Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Try me on, I'm very you

Alright, I'm doing it. I am starting to think about merchandising Precocious. It's scary! What in my strip is truly shirt-worthy? I present to you the first wave of ideas. Help me shape them into successful designs! Also, PLEASE tell me what you want to see! Since it's the fans that will be buying the shirts, the fans kinda need to let me know what they want to buy.


I know I want to do a Dr. Oven shirt, but what slogan does he get? A nice, happy SCIENCE! is all-purpose and lovely...


...the full bake sale line is more comic-specific, but it is still awesome. Actually, this would make a good bumper sticker just by itself.


Dionne's heart shirt is a perfect vehicle for a Dionne heart shirt! (You heard me.) I like this design a lot, even though I doubt many will want the shirt. If I can pull it off, I am also contemplating a Tiffany button shirt.

Other ideas I have come directly from the strips:

"If I give off the vibe of sweetness and innocence, it can be quite disarming!"

Unrestrained Creativity

"From chaos comes creativity; from creativity, chaos"

Eh, who knows? This whole merchandising thing is still at the "glimmer in the eye" stage. Let's find out what works!

5 comments:

Applejinx said...

Sure, I'll help, even when I'm too busy to comment I'm paying attention :)

I think the Dionne heart shirt is a win.

SCIENCE! while dramatically wielding a spatula is way better than THE BAKE SALE IS SCIENCE. With that sort, think: what would Adam of the Mythbusters be wearing? He wouldn't 'get' the bake sale reference, but the spatula SCIENCE is a standalone gag. Best if you can make the cartoon REALLY DRAMATIC LOOKING and clearly the wielding of a spatula. Without the spatula there's no gag. Half the gag is the fact that yes he probably CAN make the car get 200 mpg using only a spatula and 20 CC of ground-up mothballs...

From chaos comes creativity; from creativity, chaos is good. Also works with Tiffany Et's painting such as the infinite canvas image :)

Vibe of sweetness and innocence works well with the Autumn image it's coupled with, but I have a feeling it's too wordy for a shirt. That's why the spatula 'SCIENCE!' is such a win- one word and a funny image that produces more questions than it answers :)

I think you're gonna have some great shirts :)

Unknown said...

Heh, I feel as though I've helped influence you!

FIRST OFF: DITCH THE DIONNE RIGHT NOW. It gives both an overly girly and somewhat... "strange" vibe that your comic definetly does not have. A Tiffany shirt has definetly got to happen. As you may know, I am male, and I would definetly wear a tiffany shirt. Before a Dr. Oven I would do something with the main characters. Oh, and did I mention? Tiffany. That is all.

Christopher J Paulsen said...

I want to provide something for my feminine readers to wear! (Because I dearly hope they exist!) Dionne's design is different in tone because... it's Dionne. She plays up the girly stuff.

I sorta skipped over the generic cast t-shirt because it's obligatory and I wasn't up to working on it today. But, yes, I do plan on having one. Alternately, we could have a Suzette shirt for the girls: "Screw equality! It's our turn to dominate!"

Tiffany and then Autumn seem to be the most popular, so I have to design shirts for them. I think the unrestrained creativity one is a given for Tiff. After that, I'll have to play around. For Autumn's, how about "A leader in adorable crime"? It's another quote of hers and bit shorter.

Danny said...

The bake sale is science one is a nice one (I'd buy it in a heartbeat), I think I'd enjoy it a bit more if it were all on one line (and with no image). I'd like to give advice but I like to wear plain shirts, so it would not be helpful to pitch any ideas. Maybe Tiffany standing on the bottom of a white shirt, looking at it with a thing on her hand saying something about it being too clean or with a maniac look on her, waving a huge paintbrush or something.

Applejinx said...

A generic cast shirt is NOT obligatory if you have any desire to make real money with these shirts... the reason I lit up over the idea of the 'SCIENCE!' with a spatula shirt is that I think it strikes a broader chord and reminds me of Mythbusters.

It's all well and good to think of shirts as promoting the comic, but if you make it to any conventions and start selling the things, you will be VERY happy if you also have stuff that doesn't directly promote the comic but uses your comic art to just make an awesome tee- like BAR-1's shirts that aren't specifically Peter Is The Wolf but say furries anonymous- don't ask, don't tail ;)

Do NOT be afraid to pursue an idea that makes people go OMG WANT yet does not directly promote the comic...