Mutant Hand Art - A Cautionary Tale

When you have altogether too many fingers, make a parody t-shirt that is far too subtle.

Once upon a time I thought it might be fun to make a t-shirt that was a play on the name of a certain popular educational open world game, created (note to self: check this bit before publishing!) to teach children and young people how to get by during late-stage capitalism.

And here it is! This is what you get what you take altogether too many hands, with far too many fingers that are also far too long - and combine them with a parody version of the video game’s name:

The finished design, where the too-many-hands with their too-many-fingers are arranged in a sort of tree-like formation. In the foreground is an amusing pun (well, I thought so…) on the video game’s title. Let’s call it Minor Heists Autocomplete.

I think I actually used an AI image generator to make the hands, although it was a while ago and I didn’t make a note. In my defence I added the ✨ AI sparkle emojis ✨, did some light editing, and hunted down a suitable font for the caption. It transpires that Pricedown Black by Typodermic Fonts is very similar to the font used for the video game title, allegedly.

Check out Typodermic Fonts

The t-shirt design was created in the unfortunately named GNU Image Manipulation Program, with probably more layers than strictly necessary, but moar ✨ sparkles ✨ simply had to be added as I’m sure you’ll appreciate:

Screenshot of the design being worked on in the unfortunately named image editor. There are several layers, most of them containing an improbably large number of ✨ AI sparkles ✨

You can grab yourself a copy of the design if you fancy having a go at making your own remix - have fun!

I also made a version with even more hands, but this made me feel slightly ill to look at, so I decided to stick with the more discrete version:

Alternative version of the design where the background is entirely hands. No thoughts, only hands. And the fingers, so very many, very wrong, fingers!

Then I printed the design on thermal transfer paper and ironed it on to a handy t-shirt that I happened to have waiting to go:

A t-shirt with the mutant hand art design, hanging on a coathanger in front of a wardrobe. It looks quite nice, but perhaps the joke is a little too subtle?

However, when I started wearing the t-shirt out and about in public, I realised that my little joke had been altogether too nuanced and subtle. Yes, every time I wear this item of clothing, someone will (unbidden) say something to me like: Oh I love that game! It’s one of my favourites! Have you tried the new version yet?

Le sigh. Turns out the joke was on me.