I drew a new design for this year's SPAMM t-shirt. The theme, as always, was to incorporate the annually elected mascot into the design somehow. The 2012 mascot were two cats from some anime I've never heard of, or care about.
This is the first design I've done since 2006, so take a look!
I think this really incorporates the current state of SPAMM and anime as a whole. Unfortunately, no one is current SPAMM voted for it, so it did not make it on a t-shirt. We could make our own, though.
Also, the design technically isn't finished because it doesn't have a logo, or a title.
While in college, I was a member and president of the anime club known as SPAMM. In 2003, we began making yearly t-shirts of our yearly mascot, and for the first 4 years I drew the design for each t-shirt. Then I graduated, and the club went on without me.
There's a somewhat growing reverence towards the newer generation of SPAMM kids, and how they have terrible taste in anime, and how they don't give a shit about alumni members, and blah blah blah. It's all very "get off my lawn" for the most part.
But anyway, here are my previous SPAMM t-shirt design going back in time.
For the sake of timeline continuity, it's important to note that SPAMM elections for officers and the mascot are in May. Then that mascot covers the following school year.
Also, my drawing style changed a little bit over the years. I began experimenting with heavier lines, and more ink to show more definition for parts of the subject that weren't showing up well. This really made things pop and stand up, especially for a simple two tone image. It began looking a little bit like a black and white comic book.
I developed this style through these yearly designs, and that's basically where I'm at now. I don't draw very often, though.
I graduated in December 2006, and that final semester was spent in Japan, so I wasn't really even around at all. This design was really the last creative contribution I had with SPAMM with our movie "completely" wrapped up.
Mina was our character this year. She is from the opening sequence of Densha Otoko, a J-Drama about an otaku, anime geek, who stood up for a "hot" girl on a train, he gets her number, and then details everything on the internet while asking for advice from like-minded otaku.
She only appears in the opening, which pays homage to Daicon IV, an animation produced by a group of nerds in college who would later create and found Gainax, and make Evangelion.
Katamari Damacy was released in late 2004 in the states, and it was hugely popular amongst the members of SPAMM. It easily won the vote of mascot for the fully school term.
For this drawing, I tried to incorporate tons of objects relating to anime, or Japan, or Platteville, or SPAMM in general.
On the schedule and showing throughout the entire 2003-2004 school year was Macross 7. An anime that follows the war between the humans and the protoculture. It was discovered that the protoculture (or whatever) could be defeated by music, so the band, Fire Bomber, flies around in mechs in space, and defeats the enemy by playing their music over and over again.
Guvuva is the little furry creature that hangs around the girl character.
This was the first year we did t-shirts. Up to this point, I don't think we even had elections for the SPAMM mascot, or entity. If we did, we never did anything with it.
After Jason won the election for SPAMM president, he wanted to make t-shirts, so we had a vote for an entity on the t-shirt. Domo-kun won. Then I offered to make the t-shirt, or they asked me to make the design. I was the publicity officer, who was in charge of advertisement, so the basically fell on my role.
For all these t-shirts, we just used the local screen printing shop in town. We pre-sold t-shirts for $10 (or was it $5?), then brought all of our stuff there. I really don't remember how much it cost, or how many we needed to sell to break even. The treasurer was in charge of all that.