THIS SHIRT DESIGN CONTAINS SPOILERS. DEAL WITH IT PINK BOY.
First, this is technically not about gaming and doesn't belong in this blog. Sure, the subject of the shirt is gaming, and I'm making it to wear to a gaming convention, but it's not gaming. It's an art project. Still, I'm guessing this process will be more interesting to some of you than discussion of games I'm playing right now. If it's not, skip this post.
Second, a disclaimer. This is amateur design. With as much time as I've spent around web interfaces and mucking with GIMP and Photoshop, I haven't done anything approaching serious art since freshman year of high school, and I was bad at it back then.
Third, I hate everything I have ever done, am doing, and will ever do. If I don't hate it, it's done and needs to be released before I change my mind and hate it again.
This I still hate.
Front
The front is based on the heads up display from Republic Commando. The borders are transparent. You can see by how they get brighter where they intersect. The text does not have a back reflection like the borders. This is accurate to the game interface, but looks rather odd in this design. I'm not fixing it.
For those not familiar with the game, these are the members of Delta Squad. You play as Boss (RC-1138). Your second in command and computer expert is Fixer (RC-1140). Your explosives expert is Scorch (RC-1262). And the fourth box stands empty to indicate the absence of Sev (RC-1207). The colors used for Fixer and Scorch are taken directly from the game. The color for boss is extrapolated from screen shots that show orange markings on his armor.
It may seem odd that there's so much empty space at the top. That's because I want the design to be in the middle of the shirt and Printfection's process starts pretty high up. I have the image files for other shirts I've made with them and am using those files and the shirts made from them to position the design.
Back
The text on the back states the imperative of the game. It uses the red color which designates Sev in the game interface, brightened and saturated slightly to better offset the blue of the game logo. When the game ends you technically have at least one mission that you'll be required to do before going after Sev. But recovering Sev will be a primary emotional focus of the second game. Every time I read those words, part of me says "#*$& yeah we are. Just give the order, and get out of our way."
The fact that the game establishes that there will be at least one mission before a rescue attempt begins, and the way Sev was established as having some serious blood lust in the first game leads me to believe he was being set up to become an antagonist in the sequel. The phrase "going after" is meant to have two meanings. We're recovering him. We're hunting him. Also, the commandos may be coming to realize that the Empire are the bad guys and may decide to join Sev, which would add a third meaning. I can almost hear Scorch in my head. "I hate to say it, Boss, but the psycho's starting to make sense."
The large number two, floating between the name of the game and the imperial symbol in the background was made using a font called Anklepants. Some nice person on the internet (Ray Larabie) took the time to make a font based on the Republic Commando title. I've done a fairly amateurish job of giving it a bevel, some texture, and some splashing / scarring to make it look like the rest of the logo. It looks okay at this resolution, but I'll probably need to take another pass at it for the final version. Their texturing looks like splashing and charring and scraping, possibly a reference to the way the game shows cracks and blood on the player's face shield. My texturing looks like scribbles. :P
Most of the text also looks terrible, even at this small size. The only resource I've found for the "OrbitBold" font LucasArts created is an Unreal texture file. Because it's a bitmap, it looks terrible at larger sizes. I've downloaded a free font editing program and will teach myself how to use it to create a true type version of the font. It'll be more work than just massaging the text I need by hand, but it will scale perfectly and give me more flexibility to move stuff around. And it will be a cool thing to put on the net for others to use when I'm done with it. Plus I haven't done anything remotely technical in a long time, so it'll be good for my self esteem. :)
The positioning on the back is subject to change. Originally I wanted the text higher, to go between the shoulder blades. But then the logo would be warped, unless I separated the two with some blank space, which seems like it would make the back of the shirt feel sparse. I'll think about it some more. It may just be that no t-shirt hangs well on me. :P
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