Year of the Tiger shirt design

Happy belated Lunar New Year!

According to the Chinese zodiac, this year is the year of the tiger. The organization I'm part of, Awareness of Roots in Chinese Culture (ARCC), creates a shirt every year so that board members can be easily picked out at events. This year we wanted the shirt in time for the New Year dinner, so I thought it would be nice if the shirt had something to do with the new year. I also made this decision because the tiger is generally considered a majestic animal - last year was the year of the cow; I don't think the board members would have enjoyed wearing a cow around very much!

I originally drew this on paper, then I scanned the sketch in and refined and traced it in Photoshop CS4. I used this tutorial to help me achieve the halftone effect. We used customink.com, who were supportive in helping me achieve my vision of a screen-printed white tiger on grey.

I have to thank *Sooper-Deviant for taking soooo many awesome tiger shots from so many different angles. It really helped me in improving my tiger's anatomy; I suck at big cat anatomy and definitely could not have done it without his help.

I was also inspired greatly by this wallpaper:


I was also helped a lot by my friends and my sister, who provided feedback whenever I asked. Nothing I work on is done in a vacuum

Here's a tiny picture of me wearing the shirt.

_{can you find the hidden acronym?}