T-shirt No. 1 - Motorbike T-shirt.

​Initially, I created all of my T-shirt designs in GIMP, but I wanted to take things to the next level and produce something far more intricate. I had several concepts floating around in my head, but I simply didn't have the artistic ability to turn them into reality.
My first concept was a new motorbike T-shirt.
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The idea:

I wanted an image of someone riding a Suzuki DR-Z400 through the Australian bush.
Since I didn't have any suitable photos of myself, I borrowed one from the interwebz as the basis for the concept. It wasn't exactly what I was looking for, but I found a photo of a rider on a DR-Z400 stopped in the middle of a dirt road. As I didn't own the image, I made substantial changes to ensure the final design became its own original artwork. I wasn't creating the shirt for commercial resale, but I still wanted to avoid simply reproducing someone else's photograph.

My first step was to ask ChatGPT to convert the image into a black-and-white comic book illustration, which matched the style I had in mind.
From there, I removed the Alpinestars branding from the rider's jersey and replaced it with my Explorerist logo. I also removed a few distracting details, added a race number to the bike's side plate, and inverted the image colours so it would work better on the black T-shirt.
Although it looked good, something still wasn't quite right.

Then it hit me: I much prefer the look of manga artwork over traditional Western comic books.
So I went back to ChatGPT and had it rework the image into a clean manga style. That completely changed the feel of the design and was much closer to what I had envisioned from the beginning. By this stage, the artwork had evolved so significantly that it had become an original illustration rather than a stylised copy of the original reference photo.
The finishing touch was adding some Japanese text. ChatGPT enthusiastically embraced the manga theme and even included furigana, which was a little more authentic than I had anticipated! After a bit of back-and-forth tweaking the wording and layout, I finally achieved the look I was after.

With the artwork complete, it was back into GIMP to add a rectangular border with rounded corners. (No, Apple—despite the Samsung court case, you didn't invent rounded rectangles!)
The final step was the front of the shirt. I wanted my Explorerist logo to match the manga aesthetic on the back, so I once again turned to ChatGPT to transform it into a manga-style graphic.

With that, my first T-shirt design was complete.

T-shirt No. 2 - Gunnie T-shirt

The second T-shirt followed much the same process as the first. Once again, I had a clear concept in my head, but this time I already knew the finished design had to be in a manga style.

The Idea

If I was going to embrace manga, I wanted a character with unmistakable Japanese roots to represent the Gunnie trade. What better place to start than Astro Boy?

As before, I sourced an Astro Boy image from the interwebz as the starting point for the concept. To make it obvious that the character was an armourer, I wanted him holding some recognisable trade items. I found an image of a Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) for one hand and suggested a spanner for the other.

Of course, Astro Boy is a trademarked character, so I couldn't simply use him. Instead, I asked ChatGPT to transform him into a new manga-style character that captured the same spirit without infringing on copyright. There were a few hiccups along the way—the spanner wasn't being held correctly—so I worked with ChatGPT to refine the pose until it looked natural. During this process, the military clothing also found its way into the design.

Astro Gunnie was born!

This time I fully embraced the manga aesthetic by keeping the furigana alongside the kanji, as it helped explain the slogan. If you're curious about what it says, feel free to point Google Lens at it.

My wife also made a great suggestion. The star on the character's sleeve had to go. The Explorerist logo was a little too intricate to reproduce well at T-shirt size, so I replaced it in GIMP with my bomb logo. It was a small change, but one that made the design both cleaner and more personal.

The front of the T-shirt also needed a matching manga-style logo. I already had one that I'd designed in GIMP for an earlier Gunnie shirt, so I updated the font to better suit the manga theme before asking ChatGPT to convert it into the same illustration style as the artwork on the back.

With that, my second T-shirt design was complete.

Astro Gunnie isn't finished yet, though. Another piece of Astro Gunnie artwork is currently making its way from the United States as I write this. Watch this space; I'll reveal it as soon as it arrives.

I have designed a new T-Shirt. This one is a dig at the BS that comes from the mouth of Donald Dump and his cronies!

​I bought a new pair of motorbike gloves today — the DriRider RX Adventure (Summer) gloves.

The reason I thought it was time for new gloves was because of the issues I’ve had with the others. The Rjay gloves (black) use neoprene around the wrist. Although they’re comfortable, the neoprene has started to fall apart from pulling them on. The Fly gloves (black and orange) felt great in the shop and fitted nicely at first, but once my hands got hot and swelled, they became difficult to take off and put back on. On top of that, you can see they only stitched the Velcro at the tip, and the rest has pulled away — anything to save a buck.
Hopefully, the RX Adventure gloves will solve all those problems.

The old gloves will be kept as spare gloves that I will pack when I go on multi day adventures. Just in case I lose one, or they get muddy and wet.

I designed another shirt.

Expanding my line of clothes, I designed this Explorerist photography truckin hat. It cost a bomb, and was made in the UK. But all in all, I think it worked out cheaper than getting it from Australia. ☹️
My ultimate goal, would be to have one 3D embroided, with a slightly larger emblem, but I am unsure whether I could afford to get one made up.

Here’s another one of my one-off designs. This time, I’ve laid out what I see as the equivalency between motorbikes and bicycles — something that’ll likely spark a few debates.
On the front, there’s a small explorerist emblem over the left chest.
What do you think of the chart — do you agree, or would you draw the lines differently?