Georgia artist goes big for Pro Bowl cleats of rookie Kyle Pitts

But those steps are what Booth focused on as he created Pitts’ shoes. He wanted Pitts’ feet — which were so integral to his first-season success — to display the message of how good his rookie year was, sort of a commemoration of what he accomplished splashed across his Jordan 5s.

“He’s the second [rookie] tight end ever to reach the 1,000-yard milestone, so I know I’m going to put that on there,” Booth said. “And maybe a couple stats and some Falcons logos, also. Still brainstorming, maybe have one cleat look completely different than the other cleat.

“But rookie things, definitely.”

Two weeks ago, Booth was in the brainstorming process, the first part of the creative painted journey from concept to creation — something the player didn’t see until he received the shoes just before he left for Las Vegas.

This isn’t as simple as putting some paint on a shoe and going with it. This is an hours-long process for each pair of shoes Booth works on.

It’s a process Booth has streamlined over the past three years, one self-taught from what he calls YouTube University. All of this happened so randomly — how the psychology major at North Carolina Central who wanted to become a forensic psychologist ended up doing this instead. He never imagined this in college, when his boredom and scrolling on Instagram took him to WalMart and he painted a pair of Jordan 1s pink.

He wore them to class. Because he knew nothing about the custom shoe business at the time, the color ran. It looked like he was wearing a pink-spotted cow. But classmates were still intrigued. This was years before it became his full-time job, before he locked in with the Falcons and became their cleat creator.

With Pitts’ shoes, because he had time, it began with brainstorming sessions. Knowing he was working with a six-panel Jordan 5 — the more panels available, the more creative he can be — Booth then takes an all-white silhouette and puts it in a photoshop mockup on his computer.

It’s there he messes around with different fonts and sizes to get an idea of what could go where and the type of space he might need for each idea to pop to life.

“I usually go on Instagram a lot and post my mockups and have people vote on which one they like best, and the highest vote, I’ll go with that,” Booth said. “A lot of times I’ll do that to make sure we’re on the same page. I’ll know what I want to do with it, so I’ll go post a different mockup to see if people are seeing the same thing that I see.

“That helps me out a lot because it’s like that second opinion, like definitely do that. Because otherwise, I’m thinking in the back of my head, ‘Ahh, should I do this or that?'”

Booth learned from experience to edit who can see the mockups in his stories — often blocking his clients so as not to spoil the surprise. Sometimes screenshots have leaked, a hazard of social media and a lesson Booth learned.

Design done, the real work starts. Each shoe has to be specifically prepped. Booth starts by taping the soles of cleats — they are unable to be painted — and then takes acetone, places it on a pad and scrubs down each shoe to take off the clear, unseen sealer on the top of each cleat. This will keep the paint from running and sliding off the shoe or cracking once it’s put on.

“The reason for that is to open up, I say to open up the pores a little bit,” Booth said. “To give the paint something to stick on to.”

Once the initial gloss is gone, Booth can start painting. He’ll add an adhesion promoter to the shoe to add a layer and give the paint another opportunity to stick to the shoe. If he’s doing a detailed design, like a logo or a cartoon character or stenciled writing — like for Pitts’ shoe — he’ll print out stencils and lay those down while the shoe is still fully white.

Then he’ll add a base coat of paint — usually white or gray depending on the colors he’s working with both on the shoe and the design — and let it dry. Then he’ll start painting in the detailed design and stencils. Finished there, he’ll go back to do touchups just in case any of the paint bled into another area of the shoe.

“I do my outlining last because that makes the design pop,” Booth said. “Pretty much that important step in the prep. That’s the important step because football players, they are pretty rough on sneakers. They are running and jumping and sliding and tackling and everything and the worst that happens is the paint comes off.

“And as an artist, you don’t want that to happen, because that kind of tells you the quality of work isn’t there.”

Booth is meticulous with each pair. When he’s done painting and likes the work of the shoe, he’ll seal it again — much like what was initially on the shoe that he scrubbed off. He first uses a scratch-resistant sealer, again protecting his work from the realities of football. Then, he’ll use either a glossy or matte finisher depending on the look he’s going for.

The average time it takes on a shoe, from brainstorm to completion, is around eight to 10 hours. For some of Patterson’s work, it took 15. For Pitts’ shoe, he allotted 20 hours.

“I really want to perfect that design on there,” Booth said. “And I want him to really stand out at the Pro Bowl.”

This isn’t the first time Pitts has tried to show some creativity during his rookie season. His request for a change to old Florida Gators cleats he had early in the season kickstarted the relationship with Booth.

And then there’s something else — something he had every game but didn’t always get noticed: The design on his hands.

When Pitts signed with Jordan Brand — the cleats he wears — one of the things they asked him about was if he wanted to help design anything else. Pitts decided he had interest in helping to create a unique pair of gloves just for him.

And what he ended up going with each game this year had one meaning — even if it ended up looking like another.

“With the eight in the middle, that was just one of the designs,” Pitts said. “I didn’t think of it as a bullseye until I had seen it and seen the colors and it was pretty cool. I didn’t think of that to signify anything.”