Fun_Tee.LuckSalt

A new Magic T shirt design featuring a jostled salt shaker flipping a table of colorful rectangles, decrying a foul twist of luck.

I sketched this for a pitch from long ago and knew I would ink it digitally, but it's still just easier roughing things out traditionally.

This was the pencil sketch I pitched. I loved the flow of it. The idea was to embody a salty table-flipper getting as near to shrieking an F-bomb as possible, while still staying family-friendly. Fun little design challenge.

Here's a mock-up of what it might look like on Didi. I originally envisioned this over a teal-ish background, but later felt a version for each Magic color would be fair, if only just to see what that might look like. Unfortunately, Threadless doesn't have quite the colors I was thinking of, but they still have handsome options in the ballpark of each color.

I would want a black shirt, of course, so that's the one I'll shop around, but the darker Temur colors look great, too. One downside is that I had to tweak the line colors a little for the pure black shirt, though, which wasn't ideal, so I settled on the riddled black "heather" color above for the actual pitch color.

Just for fun, here are the concepts for the other colors, most of which look pretty good on Threadless's closest corresponding colors.

Salt for all.

Salt for me.

Salt for hypothesis.

Salt for whomever.

Salt for health.

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Hare_Tee.Sensei

Another rejected shirt design concept from a million years ago.

It's based on the chapter headers from the incredibly stylish, minimalist Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, which feature these gorgeous, heavy black, highly-stylized paper cut-out-looking illustrations. So at first glance, they look like those traditional, old illustrations, but when you stop and look closer, you'll see modern stuff like cell phones and things.

3/29/16

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Fun_Tee.Beardown

And here's the final of our little "i am the beatdown" shirt, or should I say "beardown"?
Anyway, the title comes from two things, primarily the old Magic adage about identifying "who is the beatdown," famously originated by Michael J. Flores, whose podcast with Patrick Chapin I quite enjoy despite not really being into Constructed myself. People talking passionately and intelligently about anything is always a great listen.

The second namesource is a twist on one of my favorite albums of all time, I am the Movie, from Motion City Soundtrack, which is lamentably calling it quits this year...

And then the design itself is a reference to the Magic slang for a 4/2 4/4 2/2 creature for two mana, affectionately called a "bear." Rather than my more intricate style, I thought a more "cute," clumsy style would be in order.

And then here's what it might look like on Didi from Splinter.
The background is a photo from when I discovered I was standing next to Tokyo Dome one night. I was more pumped by the official Shonen Jump merch shop nearby.

3/24/16

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Fun_Tee.Beardown_I

I really liked my little kuma T sketch, so I thought I'd take it to final anyway.

It's based on two little Magicisms.

Inked digitally with Steve Ahn's brush.

3/24/16

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Hare_Tee.Beardown_P

A rejected sketch for a shirt.

Rwar.

3/24/16

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Hare_Tee.Rider

Another design from the millions of scraps, twinkling away like little stars.

2/29/16

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Hare_Tee.Squirr

A rejected concept for a canceled project. One time! Just kidding--many, many times.

2/23/16

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Hare_Tee.DieOnDeck

A rejected concept based on forgetting your pact after taking pains to remember not to forget your pact.

2/22/16

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Hare_Tee.OuttaSait

A failed project design. Look on the bright side and stare into the sun. But don't blink.

Never blink.

...

Yeah, Jamie Hewlett for days.

Another design I liked here.

2/17/16

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Hare_Tee.LaTortugaFuerte

Kore was un de los diseños rechazados para una camisa. But no me importa ですね。

Inspired por トトロ, obv.

2/9/16

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Hare_Tee.Hurry

A sketch for a failed T-shirt design. Did maybe 100 sketches in total. Fun.

Stone obvious they weren't going to go with anything, so just went wild.

1/11/16

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Design_RedAtNight

This is some fan art for the Adrian Simon. Most of the music I use in my youchoob videos belongs to him (used with permission, of course!), and since I didn't get to do fan art of him last time, I thought now would be a great time to draw a token of my thanks. 

So the art "order" was for a "cute graphic" t-shirt with some kind of redhead-based saying. I couldn't think of any sweet sayings myself and research left me with nothing sumptuous, so I stretched a line a little to fit using innuendo (gingerly).

The expression I heard when I was young was "Red at night, sailor's delight; red in the morning, sailors take warning," apparently a nautical saying seafarers used to ballpark the day's weather before casting off to go fight the forces of the Negaverse or whatever it is people do in the Naaaaaavy. The phrase synched up pretty neatly with the AO, particularly when you factor in Adrian Simon's more recent work kinda gets a touch blue, so there was more to munch on there if you choose to take it up that way. Not that there's anything outrageous here that would make you turn your head, but it can go as coughy as you want it to.

Fun Facts: As we were driving up to LA for my interview to get the very job I currently enjoy here in Japan, we listened (appropriately) to Adrian Simon's Ivy League albums for the occasion, complete with his BUAD cover. 

The only one in the car who hadn't heard the song before, like I did way back when, squinted suspiciously after a couple repeats' worth of plays granted the lyrics lucidity.  It's like getting tricked into loving that song. But it's so great!  Ok, not the song, just his cover. I normally can't stand rap, but this dude killllls it.  Every single time.  I would be all over it if he did a rap covers album. He can make the most horrific stuff beautiful. Gosh.

ANYWAY. So I sketched this one mostly in my head, but early versions had him in a full-on Sailor Scoutfit but I thought that was a little much since it might inadvertently dishonor rather than laud the guy. So we just settled with a regular sailor's uniform but with Serena's pose. Clever right? Yeah I am.

But the trickiest thing was it had to be cute (I really wanna draw him cool, though, you know? I so badly wanna draw a cool picture of a redhead some day). I wouldn't normally do the extra-chibi-riffic thing but it was to sell the Sailor Moon angle, and because chibi has become a shorthand for cute, even if the SD figure isn't even actually cute (and who knows if mine is!).

As for making it feel like a t-shirt design, I tried to keep the colors simple, though if this were an actual t-shirt, I'd prolly just make it all flat.  Additionally, while I knew this would be destined for a red shirt, I thought it's be neat to make the frame riff on of the Heinz ketchup labeling.  Google it.

So, final score--redhead expression: check-ish. Cute: check-ish.  T-shirt graphic: check-ish.  Pretty close, right?

There was super short notice on this piece and I was neck-dope in a different production, but it was a fun project to undertake for the experience points.  I would love to make real t-shirts down the road someday.  I want to make them by hand, though; I'm not crazy about this 100% digital art business, ya know?

Oh! Also, if you've never listened to the Adrian Simon, you gotta chuckim oot.

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