Tag Archives: shirts

Hey, turns out that new cartoon for cool youths is something I really like. But I couldn’t just draw fanart of sometihng, no, that would be too sensible and good, noooo, so instead I decided that what it really needed was a reference to a 35 year old videogame logo from a time when that game was not yet a punchline.

I am so happy with how this looks? It’s simple and crisp and I really like how Vaggie looks with her happy smile at Charlie like ‘oh, that’s my idiot.’ If you want it on something, you can get it on a sticker, or coasters, or a t-shirt, or, you know, normal Redbubble stuff.

Here’s the design!

Here it is on a shirt!

And here’s a link to go buy it!

This one might not be around for long. Consider it a ‘limited run’ design. Typically speaking, anything that’s too obvious and related to Pokemon, even if you draw the art yourself, gets bumped off the Redbuble store, eventually.

Point is, I drew artwork, back in 2023, of a Ralts having a chill time reading a book, with a message I personally think of as inspiring, and put them on a shirt. This design was made for someone in particular, inspired by them, but I don’t want you to be deprived of it. I have my copy now, so I don’t need to worry about it being, like, taken down too much…

But you might want a copy of it.

Here! Check it!

If you’re not familiar with it, Cui Bono is a Latin aphorism that has become something of a loanphrase in English because there’s nothing quite like quoting an old dead dude to legitimise your complaint. It means ‘Who Benefits?’ and it’s used in conspiracy circles to encourage you to keep imagining more and more reasons for something to be the responsibility of those people. Thing is, almost always, the answer for ‘why would they do things this shitty way?’ is capitalism. And so:

No small irony in that I made this design on the second of May, back when I was ruminating on whether or not I stick with Redbubble at all. Still looking for alternatives, so maybe this gets edited later.

You can get this design in one of four colours, green, blue, pink or tan.

I think at some point I just want to make sports logos of everything that isn’t really appropriate as a sports logo. Anyway, here’s a The Thing as if that’s a sports logo!

You can get this sticker or shirt design here! What’s more, because I made such a big file, it’s available to jam on a bunch of different designs I don’t normally get to use – like you can get a jigsaw of this reference to the 1982 movie The Thing. I don’t know why you would want it, but it’s an option!

I didn’t set up the microskirt option though that seemed… weird.

There’s a particular genre of shirts I design to wear in front of my students that give them the subtle messages that I am a huge nerd and also they should check the subject outline. I have one, a Naruto shirt, which is consistent at getting students’ attention, but here’s the thing.

I’ve not watched Naruto.

(Yet?)

When the Big Three came down, I didn’t wind up buying into Naruto. It didn’t connect to me, but Bleach, man, that series did. I think because I thought Rukia was cute and a boy. But point is, if I have a Naruto shirt, I owe it to myself, to my honest representaiton as a fan, to have a shirt that matches my own cringe, not just the cringe of others.

This design, which I do not imagine anyone but me wants, is available on my Redbubble store.

I need very little encouragement to make some things. Over on my Patreon (where you can sign up for as little as a buck to give my brain good chemicals), I suggested this shirt design as a potential one for this month. One person went ‘I like it,’ and so I went and did it.

I was aiming at evoking a university sports team logo (which I looked at a lot of) and the DOOM logo from 1993 (which I also looked at a lot of, but for different reasons). This design involved learning a lot of things about how to make 3d-looking shaped text, which is how I got this eventual ‘curving’ effect — it involves the Lens Distortion tool in GIMP.

The popped text above and below the logo was made first in a vector program and then also made 3d in GIMP, too. Honestly, looking at this piece I’m pretty proud of how many pieces of this involved developing or refining a new skill to do something, or built on a skill I’ve gotten so used to I didn’t even conspicuously think of it.

I kinda want to get a hoodie or coffee mug with this on it for my dad but I think he, a preacher, might balk at the actual pentagram.

Anyway, you can get this design in black star or white star versions.

When you engage in a work of satirical criticism, you need to approach it with a clarity of purpose that indicates to your audience the moral framework with which you do it, so that at no point it can be construed as uncritical support for the thing you are satirising, even moreso when contending with media designed to be consumed extremely quickly and uncritically. This is on my mind as I put a lot of work into how to draw a stupid cartoon of Alex Jones as a Garfield character, who absolutely sucks.

I made this design to be a sticker. Alex Jones makes a bunch of stuff in the form of stickers, things you can place around the world to direct attention towards his shitty advertising stream. Alex Jones, let me be clear, is an abusive cult leader who is trying to exploit en masse a community that he also never wants to interact with. Right now, he’s clocking on with a tediousness that speaks of the ‘hilarious’ office garfield strips about hating mondays, and that was the genesis of this design. He sucks, and he’s banal, and the things about him that suck are also pathetic.

This design didn’t feature the background at first. The ‘Hate mon days’ logo used to be ‘HATE ‘MON DAYS,’ as in ‘hate them on days.’ There didn’t used to be as many stackies of paper, nor the big Sandy Hook bill. But I had to add to it to try and make sure it didn’t just look like I was at best neutral about how much this guy sucks.

