We all love Royal High School’s wares! To the clothes sold at the ASB, to the creative minds of the many designs that the school, and ROP Digital Media, have created for us to wear. Ranging from socks that have our teachers’ faces on it, to cute themed shirts such as the Senior Hug Day shirt that was recently created just for Valentines Day. Also available are pins, keychains, and shirts with our school logo attached to them. We sell so many things here at Royal from our creative staff and students who really roll in on the ideas. Though, there is one item that is currently in the making which will be on sale for a limited time at our school, the new Royal Visual Arts t-shirts!
The competition designing shirts was assigned on January 10, and were due on January 22 by Visual Arts teacher Catherine Holcombe. Only two students participated for the contest: Jenis O’Sodth, and Nolan Turner. Once the two designs were submitted, voting took place from January 13-29. These new Visual Arts shirts can be purchased at the ASB office, only costing $15. The beta design had a couple variations of the shirt, so we may get more than one color ranging from black, gray, royal green, and white. The design features a skull wearing our mascot hat which represents our students here at campus, with art supplies sitting in its head like a pencil holder, and flowers spilling from its mouth representing Simi Valley, and life itself.
The winner of the contest will receive a free Visual Arts t-shirt, and the satisfaction of participating in this fun event. Senior Nolan Turner said, “I thought it was fun, and wanted a free shirt.” Turner had participated in the contest as well, but since he and Jenis were the only two students who participated he ended up winning second place by default. The first and second place winners get the free Visual Arts t-shirt, but since there were only two students both Nolan and Jenis get the award automatically. Senior Jenis O’Sodth said, “The free t-shirt is mine! And I’m glad that I have a chance to design a t-shirt for Royal High School.”
Senior O’Sodth had drawn about 4-5 sketches before she knew exactly what design she had wanted to do. Most of her designs were based on the same idea which was the initial skull design that she had wanted with the paint brush, colored pencils, and flowers. She knew that there were not many people who joined the competition, only about two which included herself, and Nolan. O’Sodth said, “Mrs. Holcombe told me that the t-shirt should come around the end of this month, or maybe the beginning of the next month. I will get a t-shirt as a reward for this competition but I only got one free t-shirt for myself.” The process of her design and sketches had taken her over four hours to finish the final design, which made her lose some sleep, showing she was motivated to complete this project. O’Sodth added, “This project is not that hard, but only thing that is kind of hard about it, is that it’s time consuming.”
Senior Turner had entered the contest for a little bit of fun, his friends and him had made jokes about the contest. He had put his friend on a t-shirt, holding a ceramic duck he had made in a position referencing the movie, “Blade Runner.” Turner said, “It took me a few attempts to get it right because I have never done digital design before ever. However, it wasn’t really time consuming as it only took me around two hours. I definitely could have improved on the design but I had done it just the day before.” He had so much fun with this project as well, since there were no limitations to it. Nolan was not upset at all that he did not get first place because he thought that O’Sodth definitely deserved the win. Nolan also added, “I tried to use more of my imagination on the shirt design because my table group in that class is a lot fun to be around, and it’s the reason Ceramics is one of my favorite classes this year despite my difficulty with art.”
Mrs. Catherine Holcombe is the Visual Arts teacher,, she teaches ceramics, and the drawing and painting class. She is the new art teacher that had took over the previous one, Mrs. Petrocelli who had retired last year. Holcombe is a great new addition to Royal! She’s very kind and considerate to her students, and has many new ideas in store for us for many years to come. She, along with the Media Art’s teacher Adam Lev, had collaborated to make these t-shirts as well, and set up the contest for the shirts. Holcombe said, “The reason I wanted a t-shirt for art was for artists who can show their pride in what they do, cause some students are involved in sports. Art is their thing, so they wanted to show their pride.”
Media Arts teacher Adam Lev, also wanted to add, “I am really proud of my students, and what my students created this year. The fact that we sold various products to the community is an amazing experience that we have been able to order in this program, and it’s unlike any other class on campus. I’m very excited for the possibilities in our future.” Some ROP Web Design students also wanted to add their input on the process, and their experience in the class. Senior Rosalynd Valenzuela said, “It was a pretty cool shirt, I love this class, and we make shirts, and put our hard work into our products. It’s fun seeing the smiles on the customers faces at the end of the day.”
Senior Jack Van Kannel, who took part in the making of the shirts wanted to describe what he and his group’s process of work. He mentioned once again that Holcombe and Lev wanted to collaborate for a design. So they wanted a couple of students to stick the image on a couple of example images to see what would work, and sent those designs off to Holcombe to see what was best. The ones that worked out were stuck on the final designs of the shirts, which were early versions of the final. Senior Van Kannel said, “We press shirts, that’s our job.” Senior Jessica DeLeon added on, “I thought that the process of making the shirts was very enjoyable. The designs we chose were cool, especially how we made a vote for the Valentine’s Day shirts.”
