UNI-COOL: ON BRIAN ALFRED AND NAMCO/UNIQLO’S PAC-MAN T-SHIRT LINEUP
Apparently in the rush to cover Uniqlo’s larger games T-shirt initiative, I completely neglected to mention one subset of their crossover wares: a line of Pac-Man shirts released in partnership with Namco to promote the game’s 30th anniversary.
Normally I might not go back in time to retroactively cover something that’ll be harder to track down now than it would have been then, though I’m going to go ahead and use it as a good excuse to focus on the design at top left: the cityscape shirt created by Offworld favorite studio artist Brian ‘Paintchanger‘ Alfred.
It was actually via Alfred that I re-discovered the line-up, who posted that the shirt was not only still available at Uniqlo’s SoHo store, but is also currently importable (and affordable) from Malaysia, here.
Alfred’s design is right in-line with the signature style that’s brought him acclaim for the past several years: mural sized ‘photo-real’ landscapes reduced to superflat vectors, as seen in the video above.
As also seen in the video above — which features an E*vax, Lullatone, Jon Sheffield, and I am Robot and Proud score — he’s traditionally partnered with a number of fantastic music names for accompanying (and now exceedingly rare) compilation/gallery catalog CDs, including the above, alongside Pulseprogramming, Loscil, and Nobukazu Takemura (who you might know from his wicked/epic/utterly unrecognizable Yo La Tengo remix).
You can see all of the participating artists in the Pac-Man line up (including Kentaro Kobuke and Carlos ‘Dzine‘ Rolon’s designs, pictured at top) via Uniqlo, see larger shots of all the shirts at the company’s store, and see more examples of Brian Alfred’s work via his Paintchanger site and this bonus YouTube preview.
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