I’m proud of it, I think it looks unmistakably like Alex Jones if you’re familiar with him, and if you want, you can have it as a sticker, a pin, a shirt, a hat, a coffee mug, or even a magnet!

First up, the design! On a shirt!

Second, the design on its own so you can look at it!

This design is something of a proof of concept. At first, the idea was that this was an idea I could port to a lot of different sets, where an identifying Ship Term (in this case ‘Steddie’, but I also considered Soriku) is surrounded by a love heart of phrases that are meant to relate to experiencing these characters in their lore space. And this is a design type I want to make more of (now I have this first one done), but at the moment, this design took a long enough time to make that my ambition to make a bunch of these ran into a wall.

The thing that may surprise you is how hard this list of text to add to this turned out to make. To make this kind of word clouding work well, I need a big variety of textwith different weights, and I had to construct this cloud myself. That meant that I also had to make the title in the middle the way I chose to. If I needed 300+ words with different appearances and weight, I was able to get to a whopping fifty.

I like this design! I like how much better I can make the next one, too.

If you want this design, it comes in three flavours, the mixed colour version, the pure red version, and a pure white version.

It’s November, we’re all tired, have some shirt designs I dreamt up while I was doing the shopping and picking through cauliflower

Here’s a joke about how Final Fantasy 14 kills off cool women characters for no good reason. Here’s a version with white text, and one with black text!

Here’s a joke about Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Here’s a version with white text, and one with black text!

Here’s a joke about how we must sound to people outside of the fandom! Here’s a version with white text, and one with black text!

It’s another set of masks, which were originally made just as a test of the question ‘can I make these elements line up?’ This time I’m aiming at trying to evoke the lovely armour designs from classic 90s magical girl isekai anime, Magic Knights Rayearth, with designs in red,

Blue, and

green. I promise you this is meant to be green.

You can get these designs (red, blue, green) over on Redbubble.

You know now I’m open about playing Final Fantasy XIV there’s a whole bunch of specific niche jokes I can make that don’t make me feel like I’m divulging the location of a covert operative.

These two designs, the Profile and Bell designs, are available on Redbubble. I recommend a baseball 3/4 style, for that proper ‘sports teams supports’ design.

I don’t need shirts right now. I do however, want to have some masks, so I can wash them very regularly. Let’s check some out!

I love my THIS SHIRT SAYS TRANS RIGHTS shirt, and I wanted a version I could wear on a mask when I need my shirt real estate to say something else, like, say, DID YOU CHECK THE SUBJECT OUTLINE. I made this variant on the shirt for mask purposes.

I have a M*A*S*K mask already, but I was never as into MASK as I was into Transformers. This mask is based on the face of Wheeljack, from Transformers.

And this is my masterpiece. This Haruhi-inspired asymmetrical mask is a reminder to me just how much I love that classic anime. I should write about it later this year.

In my current understanding, kids will need masks in the new year. Masks are also a good thing to have in your life as something you can wear for when you’re feeling generally low-key ill, like if you have a cold, wear a mask to keep from spreading it, that kinda thing.

I made my own mask this year based on a dumb joke, and then realised wait no, this whips and I’m going to keep using it when I’m out in public in general, because it’s not bad to be careful. Here, then, for your new year purchasing purposes, are three masks I made for me or for family members.

I’ve been wearing these masks from redbubble for about six months. I find the adjustable straps nice and comfortable, but also nice and durable: I’ve had other masks snap over time dealing with my big weird head.

My first mask, modelled on Matt Trakker from all-purpose advertising yawnfest, M*A*S*K:

This should not be seen as an endorsement of M*A*S*K and more just me signalling to a general audience that I am old.

One of my niblings still needs to wear a mask to school, a fact that has him bummed out. So I asked him what kind of masks he’d like to have – and this is my attempt at a g-rated version of Scorpion’s mask from Mortal Kombat. Like I don’t think a teacher is going to get mad at anyone for this, there’s no blood spattering.

And finally we have a mask that represents the passive okayness that you can only get out of a Snorlax.

I don’t know if you order one of these masks now you’ll be able to get them in time for Christmas. But I do know that you should have them in time for the new year and the subsequent new school term, which you may need or want if you have a kid in your life who is bummed about needing a mask but might be a bit perked up by the mask seeming, like, kinda cool. Maybe. Maybe they think this is cool? Hell, I don’t know what the kids think is cool.

It is, here where I am, the last days of spring. Summer is coming, or, really, as an Australian, summer is now. Some people like to imagine seasons as these simple, standardised, three-month chunks, but here in Australia, Summer kinda reaches from sometime in October all the way through to April, if it’s a hot one. Every single day of summer, it seems, shows up with a phenomenal force, a demand that you contend with it.

It’s also the time that my university work isn’t available, creating a strange period where I have something like three months of holidays, a long, slow stretch of time to write, read, create, and yes, of course, contend with the heat.

It’s the first time in my life I really connect with this idea that Americans espouse, of the idea of ‘summer vacation.’ And so I made this shirt, a testament to the way summer feels.

