MUSKRAT RAMBLINGS
Meat the Boss New T-shirt
Posted by John
OK. So I’ve said this before: I often use Twitter (where I can be found as “Muskrat_John”) as a sounding board for ideas.
Shoot out a quick gag, and sit back and wait to see if there’s any response. Some ideas I think are gold play to the sound of crickets chirping. Others seem to genuinely work.
Yesterday, I tweeted a silly little thought that popped into my head: “MEAT IS MURDER: Quick! Eat the evidence!” My Smiths fandom may have had something to do with this. Ten years of Drawing sick, sick Munchkin cards may have been another factor.
The replies were great – many revolving around the “OMFG! I would SO buy a t-shirt of that!” theme we cartoonists so love to hear.
So many so, that I – frankly – panicked. “Holy carp! I just sent a Not Bad t-shirt idea out into the Interwebs, all on its own! Poor little thing! Better come up with an actual T-shirt STAT.”
OK, so I knew there already was a “Meat is Murder. Tasty, tasty murder” t-shirt out there. But it struck me that this was different enough to go for it. Anyway, I wasn’t sure it would make a great Dork Tower, and I wanted to do something with it.
So, about 30 seconds on Photoshop produced this:
“Needs something,” I thought to myself. But what?
Of course! CUTE LITTLE ANIMALS! About to meet their doom on some plate, yes, but CUTE LITTLE ANIMALS, nevertheless!
What doesn’t go better with Cute Little Animals? Especially T-shirts about eating them?
Another half-hour or so, and this was the result.
Quickly, I sent it off to OffWorld Designs, who loved it (I’m taking their words at face value here – I don’t THINK they were being sarcastic: “Oh, John, we just LOOOOOOVE that T-shirt of yours. Oooooo, you’re SOOOOOOOO clever”), and promised to get it done up ASAP. Women’s cut shirts, too. NIFTY keen!
It just got me to thinking how cool this job is, sometimes. And how none of this would have happened even ten years ago.
Well, it MIGHT have happened.
Just not all in the space of one hour.
From weird idea to T-shirt: 60 minutes. DONE!
Thank you, Interwebs.
Thank you, Brain Trust.