Sinister Studios Games
Merchandise
Someone once described the currency of the internet in shirts. They said that if something is popular enough then it will always have a shirt made and people will support it. Therefore I thought it was important to ensure we had our own shirts. But first I needed to look into what other shirts have been made for a similar style of genre to what we were making.
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I previously went into Resident Evil and its marketing strategy showing their many shirt designs, however now I need to go deeper into what we can use for our game.
The games used for the shirt research are; Five Nights at Freddy's, Bendy and the Ink Machine, The Evil Within 2, Silent Hill and Dead Rising.
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Each of these games are horror games, each of them with their own focus within the game however most of the shirts actually try to characterise their antagonists. Our game is in a similar position where we have an antagonist however th story will be something slowly explored throughout the game and so marketing the story may not be the best or most effective tactic. Instead it may be worth attempting to market the specimen character itself.
This is the design I worked up, I decided that showing the Specimen looking over the shirt with his arms out would be the best look for him, however I also understand that horror means that you should not fully show off the character and that is why I obscured him through what looks like scratches. This allows people to make up what those scratches could be themselves, be they an attempt to leave a room or perhaps an attack on a person.
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I also decided to add the Sinister Studios logo onto the back of the shirt because it allows people to walk around showing off the studio name, this also applies to if we would work any events, it means that our game and studio are both recognisable right away.
A second shirt designed was with the intended idea of using the signature look from the Specimen as his shirt is all torn and disgusting looking. While keeping this in mind I thought that rather than have it look realistic as some kind of guts spewing out look we should instead make it look more cartoon and easier on the eyes. This will save in printing cost and also look more acceptable.
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That is why the one on the left is more cartoonist than the one on the right. This is a prototype as I am not an amazing artist and I will pass this design along to one of the creative guys in order to get their opinion on the shirt and how they might make it clearer and better.
Another key item that can be sold as a part of a video games bundle or merchandise is a mug. I decided to go for a full on black design for the backing of the mug and use the studio logo in the middle to separate the two designs.
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I also decided to have a little more fun with the design of the mug, I done this by having the Specimen trying to climb into the mug to get at whatever liquid is inside the mug. It does not break the character as what we know from the Specimen is that he is driven by the food and whatever primal desires that comes to mind, so having him climb the mug can be seen as comical and canonical. Due to the way RedBubble.com works I was able to add my own design to a mug and see how it would look when printed, therefore I was able to take this image and use it as a concept for what the mug will look like.