I like to think that sometimes my shirt designs are about jabbing out a simple, short joke, sometimes about using a simple tool well. This one is one I took a lot of time on; multiple iterations through the months, multiple additions of elements. Every element of this design has been made or remade at least twice, because I wanted to make something that looked really good to what I wanted to.

Since it has black shapes in it that rest against the colour of the shirt, there are two designs; one for putting on white shirts:

And one that’s for putting on black or dark shirts.

You can get either design (White or Black) over on Redbubble.

I read Chainsaw Man in a day. It’s really good! I liked it a lot! Not something I can recommend to most people, but still, I thought it had some really cool ideas, great utilisation of the entirely 2d medium, wonderful characters, and, of course, it had Pochita, a good, good boy.

And being me, I immediately compared Pochita (a contract-making animal mascot with enormous destructive potential) with Kyubey, from Puella Madoka Magic: The Latest Movie (a contract-making animal mascot with enormous destructive potential). Kyubey is exactly the kind of garbage who would look at the kind of contract Pochita got and say ‘well, if that’s what it takes to get that kind of power, I’m down.’

I made these using the pen tool in GIMP. That’s why everything is these smooth shapes, and largely things are intersected. I thought about putting both designs on a shirt facing each other like this, but the thing is, that would require me to go through the lighting on both of them?

I dunno, maybe if someone better than me at lighting told me a way to do it easier, I’d make a shirt or sticker of them looking at each other.

There are two designs; one that’s just very clean, simplified fanart of Pochita:

And one that’s about that impersonating asshole Kyubey:

I really like that this artwork of Kyubey involves a lot of substitution but doesn’t need to change much. Kyubey’s gold rings used here to represent the handle and his eyes are also extremely distinctive.

Personally, I might not have a Kyubey shirt, but I might get a badge.

You can get either design (Pochita or Kyubey) over on Redbubble.

I have a bunch of t-shirt designs that build on the meme of Loss. I think some of them aren’t so great, as shirts, any more, and are a little slack or lazy in their execution. Since I wear them to class, I decided I needed to update and add to those designs, so here’s another one.

Here’s the design, on a shirt:

You can get it on Redbubble.

As of when I write this, I am unvaccinated. Here in Australia, vaccination has happened on a schedule that we might conservatively call ‘a bit of a mess.’ Since February I’ve been aggressively checking the schedule to determine when I can get vaccinated, with an eye to being as soon as possible.

The category I belong to, according to our current government schedule, is ‘Balance Of Remainder,’ which is to say ‘everyone who isn’t old or a conservative politician.’ And so… time to cheer for the team.

Here’s the design, on a shirt:

You can get it on Redbubble.

Who are my shirts for?

Like, that’s the question you ask with anything you make, if you think about it, enough. Who would want this, and being able to conceptualise your audience is a skill that I try and impart on my students. Who then, are these designs for?

On one level, what I’m doing is graphic design for sometimes as few as one or two people that might enjoy the joke. Sometimes I’m making shirts that I want to wear to class. Sometimes, I’m making shirts for people who aren’t me. For example, I don’t need a they/them pronoun shirt.

This shirt is a shirt that’s very much for me.

You’ve maybe seen this kind of shirt before. Normally, this design is focused on starter Pokemon – three form pokemon that get soooo much attention and merch.

And here’s a shirt of a Pokemon I’m very fond of – Gligar, and the silhouette of the Gliscor it one day will become and terrorise metagames that are afraid of a beastly physical wall.

Here’s the design, on a shirt:

You can get it on Redbubble.

I thought a lot about this month’s shirt.

I mean, it’s the me month right? Am I going to put a logo on a shirt that you can put out there that shows off like… me? That seems weird. Plus, my current setup is a little… let’s say it’s branding obtuse. Like, go on and ask me what ‘press dot exe’ means sometime, except Shelf, who knows.

Anyway, I thought at first about making some kind of logo for myself, then I did a few dumb deep-cut jokes about game logos and then I thought about making fan merch for a game that obviously a lot of people care about but which is completely unrecognisable to even other fans.

Also, it’s the Me Month. So I wanted it to be really easy.

I actually wound up making three designs today (today!). I also almost mad a fan-design for Carcer, based on a drawing a friend made of a spooky ghost. But that’s their art, not mine, and so that got scrapped. Maybe some of those other designs will come up later. The fine thing, the most important thing:

I really wanted this month’s shirt to be easy.

Like, if I was going to do something for myself, today, I think it’d be giving myself a break.

So I made something that gives me nostalgia and which I know will probably never sell a second copy.

Here’s the design! It’s a 3.5 inch diskette and that is my handwriting. It’s meant to be like the disk that Johnny used to get the game in the book of the same name – complete with the fading text. It’s just a simple, small little thing, it wasn’t hard to make, and it reminds me of something that I care about a lot.

It also has a message that has more and more become part of my life. We’re the only people going to be saving us. It’s not coming from space and all.

Here it is on a shirt.

You can get it over on Redbubble.