Patch 97-03

97-03 Patch, 1996

Sticker (ink and vinyl) and also a fabric patch. Since I had the opportunity to make our class patch, I wasn’t going to make a friendly one. And there was no way I was going to allow baby blue to fill the sky. Many patches were that way and I thought they looked too cartoony. That color became an issue – not for our class, but for the manufacturer. I made him redo this sticker once (used baby blue and the flags were wrong) and the patch twice (too small and used baby blue). This is about the actual size of the patch – sweet.

the sketches...

 

97-03 Sketches, 1996

Pencil and ink. In pilot training another opportunity to draw something that would hopefully be used - our patch. I drew four designs. Three of which used famous characters like these from Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are and Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes. I tried to do them justice but to be honest, it wasn’t what I had in mind. It was too cartoony, too trendy, and not an original idea. I did like the arrangements of the jets (T-37 and T-38) and how they came out of the NATO star (upper left).

 

97-03 Sketches, 1996

Pencil and ink. The patch on the left is another play on the Wild Things. Flying with other countries at ENJJPT, I was pleased how I fused the flags into the windows of the skyscraper. But what did I really have in mind? The one on the right – a “bad” patch. Lost for words for the patch, a classmate and great friend of mine, Dice Lyons came to the rescue with this perfect saying (shown). He says he can’t claim the idea, but to me it’s his. Can you imagine racing through space in a T-38?

Interestingly enough, before the patch was approved I had to change the skeleton's grip on the NATO star (he had to hold it from behind so more of the star would show). At first, several classmates were leery of this unfriendly patch, and what didn’t help was we made it larger than the standard pilot training patch. That opinion soon changed since it stood out from all the other classes. (Note: the image of the final [top] is a sticker, which is the same as the patch, but scans much better, and you can see how the hand changed.)

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