Arttees3

It's not your usual caricature and portrait

Arttees3's Customized Chibi Shirt is a fun and the freshest way of expressing yourself in your shirts.  It's not the usual or common caricature or portrait of yourself printed on your shirts. 

It's YOU being drawn as Cute and Short characters in big heads, small bodies, and wide eyes.  

 

 

Cute Twin Brothers in Arttees3 Customized Chibi Shirts

We ask our clients to provide a photo of them for our Artist's reference and also their preferred theme or background on their Chibi.  Lets say, if our client is a basketball player/fan,we can draw them with a ball with a basketball court in the background.  If our client is a CARS movie fan, we can draw them in a CAR.
 

Basketball Player/Fan in an Arttess3 Customized Chibi Shirt



The Cute kid is a CARS fan


But What Does Chibi Mean?

Chibi is Japanese slang for "small" or "short." It’s usually applied to objects, animals, or people (ie. a short person or a small child).

When chibi is used in manga and anime, it tends to have a positive, kawaii connotation. But in real, human conversation it may not. In fact, most of the time, calling someone chibi is going to hurt their feelings. But it can be used to show affection, if you know what to say and how to say it.
Think of it this way: if you go up to someone who is shorter than average and say "Hey, Shorty," or "Hey Small Fry," how do you think they'll react? It's likely they'll get a little angry (if only quietly on the inside, waiting to strike). But maybe not. Depending on your relationship to the person, it could be a sign of affection. Like calling your child "munchkin." A tough call in your native language. Even tougher in a second.


The Origin of Chibi


Chibi has its roots in kobun, or classical Japanese. The kobun noun tsubi 粒つび, which means "tiny, rounded thing," eventually evolved into the verb tsubu 禿つぶ, which describes something becoming worn down or sharp edges getting rounded out.
A good example would be a calligraphy brush losing its hairs (because that’s what they used to write back in the days of classical Japanese).
The reading of tsubu eventually changed to chibiru 禿ちびる, and suddenly we’re not too far from chibi.

Some examples of chibiru in action are:

Japanese 下駄げたが 禿ちびてきた。

EnglishMy geta1 sandals are getting worn down.

Japanese 禿ちびた 鉛筆えんぴつしかないよ。

EnglishI only have pencils that are worn-out.

Eventually the word chibiru got worn out and gave way to the adjective chibi ちび, a smaller version of itself. Chibi is the chibi version of chibiru. How meta!

Chibi is usually written in hiragana or katakana, as in the word chibi-geta ちび 下駄げた (worn-out geta), or chibi-enpitsu チビ 鉛筆えんぴつ (stubby pencil).

Though chibi has kanji (禿び), I’ve never seen it written that way. Probably because it uses the same kanji as hage 禿はげ, which means "bald." It’s easy to see the connection when you consider chibiru was used for describing a brush losing its hairs.

Scholars haven’t yet found the exact years these words spun off from each other. The earliest use of chibi comes from the Taiheiki 太平記たいへいき, a Japanese historical epic written by Kojima Houshi in the 1370s.

A sentence in it reads:

Japanese 歯禿はちびて、 僅わずかに 残のこれる 杉すぎの 屐あしだあり
EnglishThere is a pair of geta with worn out supports.

So chibi is at least as old as the Taiheiki, which is pretty dang old.

Also old but not as old as the Taiheiki are Kachou Fugetsu 花鳥風月かちょうふげつ (The Beauties of Nature) published in 1457 and Nichipo Jisho 日にちポ 辞書じしょ (Japanese-Portuguese dictionary) published in 1603. Both use the word chibifude 禿ちび 筆ふで, which is that worn out calligraphy brush I keep bringing up.

Mentions of a new evolution came in 1753.

The Japanese onomatopoeia chibi-chibi ちびちび first appears in Imayo Tsuji Dangi 当風辻談義いまよつじだんぎ written by Joukanboukoua. A second onomatopoeia, chibiri-chibiri ちびりちびり appeared in the story Shodou Kikimimi Sekenzaru 諸道聴耳世間猿しょどうききみみせけんざる in 1766.

These words means "a little bit" or "little by little." For example, you’re cheap so you only spend a little. Or you don’t want to get drunk, so you drink your beer little by little.

Japaneseお 酒さけをちびちび 飲のんだ。
EnglishI drank alcohol a little by little.

Japaneseお 酒さけをちびりちびりと 飲のんだ。
EnglishI drank alcohol a little by little.

For hundreds of years, chibi was only used with nouns, like in the word chibifude. But in the Meiji period (1868-1912), people began using the word by itself. Chibi finally won its independence from compound words!

During World War II, chibi’s meaning became simply "small and short." It described small or short people and animals. And finally, we have the full chibi meaning we know today. An adjective used to show affection or belittle someone we think is short.


Source: https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/chibi/ (What Chiobi Means, Origin and History)