(Tee)naka Reina

Two nights I got one of those random inspiration bursts. I'd have them a lot in life, especially in my room; its very inspiring. Anyway lets talk about my breakthrough into apparel design. I was thinking how much fun Hello!Project Tour shirts are, but they are very pricey to get in the US ($40-$80+) And some designs aren't even nice! I had an idea to make a shirt, It started as just a Reina fan shirt, but then I look at the design and thought to myself "This design is pretty versatile" so I started making one for Eri and now Ai. I spent about eighteen nearly straight hours, and went through about twelve drafts before coming to the final design. You can find them here at my spread shirt store. I kinda liked it, but I have to charge a bit more so I can get a little personal commission. Of course 100% of that design commission goes right back into Hello!Project. I have a ton of ideas, once I'm done with this "Musume Debut" series of shirts, I plan on making a Mano Erina shirt, and the a Reina 20th Birthday shirt. I can only ask the readers that are fans to support me with your support I can open up my own online shop and give everyone better prices! But for know I have to stick with spreadshirt until my ticket is paid off. If you readers have any suggestions on a shirt (or any apparel) You can send me ideas through one of my contact methods below.

(Left: Kame Eri shirt, Right: Tanaka Reina shirt)

I guess I'll talk a bit about the design process for those who are interested. I started to get ideas sitting in chair look out my window. And I guess all I ended up daydreaming about was a giant Musume (娘。). Wrapped around my chair is a hoodie, and then it snapped. Since summer is ending it would be great to have a type of outerwear themed of Morning Musume. I went to spreadshirt after visiting a few other sites, something about that one drew me to it. I saw the options they had and it was free so I jumped onto Photoshop CS3 and created a graphic to put on the back of a Red track jacket. I was really excited, but when it was all done I was unhappy; It was cool to look at but it was just dull. And my friend brought up the fact the Hello!Online had alread made a similar design for their Anime Expo shirts. Even so I wanted to use the Musume (娘。) for my design. I started playing around in photo shop and came up with my first draft graphic after a few hours:

I used a blue stroke effect on the Musume (娘。) and the I noticed the amount of space with the font, I decided to squeeze Reina's name in Japanese curving the shape of the dot. I decided after to type it horizontally in English. I was really happy with the results, but something still seemed a bit bland about it. I thought about different things, but the one idea I had about themeing it about the members debut won me over. So next came this:

I was pretty happy I got to use the vector I made of Reina's signature, and it started to feel like an official shirt. With this I thought I was finally complete with the back half of the shirt, but once I applied it felt weird. If you were to view the shit from a distance it would look very bad (If you walk a distance from your screen you can understand what I mean). I had plenty of space below the graphic. I decided to transfer the "2002 DEBUT" and "Shabondama" below the Musume (娘。) And I did some sizing and spacing adjustments which brought me to Beta 3:

Once again I was happy for the progress; I applied it to the shirt once more, I stared and I started to notice another error, it probably wouldn't be a big deal to most of you. Do you notice how close Reina's signature and subgroup names are to the Musume? That was bothering me, a lot. I decided to make two separate graphics, spacing the subgroups and the Musume out. (Because there is a 3000x3000px limit on the site for graphics I had no choice but to make them two separate.) I also wanted to change the layout the subgroup names were placed around the signature. When I was all finished I was very very happy. I felt finally I reached the end. Indeed it was. But it was just the back the was over!

Hahaha did anyone catch that the year of Reina's debut was 2003 and not 2002!? Don't worry it already fixed on the shirt you would buy. Anyway I tried various different styles for the front, I don't really want to post them all up because I have to get back to work. I did go about four different designs: A heart with Reina's name in it, A music note vector with Morning Musume, that same graphic but with her name and signature in the note as well. Then finally I stopped and said, hey lets use that dot from the back and place it on the front left! So I did, and I wrapped Morning Musume around the bottom.

Other than that my shirt design was done, Its easy to adjust the design for each member but it's still time consuming. I really hope you all enjoy it. If your favorite member isn't up yet it will be sometime within these few weeks.