The "Smoking Asian Lady" shirt has always been a favorite. Like the "Dead Fish" shirt, the image turns up a couple of times in different sizes and on different shirts. What was the original source of this image, if you don't mind sharing. I have heard that the shirts were made using iron-on transfers - is this right? Some of them definitely look silk screened. I've made a couple for my own use (they get used on "Firefly Fridays at work - like tomorrow) and I have also purchase a couple of the QMX shirts. The ones that I have made are not available commercially and are based on my own interpretation of the screen used designs - yours, apparently.
Well, I should have started with this, but THANKS! for contributing to the depth of the texture on one of my favorite shows.
David
The smoking Asian lady. That's an interesting tale. The image was brought to me for another purpose, but we couldn't get legal to sign off on its use. Or we did, but not in time, but it's likely the first, since we didn't use it. So the smoking Asian lady sat there in my files, and was simply neglected.
I wasn't hired for Serenity, but I did have some phone meetings with a producer (name I cannot recall) who was trying to verify whether or not everything on my discs (it's a work for hire for Fox, I don't own my work at this point!) was all produced by me, nothing reused or that could not be considered as a resource modified sufficiently by me, etc.
I said something to the effect of "Yes, every single thing EXCEPT the picture of the smoking Asian lady. It's probably a good idea not to use that."
So then we see a smoking Asian lady. Nice work, dudes. Maybe they got it clear? I don't know.
Yes, all the shirts were iron-on transfers. We did them very last minute. Shawna had a great idea that Jayne would be kind of a doofus in some ways, and wear the equivalent of those "Big Johnson" or "Bad Boy" shirts that a lot of guys were wearing at the time. So our goals were to hit all the cheesy notes, like GUN and some weird sports team FIGHTING ELVES. I think Blue Sun was screened since it was one color, and we knew we were going to see a lot of them. Of course, if you hadn't noticed, the first appearance is transliterated and wrong. HA! So... Silk-screen AGAIN.
The QMX shirts are great... the Fighting Elves one even has the little bits of white that should have been cut out of the transfer. We were a first season show... There was only five of us in the art department/design team. I was there at least 13 hours a day every day. And I loved it, especially seeing the shirts living on with such ferocity!
