T-shirt design: No Gi Oddity for Ground Control Sept 11th Manchester

Following the success of my previous design for Ground Control (Grappling Swamp Thing), the organisers asked me if I could design something connected to their brand name 'Ground Control' for their next tournament.

I pondered over this idea for a while as I'm not too keen on direct literal interpretations so I suggested the line from David Bowie's song, Space Oddity ("...Ground Control to Major Tom..."). They loved my quick sketch of the astronaut submitting an alien using a rear naked choke (the astronaut's legs are very close together but NOT crossed over). It was fairly straightforward to proceed to the vector drawn digital version you see above. Actually the original vector was designed to be all one colour - white - which would be cheaper to produce, however Jason at Ground Control said he did not mind paying a bit more for a colour version. I think he called it right and allowed me to be a bit more creative over shadow and detail.

Here's my original sketch (literally on the back of an envelope):

Thanks go to Matt from Scramble. He suggested I somehow make the No Gi Oddity text come alive a bit with some whizz bang graphics. I love old skool scifi TV shows like Blake 7 and 80's arcade games so the multiple overlapping effect (using the blend tool in Illustrator) is an homage to that side of popular culture.

This t-shirt is only available to online applicants who enter the Ground Control event in Manchester on September 11th. As one commentator kindly posted on Facebook: this t-shirt is worth the entry fee alone.
Ahh, bless.


:)