Compete-tee-tion

Shirt.Woot is doing something really interesting with their derby this week, Three’s a Crowd. In keeping with the theme, they’ll only be printing first and second place, both of which will receive $1500 instead of the traditional $1000. I don’t love the idea of printing fewer entries, though my (completely unfounded) hope is that Woot will use this as an opportunity to print a lower-scoring entry. At any rate, here’s Woot’s full description:

You know, it’s true what they say. Two’s company, three’s a crowd. That’s why this week we have a special announcement: we’re only printing first and second place. Now depending on your outlook on life you can chalk it up to some horrible conspiracy born out of our quest to ruin your day, or you can accept that it’s part of regularly-scheduled downtime and wonder what’s coming up. So here’s the deal: this week, give us your best designs showing how three’s a crowd. Maybe it’s a pair of lovebirds shoeing away a third, maybe it’s a couple of kids playing Battleship and a third wanting in, or maybe it’s two clowns murdering another clown in a filthy basement. Maybe not that last one.

No text only designs.

Seriously, we’re not printing third place. Only First and Second will print, and they’ll split third place’s prize money among them for a total of $1500 to each winner.

The derby opens to submissions at noon on Friday, with submissions continuing until Wednesday at noon. Voting is on-going from Friday at noon until Thursday at noon. Two winners will be printed the following weekend (as chosen by site members), with the printed designers earning $1500 for the first night of sales and a potential $2 per shirt sold on any sales after that date.

First off, it bears mentioning that there’s a nice sale on at Threadless right now! Although the $9.99 sale doesn’t apply to many of the more recent prints, there’s a good selection of reprints and older tees available.

3 Cynics by Marko Vuleta-Djukanov (floatingbastard) is my favorite print of the week, featuring three unique characters who fill the shirt nicely. They’re kind of halfway between cats at Batman, black figures with alert ears whose eyes tell you their story. The thin, cooly suspicious gaze of the fellows on the sides contrast well with the bug-eyed stare of the smaller, middle guy. It makes me buy into the whole scene, because it feels real- of course one confident character would attract this kind of posse, the peewee pretender in orange and the dim bulb with empty eyes in green. One’s chatty, the other’s the enforcer. Their aggression lets the cool cat in blue saunter freely, knowing he’s got back up and can idly watch the fallout. I love any time a simple image seems to give me enough clues to see a whole story, and that is in full effect here.

EGGsplosion by Monica Gifford (myteemo) takes “food with faces” to it’s natural conclusion. If eggs are already sentient beings, then a hatching is of course a horrific, Alien-like event! The emerging chick seems nice enough, but our sympathies are with that cracking shell and his poor, doomed buddy. Somehow the fact that the chick’s hatching hasn’t killed the shell (his eyes are still racked with concern and worry, not cold little X’s) just makes it all creepier. The simple style of the art highlights the joke well, and I’m especially impressed by that subtle blue background. It’s super-lowkey, but does a lot in terms of establishing an environment for the scene.

Nature of Crime by Dewi Herawati (caffeinart) builds a zebra out of yellow crime scene tape. It’s a really clever way of thinking about crime, that the clues left behind form stripes to create an accurate picture of what went on. My favorite moment is the delicate spiral of the legs, a reminder that the whole story is rarely told (plus, honestly, it just looks awesome). Here’s what kind of threw me for a loop, though- why in the world was this design printed on an asphalt shirt? It’s so striking and bold on the black, perfectly suited to creating a feeling of darkness and mystery. The asphalt sucks a lot of that contrast out, and makes the image less powerful as a result.

A Few of My Favorite Things by Reagan Lee (reags) must be catnip for guitar enthusiasts, packing tons of guitar line drawings into one t-shirt. There’s a nice twist in the inclusion of a Guitar Hero controller towards the center, which I think helps make it surprisingly wearable even for people who can’t strum a tune- it opens up the audience to people who like guitars whether or not they can name them or know anything about them. I do feel, though, like the art might benefit from a slight tweak- an extra row of guitars at the bottom. Right now the shape is a bit too squat to fill the length of the shirt well, and I feel like part of the idea is to be overwhelmed by the number of guitars present.

