SofaMan
31st July 2009, 11:45 PM
Well, I've put forward a t-shirt design, and I've received valuable feedback from many of you, but I want to get a gauge of it's overall popularity before posting it as an actual purchasable option.
Invariably, no design is going to please everyone. Some of the feedback I received was inevitably contradictory, and I needed to resolve that with my own design judgment. Having said those things, there's no point making any t-shirt available if virtually no-one is actually interested in buying it. Hence the poll. The design you are voting on is posted below:
http://users.adam.com.au/comfortzone/ozformers-tshirt-1.5a.jpg
To explain some of my design choices:
I used Metroplex because I think the link between us as a community and a robot city is a good one. I also like the Aerialbots connecting to Metroplex and the idea of the community connecting ("connecting since 1996"). It's not perhaps the iconic connection that using someone like Optimus Prime might have given, but I think that a visual representation of our community should spark questions and conversations, giving us an opportunity to introduce others to what we love, but still retains some mystery, almost in a 'secret handshake' kind of way - "If you know why we used Metroplex, then you're one of us".
I deliberately didn't use any Transformer typefaces because they're mostly not really very good. I tried a couple of modern 'techno' type fonts before arriving at a digital/bitmap style.
I used the yellows rather than the red/pink so that the design would integrate visually with the OzMatrix without jarring colour differences.
I quite like the illustrations from the old G1 instructions. They have an emotional resonance for me in the way that more dynamic comic illustrations or box art don't have; once you had access to these drawings, you were playing with the toy. I like the idea that others feel the same way, and that this drawing might create a personal connection. Secondly, they don't date quite as rapidly as some other types of illustrations, being essentially technical drawings.
It's just front-of-shirt art because RedBubble (http://www.redbubble.com) doesn't have any capacity to print on sleeves or backs of t-shirts. Sorry. They have other awesome things like good quality shirts in a range of colours and sizes that get printed on demand.
I know Metroplex is around the wrong way - it's the only way that I could get Metroplex and the OzMatrix to be facing in the same direction and still both look like what they are supposed to be. The OzMatrix wouldn't have looked like Australia anymore if it was flipped over, whereas Metroplex is still recognisably Metroplex.
I didn't include faction symbols because a) there are a lot of them, b) people identify with different factions, and I didn't want to be seen to be privileging any (despite choosing an Autobot, but hey), c) I didn't want the design to get too busy and d) I wanted to further minimise the admittedly already small risk that Hasbro may take exception to this design.
Invariably, no design is going to please everyone. Some of the feedback I received was inevitably contradictory, and I needed to resolve that with my own design judgment. Having said those things, there's no point making any t-shirt available if virtually no-one is actually interested in buying it. Hence the poll. The design you are voting on is posted below:
http://users.adam.com.au/comfortzone/ozformers-tshirt-1.5a.jpg
To explain some of my design choices:
I used Metroplex because I think the link between us as a community and a robot city is a good one. I also like the Aerialbots connecting to Metroplex and the idea of the community connecting ("connecting since 1996"). It's not perhaps the iconic connection that using someone like Optimus Prime might have given, but I think that a visual representation of our community should spark questions and conversations, giving us an opportunity to introduce others to what we love, but still retains some mystery, almost in a 'secret handshake' kind of way - "If you know why we used Metroplex, then you're one of us".
I deliberately didn't use any Transformer typefaces because they're mostly not really very good. I tried a couple of modern 'techno' type fonts before arriving at a digital/bitmap style.
I used the yellows rather than the red/pink so that the design would integrate visually with the OzMatrix without jarring colour differences.
I quite like the illustrations from the old G1 instructions. They have an emotional resonance for me in the way that more dynamic comic illustrations or box art don't have; once you had access to these drawings, you were playing with the toy. I like the idea that others feel the same way, and that this drawing might create a personal connection. Secondly, they don't date quite as rapidly as some other types of illustrations, being essentially technical drawings.
It's just front-of-shirt art because RedBubble (http://www.redbubble.com) doesn't have any capacity to print on sleeves or backs of t-shirts. Sorry. They have other awesome things like good quality shirts in a range of colours and sizes that get printed on demand.
I know Metroplex is around the wrong way - it's the only way that I could get Metroplex and the OzMatrix to be facing in the same direction and still both look like what they are supposed to be. The OzMatrix wouldn't have looked like Australia anymore if it was flipped over, whereas Metroplex is still recognisably Metroplex.
I didn't include faction symbols because a) there are a lot of them, b) people identify with different factions, and I didn't want to be seen to be privileging any (despite choosing an Autobot, but hey), c) I didn't want the design to get too busy and d) I wanted to further minimise the admittedly already small risk that Hasbro may take exception to this design.