Aether Shirt Campaign

Taking my experience designing for niche indie video game Rivals of Aether 2, I took it upon myself to create designs for t-shirts of the individual characters of that games franchise. These shirts were sold publically by me on Etsy along with social media marketing on my socials accounts. These shirts hit an initial burst of $700 revenue and climbing with only half of this cast of characters as I actively update and post about the shop to increase its traction over time.

What are they?

These designs are made to depict characters from the Rivals of Aether 2 video game. It is a competitive game enjoyed by many and as such people tend to get invested or connected to the character they play. These shirts aimed to capitalize on that by creating depictions of each character that stand out as something cool to showcase your enjoyment of the game or character. These were designs solely posed, rendered and composited by myself using the official models of the in-game characters. I used a production company called Tapstich to mass produce these shirts for automatic and widespread sale.

How are the Designs Made?

The production of these designs is mostly completed using Blender 3D. First I import the models from the game and focus on the posing of the character. It is important to get everything anatomically correct while still producing a dynamic and striking pose that would look good in motion. After the completion of the posing I move to the lighting. Utilizing a combination of Blender's light objects as well a unique shader node setup to simulate the rim lights I can create a style for the lighting that stands out even from the game itself to create something even more dynamic. From there I render out the image and bring it into Photoshop. From here I add any color grading modifiers and slight composition touchups to the render. On top of this I add a grunge texture to more closely match the style of the shirt it's being produced on. And lastly I add the typography to the background to complete the design. You can see below the different stages of the design along with my Blender 3D setup.

The designs are then sent off to the production company to produce two versions. The first is the main intended shirt the design was made for, the oversized snow-washed cotton shirt. Additionally I added a basic cotton t-shirt as a cheaper and more standard option for people not looking for the initial one. You can see these shirts below.

Promotion & Individual Designs

In order to sell these shirts they needed to be advertised. I posted promotions for them on my social media accounts to showcase the shirts and encourage people to by them. I used the production company's supplied renders of the designs on the shirts to more accurately portray the product. You can see below each of the designs I made as they appear on the shop.

Absa

Clairen

Orcane

Kragg

Fleet

Etalus

La Reina

I continue to update this shop with new shirts over time and took this account from nothing to a growing client-base in a niche market. This shop in it's debut month made approximately 20% more sales than the average Etsy shop in its first month. As it continues to grow, I learn more ane more about e-commerce markets and how to propperly establish advertising campaigns for a growing business.