I’ve wondered what his smithery must have been like. And not only that, but where was it? Did Count Rugen travel all the way to Spain – from wherever the obviously fictional (and British-based) land of Floren “exists” – just to have this special sword made? Or maybe Señor Montoya set up shop just down the road from Miracle Max. Maybe that’s how Inigo knew about the old alchemist.

The idea actually started out as a shop shingle, but I’m a big fan of keeping things simple and subtle. I started asking, “If he had a t-shirt designed today, what might it look like?” I knew I was going to have Inigo’s sword in the design, so I googled up some images of it. I found a couple from the movie itself plus some pics of various prop replicas others have done. I knew it was going to be tricky to draw because, A) the hand guard has some very interesting, sweeping, and dauntingly 3-dimensional curvature, and B) I’m not that great an artist.

As with most everything I design, I drew the whole thing out in Adobe Flash. The font for “Montoya & Son” is Formal Script 421 BT (Bitstream, FormalScrp421 BT), and I found the font for the other text here: Spanish Round Bookhand, 16th c. I then masked with a stone texture, followed by Posterizing in GIMP to reduce the colors. I made light tee and dark tee versions simply by using brightness/contrast effects.

Finally, a few words on the additional text. I knew there must be an interesting word for someone with extra fingers, and “polydactyl” was pretty easy to find. The “PRICES ARE NON-NEGOTIABLE” line was inspired by Inigo’s recounting of his father’s murder: “The Six-Fingered Man returned and demanded it, but at one tenth his promised price. My father refused. Without a word, the Six-Fingered Man slashed him through the heart.”

This design will probably always be one of my favorites, just like the movie that inspired it. I hope you like it, too.

• To buy this on a T-shirt at RedBubble:
  • Light Tees
  • Dark Tees
• Vote for it on Qwertee.
• You can comment on this blog post over at my Facebook page.

This design actually began as a USB keypad , kind of like you might plug into your PC or laptop. The symbols and icons would have been on the keys, and the thought behind it was that, as a sci-fi/fantasy author or screen writer develops a story, they interject bits from all the tales that have inspired them throughout their lives. Like, “This scene needs to be more Batman”, or, “What would Gandalf do?”.

I became frustrated at trying to render the keypad itself, so I allowed my brain to wander freely to find a different framework. At some point the little light went on above my head and the Stargate became the obvious choice. The next decision was how many spaces to fit on the wheel. I figured it would be best to stick with a number evenly divisible into 360 degrees, so after doing a bit of simple math 24 became the logical choice.

But then the hard part began. I had more than 24 symbols/icons in my list, so I had to whittle that down. Some of them were from the same stories, so I decided to pair them up, Two Face-style: Rebel Alliance/Empire (Star Wars), Autobot/Decepticon (Transformers), Enclave/Brotherhood of Steel (Fallout), and Alliance/Horde (WoW). Some stories held the opposite dilemma for me: no broadly recognizable symbol or icon at all – at least, not like Superman and Batman have – such as The Lord of the Rings, Indiana Jones, FarScape, etc.

I won’t say which are which, but some of these symbols are included not so much because I’m a big fan, but because I know what they represent is incredibly popular among geeks. Hopefully, that won’t paint me as a poser. I did it more to be sure the design as a whole could appeal to as many as possible.

You can vote for this design on Qwertee and buy it right now at my RedBubble store WITH and WITHOUT the text at the bottom.

SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Here is a list of all of the symbols on the OmniGate starting at the top (my personal logo) and working clockwise:

Like millions and millions and millions of others on planet Earth, I have played World of Warcraft. I’ve been on the WoW wagon for a couple of years now. But back when I was still addict…I mean…had a well-worn subscription to it, my first main toon was a Tauren Warrior named Moobiwan.

For those who don’t get what the phrase “You break it, you tank it” means, there are various forms of “crowd control” – ways of rendering monsters or opponent players harmless – that can be nullified if the entity is struck or otherwise caused damage. The most common form of crowd control is probably the mage’s ability to turn a mob into a sheep that simply wanders around being, well, just a sheep.

If you inadvertently “break the sheep” before your party intended to fight it, you are expected to take the mobs attention and endure the damage it does that would normally be easily soaked up by the party’s tank.

I originally made this design some years ago and sold a decent number of t-shirts on CafePress. I no longer have a store there, but you can buy it in a clean or distressed version in my RedBubble shop.