A friend who had advanced to the US Navy’s Strike Fighter Tactics program realized the class of students he was in needed to have a class gift to present at their graduation.  Having previously commissioned the Getz Girl ‘Lucille’ – he wanted to know if I could deliver poster artwork with a new Getz Girl pin-up.

My answer was “YES” (duh) and the result was ‘Gracie’ – who eventually appeared on the 04-11 TOPGUN class posters (each class member got one, plus one framed for the gift) and t-shirts.

There were a couple of challenges with this project.  First of all, there were 16 members in the class from 13 different NAVAIR organizations.  Guess what?  Almost none of them could deliver emblems that were high-res enough to look good on the poster – I I had to re-create them all.  So, if you’re with one of those squadrons and need your emblem in high resolution, let me know.  I can even get zaps and patches made for you with the art.

Another challenge is that no ‘official’ logo exists for the TOPGUN program.  Oh, there was that movie logo – but the rights to it belong to the studio.  And there is an official patch design too – but that wouldn’t work for the top of the poster.  So I created my own original design.  I hope to have zaps (stickers) available with the design in the shop eventually.  I plan to do a version of it for back-seaters as well…

All the different aircraft had to be represented, as well as the Fallon tower and USMC ground station… It was fun getting them all in there.  I even stuck a cactus in there to help set the mood.  🙂

Finally, each squadron has specific shirt colors they are allowed to wear under their flight suits when on duty.  The design had to work on all of those colors.

So, long story short, everything got done in a compressed schedule and the graphics were made to work on the poster (more colors) as well as on the various t-shirts (one color screen!).

Now I wonder where that poster ended up after the big graduation bash…