Behind the Scenes: Designing the To The Fools! T-Shirt (Patreon)

“Let me see...That's some good sake! This is how we drank when we won our battles.”

To The Fools! is both a celebration and a memento of our adventures in Ashina. 

We knew the journey would be arduous but we didn’t know it would take quite so long because of real-world events – it’s been a year unlike any other.

But we’re happy to finally release a new T-shirt, which you can buy here until midnight (UK time) on Friday, November 27th.

We wanted to give you a little glimpse into the work that went into the design, from early concepts to the final design that’s currently on sale.

I. Early Concepts

Like Retry Mission Crew before it, we knew we wanted the shirt to mark the end of this season of the show..

We always want any merchandise we put out to have a reason behind, rather than simply existing for the sake of it. (Lazy.) The way we make these shows takes time, and you spend months watching them week-to-week, so we think it’s nice to have something to commemorate that.

Below are the rough early ideas we put together and presented to each other.

Mission Sekiro

Krupa: The show takes a long time to make, and by the end, it always feels like we’ve been on a big journey and achieved something. The first Retry shirt aped the NASA mission patches for this very reason. (I’m not saying beating Dark Souls 2 is as hard as reaching the moon, but we’ve all got our own stuff on.)

So I toyed with the idea of this being a series of shirts. Just as NASA created a new patch for each mission, we could do the same. So this was my stab at incorporating elements from Sekiro into that existing style.

Cherry Blossom Retry

Rory: The designs I had were focused around reimagining the Retry logo with some of my favourite imagery from Sekiro. The first idea combined the resurrection cherry blossoms with Sekiro’s sword stuck in the pampas grass where he faced Genichiro.

As a variation of the first, the second design simply replaced the Retry arrow with a katana and sketched in the first two letters of Retry to match the show's opening title card.

To The Fools!

Gav: I’m constantly freaked out by the small things in FromSoft games that end up striking a chord with us in real life. There’s more obvious stuff, like the constant depiction of slugs, but as our intro has stated for years now, the show is about “three idiot friends, slowly losing their minds”. And I think “To the fools!” encapsulates that sentiment perfectly, and it’s become a bit of an unofficial motto of ours.

I had the idea for the sake cup and bottle whilst sitting in a lovely beer garden, and luckily I spend most of my time with an incredibly talented (and patient) artist called Clara Sinclair, who is very used to taking my strange ideas and working them up into beautiful pieces of art. 

Luckily for you, this time I put that art on a T-shirt instead of my skin.

II. Refining the Design

To The Fools!

We all felt the sake cup idea best captured the overall feeling of the series. 

We liked that it was an echo of our first shirt, Slug Life, but transformed by the world of Sekiro. We also – and you can probably tell by those final episodes – became quite fond of the phrase To The Fools!

We worked with Clara on refining the concept, making it look as elegant as booze from the Divine Realm should. Below are some of the early drafts and the options she presented us with.

Clara’s First Drafts

Cup Designs

Bottle Designs

Clara’s Second Drafts

Font Choices

Final Design

Clara Sinclair

Here's a little bit from Clara on the project and what it was like to draw a hairy slug.

What did you think when you heard the idea?

I genuinely thought it was an amazing idea before I even thought I’d be working on it. I’ve worked with Gav on a few tattoos now and I’ve learned to... have an open mind when it comes to the initial idea because it’s usually going somewhere fun.

Did you feel weird drawing a slug?

It wasn’t the fact of drawing a slug, it was the fact of drawing a hairy slug... now that’s a game changer. But I love your community, how much they love slugs, and how it’s become a thing. I’ve been lucky enough to meet some of your community and they’re a lovely bunch. 

I’ve even tattooed a slug on one of your (human) slugs before.

Did you need to do any research to make the art appropriate to the setting we’re going for?

Gav showed me bits and bobs of Sekiro art as you were filming the series just because he knew I’d like it, and it’s all absolutely beautiful, so it was nice to be able to do my rendition of that.

I could've spent hours looking at all the beautiful Sekiro artwork. Luckily the design spec was very direct about what RKG wanted from the T-shirt.

How much did you have to adapt your natural style to make it work for this design?

Even though I’m known for my ornamental and filigree work, I’m pretty versatile and I trained in a variety of design styles too. I’m not precious about having to stamp my filigree style on every piece of art I make, particularly when it’s a fun design like this one. I did manage to sneak some 'Clara'-style swirls in there though.

What was your favourite part of the design?

I’m always a fan of mixing heavy line work with soft shading whether that’s grey or dot shading, as I feel this creates a nice contrast and depth for a design.

Are we nice to work with? (No pressure.)

You guys had a very specific thing in mind and you’re good at putting that into words, so it was great working with you because I was always working with specifics. Often clients aren't  good at articulating what they want but that wasn’t an issue with you, and the whole process was a lot more fun because of it. 

I’m so happy with the shirt – it looks fantastic and I couldn’t be more proud of how it’s turned out.

Clara Sinclair 

III. Little Details

Krupa: I’m a big believer in little details. The cumulative effect of little details is massive. It makes the difference between something being cool to look at and something being truly special.

So I wanted to lace in some extra elements that would mean more to our community. There’s a couple of little visual nods to this series, but also the kanji we selected on the bottle has a deeper significance.

Gaman

I wanted to know what our show, Retry, would be called in Japanese – not just a straight translation. I didn’t want to Google Translate the word ‘Retry’ and see what the nearest Japanese equivalent would be. Languages aren’t codes. I wondered if there was maybe a Japanese language-specific concept that would do it greater justice – a concept that you simply can’t capture in a single English word. 

Basically, what we would’ve called the show if we were Japanese.

I started looking up concepts uniquely expressed in Japanese. I learned that Tsundoku (積ん読) is the act of acquiring so many books that they pile up unread – a cross between a hoarder and a bookworm. I learned that Kuidaore (食い倒れ)  means ‘to eat yourself bankrupt’ – a decadent love of good food and drink, a hunger so great that you’d spend all your money on it.

Then I came across Gaman (我慢): an extreme level of perseverance beyond one’s comfort level. 

Perfect. So that's inscribed on the bottle on the back of the shirt. Seems about right.

So that’s just a little behind-the-scenes look at how we came up with and developed our latest shirt, To The Fools! 

We hope you love it as much as we do.

RKG x

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To The Fools! It’s available until midnight (UK time) on Friday, November 27th from everpress.com/RKG.

The T-shirt is 100% soft organic cotton, fair trade, and carbon neutral. The design is screen printed, ensuring brightness and durability. It’s available in unisex (XS - 5XL) and women's fitted style (S - XL).