Jamie Roberts

Jamie Roberts not only renders ultra-clean vector images of Ghost Rider, Cyclops and Captain America; he riffs on formats and styles and churns out series in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Whether his works are put together like propaganda posters, movie posters, portraits or simple egg-shaped midget variations of popular comic book characters, they always have energy, and his use of basic lines and forms should make a lot of artists question how efficiently they're using their pencils. - Comic Alliance

Roberts Blog This guy's work stands out to me. They're not simple flat vectors, they ping! I've be looking at his other work on his blog and I think that's the style I want to go for with the Fashion Hero brief.

Current Marvel T-shirts

This is last years selection of Marvel t-shirt's made for 'females'. It's from the collection aimed at girls/women aged between sixteen and twenty five. These are only sold on the Marvel website. (So I'm under the assumption you would have to be a fan to want to purchase one?)

I went through the collection to see which ones I would wear and which ones would be better suited towards my 12 year old sister who IS interested in boy's and dating. I then went around the studio and asked the girls which ones they would hypothetically wear. (Taking into account that there's a wide verity of girls and clothing styles mingling around.)

Yes! (Or at a push, it wouldn't make people cringe if they had them on. Another point that came up was that these looks as if they should be sold in places like Top shop and aimed at 13 year old girls. Not on the Marvel website itself and aimed at older readers who are actually interested in the characters)



No: Due to either their imagery or slogan:









(Ok, this ones only here because I really dislike phoenix...and Storm IS drowning. That's not very nice.)



The designs were made by Junk Food Design (Who focus on vintage 80's clothing...However, most of the art work has come from the 60's/70's era of comic books) Oh, my bad. You can also buy Superhero t-shirts from Junk food under: Women, Superheros. However, they are the DC comics and not the Marvel ones which I'm assuming can only be bought from Marvel.

In my opinion. The DC's ones are just as bad.

The problem I see is that guy's can pull off the full design t-shirt of wolverine slashing open deadpools throat (A t-shirt I wear to bed...for the simple fact that it's not made for my size or fit) But fashion for women isn't so bold.

And maybe it's just me but I want to see t-shirts with lesser known teams and characters on who still have the fan base to be able to be commercially possible. It might make people ask more questions: "Oh, whose that character" And a query is born and just possible a new reader whether it's a guy or a girl.

Needs More Glitter

(I had this posted over on my PPD blog but it's also appropriate for my fashion hero breif)

I found this great article while researching for my dissertation. My dissertation is focused upon how women are portrayed and stereotyped in comics books. Other media is also pending. (I have a bone to pick with Bayonetta.)

While my dissertation is focused on the actual portrayal of characters and how they fit into a media mostly dominated (I mean that in a literal term) by guys, I also want to focus on actual women consumers. This article deals with Marvel fashion and what was written to promote rather (in my own opinion) stereotypical and unflattering clothing. (Then again, how flattering can you be in a t-shirt proclaiming you went to the Xavier Institute....not that I didn't have one of those at 13)

From WWD Fashion Market News: "Consumer products team at Marvel is thinking big when it comes to females." Article: Link

"This one always gets me. Referring to women as “females” is dehumanizing, particularly when it’s contrasted with the use of terms like “men” or “guys”, rather than “males”. Both female and male are fine as adjectives, in moderation. However, when you want to use a noun to refer to female humans, “women” is better, both stylistically and politically, as a recognition of that very humanity. If you want a description for both women and girls, then “women and girls” is the way to go.

The fashion industry magazine in which this article runs was, by the way, originally titled Women’s Wear Daily.

The words “female” or “females” appear five times in the article, three as an adjective (twice as “female product”), and twice as a noun. Women turns up once, as “women’s apparel”. When men turn up, they are not “males”, but “guys”, in this truly wonderful quote:

“Since our core customer has always been guys, we need to be very careful when we introduce female product so that we don’t alienate our core,” said Paul Gitter, president of consumer products, North America, for Marvel Entertainment Inc. “What we have found through testing is that we haven’t alienated them, which gives us the OK to move forward with female product.”


Basically, when promoting products for women we must not forget who the true customers are: The men. That women are merely a bi-product in a media that is dominated by males and that as girls we should feel privileged that we're being included at all.

Or maybe that's just me.

Also, the use of the phrase "female products". This doesn't make me think of t-shirts and cute little heart pendants. It makes me think of bathrooms and pain.

So, just what are these "products"

"Also, anything that we can relate to current music trends does well. For instance, we have a T-shirt where all the superheroes were assembled into a band with a saying like, ‘I heart boys that rock.”

Hmm. I can really see me flaunting that in the studio. Can you? Because I'm 'female' surely that means I like cute girly things and want to date superheroes, not aspire to be them (Note: When I was 8 all I wanted to be was Franklin Richards of the fantastic 4). That's the subtext that I'm reading here. Do they think putting Captain America on a baby-tee will scare men away from the character?

As an 8 year old girl I was reading this:

(Pretty unerving. Couldn't find an image of this on the internet and had to drag out my older collection to scan it in.)

I also wanted to aspire to be Jay Guthrie and have my own robot:

(I bought this at a flea market in whitby when I was ten.)

The problems I see with fashion for women is treating them too much like a separate species. We're all the same nerds. Treat us as such.

Rogan Josh's Stunning Mod Art of Superheroes

Rogan Josh's gallery of personal creations looks like a one-man Marvel Masterpieces set, save a few DC and independently owned characters who have managed to inspire him. In the same way that Mark Grambau and Jamie Roberts like riffing off of simple concepts with flat color schemes, Rogan grabs potently symbolic arrangements and lets them do the talking.

I've posted some of his work before but I wanted to include some of his newer pieces. (That I have fallen in love with)

(I see Victor and Julian...suspiciously he still has his hands.)

(Because professor Xavier is a jerk.)

The Little Book of Hindu Dieties

Sanjay Patel is an animator and storyboard artist at Pixar. Came across his website and work GheeHappy on Pardon My Hindi. Tiny happy illustrations of Indian Gods, very child- friendly.

More over on his Sanjay Patel’s work: Link

According To

Came across these over on the Behance Network. The world according to the country's. A rather stereotypical way other countries perceive themselves and others.

The world according to italy

The world according to Germany

The World According to France

The world according to Bulgaria

I wish they where big enough to read the smaller print, but theses are the only sizes that are available on the site.

British Stereotypes

As Fred pointed out in the briefing crit last week, my target audience are foreigners to the country. More importantly they're ignorant foreigners who think the entirety of England is 4 people in London who all know each other.

I'm not saying every person who visits the country is ignorant. It's just a stereotype that's built up over the years. It really has no place any more apart from producing funny little video's like this one. (If you can sit through it without shouting at him to blow him nose then well done...I couldn't.)



The tittle say's "British stereotypes" but it's England he's focused upon. As English, we can take this with a pinch of salt. We're a nation that can laugh at ourselves.