Mycenean Mascots
It seems that this year's crop of JCL members are not to be noted for their artistic ability (and me the Graphic Arts chair! how embarrassing!), for when we did our annual "design the club t-shirt and win a free shirt" contest, not a one of them turned in a design that was actually finished and polished enough that I could take their drawing to the printer's and get the shirts made then and there. Most were very rough pencil drawings; a couple actually went to customink.com and designed something there...then printed out the little preview shirts and turned that in. Not nearly high quality enough to take to the local printer's. So, we picked a shirt anyway - one of the customink designs - and at our senate (club officers) meeting discussed what changes to make to it. Then - see above for lack of artistic ability in the membership - Magistra got drafted, or maybe I volunteered, to do the final design.
Of course I couldn't find exactly the same clipart from the design we chose, and the previews at customink aren't big enough to work in my own design. So it was either order from there or...improvise. I was searching here and there and all over for lion and tiger clipart. (The "winning" design had a lion and tiger on the front, a wolf on the back. Lion for HSE, tiger for FHS, wolf for Rome. Is it just me or do we have mascot overload?) Some of the designs I came across were nice statue lions, and that reminded me...
...of the Lion Gate. Mycenae. You know the one? (I've never been there to see it in person, or I'd insert my own photo here. Instead, go check out the link. Other people have been lucky enough.)
(By the way, that gate is sort of the one and only thing that was making me want to go on the IJCL trip to Greece next summer, before it got cancelled for lack of students signing up. Oh well! I still want to see the Lion Gate, though.)
So I printed out a Gate picture and started sketching. I've not done much sketching since back in the heyday of Terra Group, when I was sketching and colorizing profile pics and emblems for all our invented and not-quite-invented and outright-borrowed characters. But I rather like how this one turned out.
The Greek lions become the FHS tiger and the HSE Royals lion...and the column becomes the JCL torch emblem. :-)
Then, since the original shirt design had a wolf on the back (symbol for Rome...) I found pictures of - what else? - the Capitoline She-Wolf, i.e.:
and did this:
And I apparently still remember how to work the coloring in Paint Shop Pro, because I managed to turn these into line art (for the t-shirt printer):
And then into cartoon versions for Cafepress pretties (I am probably going to have a Mycenae Mascots mousepad soon...)
Finally...here's the front of the shirt that we will be ordering:
And the back (I didn't save one with the purple background, but it will be on a purple shirt):
The text is a play on this year's NJCL convention theme: "Non nobis solum nati sumus," which means "We were not born for ourselves alone" (from Cicero, and an awfully good theme if you ask me). Our t-shirt front translates: "We were not born for the lion and tiger alone..." and the back, "we were born for the wolf too!" And on the front, 2760-2761 A.U.C. is 2007-2008 in Roman years. :-)
I guess I'm kind of glad now that we didn't get any decent entries in the contest. It's been so long since I got to play with designs like this!
Of course I couldn't find exactly the same clipart from the design we chose, and the previews at customink aren't big enough to work in my own design. So it was either order from there or...improvise. I was searching here and there and all over for lion and tiger clipart. (The "winning" design had a lion and tiger on the front, a wolf on the back. Lion for HSE, tiger for FHS, wolf for Rome. Is it just me or do we have mascot overload?) Some of the designs I came across were nice statue lions, and that reminded me...
...of the Lion Gate. Mycenae. You know the one? (I've never been there to see it in person, or I'd insert my own photo here. Instead, go check out the link. Other people have been lucky enough.)
(By the way, that gate is sort of the one and only thing that was making me want to go on the IJCL trip to Greece next summer, before it got cancelled for lack of students signing up. Oh well! I still want to see the Lion Gate, though.)
So I printed out a Gate picture and started sketching. I've not done much sketching since back in the heyday of Terra Group, when I was sketching and colorizing profile pics and emblems for all our invented and not-quite-invented and outright-borrowed characters. But I rather like how this one turned out.
The Greek lions become the FHS tiger and the HSE Royals lion...and the column becomes the JCL torch emblem. :-)
Then, since the original shirt design had a wolf on the back (symbol for Rome...) I found pictures of - what else? - the Capitoline She-Wolf, i.e.:
and did this:
And I apparently still remember how to work the coloring in Paint Shop Pro, because I managed to turn these into line art (for the t-shirt printer):
And then into cartoon versions for Cafepress pretties (I am probably going to have a Mycenae Mascots mousepad soon...)
Finally...here's the front of the shirt that we will be ordering:
And the back (I didn't save one with the purple background, but it will be on a purple shirt):
The text is a play on this year's NJCL convention theme: "Non nobis solum nati sumus," which means "We were not born for ourselves alone" (from Cicero, and an awfully good theme if you ask me). Our t-shirt front translates: "We were not born for the lion and tiger alone..." and the back, "we were born for the wolf too!" And on the front, 2760-2761 A.U.C. is 2007-2008 in Roman years. :-)
I guess I'm kind of glad now that we didn't get any decent entries in the contest. It's been so long since I got to play with designs like this!