Sometimes it’s tricky to pin down where an idea actually comes from. I don’t mean the end product, but the original spark. I don’t really have that lightbulb-goes-on “Aha!” moment. Maybe it’s just from following so many YouTube-algorithm rabbit-holes. I was playing around with Photoshop, all my recommendations seemed to be on making Brutalist-style posters (I guess that’s what the cool kids are into). Somehow that changed into making a vintage-looking t-shirt design.
Being a Gen-X’er, it’s been inevitable I fell for the nostalgia trends happening now. Accepted wisdom seems to be it’s roughly 20 years, but the Synthwave and Vectorheart I’m into run a little further back. I can now add nostalgia for VHS-era anime to the list.
I can’t get into the post-Pokemon/One Piece PG era we’re in now (if I hear the word “Isekai” one more time, I will go crazy and take you all with me). Give me the pre-Internet era, before the Sub vs Dub debate when you couldn’t choose which you got. Give me the gratuitous violence and swearing of Manga Video. Give me “Ninja Scroll”. Give me “Fist of the North Star”. Give me “Cyber City Oedo 808”, which I got on Blu-Ray a while back and loved as much as when I taped it of Channel 4, back in the pre-historic past.
This is what I made the t-shirt design of. Not like there’s a lot of merch out there. The character art rules, but the logo is just generic text, so I found a YouTube tutorial on retro text and T-shirt design.
Downloaded a copy of the character art from the cover of the Blu-Ray. A couple of hours later, I had this:
Had a T-shirt printed with it on that came out… OK. Still, a fun project I might retry with a different subject at some point.