that have been made to the website in the past few days. New web store, new main page, and of course, the Spring & Summer Lookbook went live just yesterday. The Lookbook, entitled ‘A Change of Seasons’, started out more or less as something that we didn’t think we could pull off. Not because we didn’t have the resources, not because it wouldn’t turn out how we envisioned, but more than anything…because it was cold.

For those unfamiliar with Minnesnowta weather, it takes about 5 minutes outside in sandals before your toes experience a fantastically painful sensation. Anyways, we put together some scenes, went out and got the shots we wanted, and hopefully produced a shoot that draws a smile from everyone who sees it. Here’s a few pictures from this past week, up soon will be more & more press releases as we shift from behind the scenes work to gaining exposure across the internet. Stay safe, and stay tuned.

This gives you a good idea of the creative process behind creating our title for the shoot. Above anything, I hope that this gives everybody a bit more of an appreciation for people in creative fields. And for those in creative fields, this picture shouldn’t be surprising. There are a lot of good ideas, a whole lot of bad ideas, and one or two that actually work, in our case; one.

And hence the title of this post…the city I love from fourteen stories up…the city that never sleeps.

I think I’ve had my face buried in Photoshop for about fifteen straight hours, so rather than a post related to recent developments at the Check Your Six camp, I decided to do a post dedicated to somebody that all of you should know…and if you don’t, you will. Ryan Lee. Ryan’s the man responsible for our Stampeding Elephants bestseller, our Roll That Shit bestseller, and our Skeleton classic…so basically, he’s the Midas Man, because everything he touches turns into gold.

Below is an assortment of my favorites from his collections, compiled from both of his websites: Ryan Lee Art, and Ryan Lee Sketchbook. I hate love how Ryan has more talent on his pinky finger than I have in my entire family tree, and frankly…he has more talent than really anybody I’ve ever met. Enjoy some of his drawings/paintings/sculptures/digital creations below, and for the love of God..put this man on Bookmark, he’s going to be creating the next Shrek.

This week marks the beginning of really an entirely new, exciting chapter for Check Your Six. The Spring 2010 shipment is arriving, we are putting together our Lookbook, and we are doing a preview video for the release. We fully expect this Spring season to be our most expansive release to date, and we have been doing some creative campaigns regarding these upcoming products. I won’t give too much away regarding the photoshoot, but it is going to be absolutely ridiculous, non-sense, creative foolishness. Product previews will be up later this week, and then after the weekend we’ll have some previews of the shoot and the video. Stay tuned for CY6 flicks later this week, in the meantime, here’s some shots from our creative director Steve’s personal collection…

Spent the better part of yesterday afternoon grabbing lunch with our creative director, Steve. We caught a legitimate meal, discussed how we envisioned pulling off the Spring shoot, and planned out some events coming up. On the agenda in the coming few days is the lookbook for our Spring products, shipments to retailers, and finally some half decent weather…well, hopefully not too soon.

After lunch we spent a few minutes in a local bike shop, called Cronometro. Both cycling alumni and all around enthusiasts, it’s never boring for guys like us in a place like this.