Everybody had a main
A select screen is a grid of small portraits with one highlighted and two locked. It's a group portrait with a preference attached, which makes it a better team shirt than a logo.
Twelve small cells in a grid. Chunky bevelled edges. One surrounded by a thick yellow frame. Two of
them are question marks. Along the bottom, a banner: VESPER.
Everybody who played had one cell they always went to, and everybody remembers whose was whose.
Why is a select screen a good print?
Because it's a group portrait that also records a preference.
A row of characters is just artwork. A grid with one highlighted says this one is mine — the design encodes a choice, publicly, in a way a logo never does. That's an unusual amount of information for a graphic to carry.
It's also a shape people read instantly. Nobody needs the convention explained.
What are the question marks doing?
Promising there's more.
Locked cells are one of the great small inventions in interface design: visible, countable, and withheld. They tell you the roster is bigger than what you can see, and they make the grid feel like a place rather than a list.
They also carry beautifully into non-game use — a group with two unfilled cells is a group that expects to grow.
Isn't this the same as fighting game art?
Adjacent, and worth separating.
The art style is about how the characters were drawn — the linework, the palettes, the anatomy, the poses. This is about the grid: bevelled cells, a highlight frame, locked slots, a name banner. One is illustration, the other is interface.
Same distinction as a high score table versus pixel art. This whole bucket lives on that line.
What's the version worth making?
Real people, as a roster.
A family, a team, a flat, a five-a-side side, a band. Twelve cells with everyone in them, one highlighted depending on who's wearing it — which means the same design produces a different shirt for each person, with the highlight moved.
That's the strongest form of group apparel there is: identical design, personal detail. Nobody gets a uniform and everybody gets the same thing.
Can I use real characters?
Those are studios' characters and among the most protected designs in the industry.
Fighting game rosters are heavily merchandised, the character designs are copyrighted and the names are trademarks. It's licensable — this is one of the biggest licensing categories in games — but it has to be licensed before anything is printed or sold.
Invented fighters are also just better here, because the grid is about your roster.
What should the name banner say?
The name of whoever is highlighted, styled like a fighter.
That's where the joke and the affection both live. A real person's name set in a fighting game banner is a small act of ceremony, and giving somebody a shirt with their own cell framed is unambiguous about what it means.
Does it print well?
Yes, with fewer cells than a real screen.
The grid, bevels, frame and banner are all hard-edged and safe. The portraits are the constraint: twelve at true screen scale become smudges on cotton, so they want to be simplified to high-contrast graphic heads rather than detailed art, and the grid wants to be around twelve cells rather than twenty.
Deep purple, black and navy grounds. Three inks — the portraits in two, the highlight frame in a loud third used only once.
How do I get one made?
Describe the roster at JustOG — who's in it, who's highlighted, and how many cells stay locked. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to order and shipped.
Designs other people have published are in the shop.
Two cells still have question marks in them. That's on purpose.