To took just a few things to make: a black shirt, iron on transfers for dark colors, iron, ink jet printer, pics from the web. Take all of these, apply heat, pressure and an X-acto knife and you have a winning shirt. I doubt I'll make another since this one didn't turn out great. I had to make this specific design myself because I loved these panels of the comic and the official one wasn't quite as deliberate. You can see their design here:
The shirt was all done "by hand" so I had control over as much of the quality and shape as possible. It's a medium cuz I bought a black shirt that fit me just right, the design is precisely what I was looking for because I picked it out and trimmed it up in illustrator a bit, and the quality is great since I put it all together just the way I wanted. The ONLY problem that I didn't foresee was the iron on crinkling up like it did. I've done a few iron on "experiments" and they never turn out like this after just one wash! I think it's from the "paper" being such a large congruous piece, as opposed to having it all cut up in smaller shapes/pieces.
The pictures are 2 panels from a comic called Nedroid. The character is Party Cat, he likes to party. On the front panel he's saying, "I just feel lately your parties have not been up to par" and on the back he's got his paw on his chin and he finishes, "...ty". When I first read it I was dying of laughter and pretty much made the shirt on the spot. Rarely do I get so inspired so I just went with it. The quality would have been much better with just one color screened on a black shirt, but that's clearly out of my budget.
Obviously I want to wear this around people who know who Party Cat is or who have read Nedroid. That's nearly impossible to pull of so I have to settle for option two: people who are open to new webcomics. Now, while that seems like a broad/vague set it can be narrowed down with people who spend 4+hrs a day online, are creative types, are often very bored, and maybe are already up to date on a couple webcomics to start. Failing that, I like to just wear it to parties. Ya know, to have a tongue in cheek gag where the party that you are currently at clearly could be better -maybe 20% cooler-.
The first time I wore this to a party, it was new -without any cracks- and was well received. There were actually quite a few Party Cat fans who got the reference! I was even asked where I bought the shirt from, which I smugly got to reply that I made it -one of a kind-. The next time was at my own party I believe, which added yet another layer to the joke -implying that my party is awesome and yours need some work-. The iron on started to fail there as sitting in the plastic chairs began to tear at the design, which you can see as little black marks on the back. While wearing this around casually, I've had a few people say that it's "a cool shirt" without any context or knowing the character at all -a good sign!-.
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