W.T.F? by Blair Sayer (Mr Rocks) certainly lives up to its name. This crazy blue… creature with eyes right out of Dune stares at you with blank, unseeing eyes. He’s been covered with peach bandaids in an attempt to look more natural (like one of those hairless cats I guess), but it somehow just makes him more disturbing. Like an alien ineptly masquerading as a pet. And the fact that it’s bandaids amps things up a bit as well- it raises the possibility that what they’re hiding isn’t just blue skin, but maybe some kind of freakish wound or sickness. It all feels like a cousin to zombie mythology, except with blue cats. It disturbs me a lot, but I think I also like its originality and freshness.

Threadless prints new shirts every week, chosen from the designs submitted by and voted on by site members. Most winners get $2000 cash and $500 in Threadless credit, with the possibility to earn more through Bestee awards, poster prints, and reprints. Artists printed through the Labs DTG program receive 10% of sales for the week their design is sold, and are allowed to keep the full rights to their design work.

Shirt.Woot is all about music with their latest reprint collection, Jukebox Heroes! There’s a nice mix of older classics forgotten gems, and a variety of formats including messenger bags and posters.

Best of the Bunch: The Madness of Miss Stereo was always a crowd-pleaser, great to see it get another chance at glory.

Nicest Surprise: I have no memory of Vinyl Kid at all (did it print before?), but it’s a really fun piece!

This promotion will only last this week (ending at 11:59 p.m. on Sunday). So if there’s something you like, grab it fast!

Like Good Movies? So does Goodjoe, and this week they’re looking for designs inspired by them. As Goodjoe says, “From Disney to John Waters, there’s a movie out there for everyone. Pick yours and go for it.”

Enter before Saturday, May 19th, 2012 for your chance to win. Two winners will each earn $300 cash, $100 store credit and 6% royalty per shirt sold.

Goodjoe is teaming up with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps for a design contest on the theme Put Your Hands Where Your Heart Is. That’s definitely a cool message, so it should be fun to see how artists go about interpreting it. Goodjoe does offer designs these two notes:

The design should not be designed with a green, red, brown, or blue t-shirt in mind.

(Optional): The words “Jesuit Volunteer Corps” and the organization’s URL, jesuitvolunteers.org, should appear as subtle secondary elements in your design.

Enter before Saturday, June 2nd, 2012 for your chance to win. One winner selected by JVC staff will earn $500 cash, $100 store credit and 6% royalty per shirt sold.

9 Fountains, Singapore’s t-shirt design contest, is currently having a huge storewide sale. If you’ve ever coveted one of their tees, now is a great time to indulge that curiosity. Personally, I thought their Geisha Dream design was pretty neat.

BATTER UP! by MrRocks is a pretty rad, comic book-style take on the zombie apocalypse. There are a lot of interesting choices being made here that help make the design a little cooler than the average zombie tee. For starters, I love the female protagonist- she’s tough as hell, and actually seems to be snarling at the oncoming horde. Her eyes betray a bit of fear as well, which is impressive layering of emotion. Color choices are fantastic, bathing the scene in blue tones and the occasional flash of bright red. The red on the zombies is blood, but on our leading lady they call out her shirt, lipstick and nail polish. It sets her apart from her attackers, but keeps her firmly grounded in the style of the piece. Plus, you have to appreciate how the art fills the entire tee, from the stars above to the waves of grass below.

Last Goodbye by buko is telling a familiar story- that of nature carrying on in the face of a human-created nuclear disaster- but does it in a crisp, complete way that draws me in anyway. The reflection in the mask is full of fluffy, colored cloud shapes- something that almost makes the nightmare seem dream-like. We see a giraffe tilt his head towards the huge mushroom cloud as though it was a tree. It’s beautiful and terrifying at once, something that seems too horrible to be real. But on the outside of the helmet, a butterfly lands and cements that connection to reality. This isn’t some far off fever dream, it’s happening right here and right now. Bright orange highlights throughout the mask subtly reinforce the grim truth of the situation, making it clear that the orange explosion is shining directly on the drab black plastic.

PENGUIN HEADPHONES by charlyereal is about a penguin listening to music on some headphones. You know, silly but fun. The artwork lives up to the basic promise of that idea, though it doesn’t take it any further- there’s no emotion playing across the face of the penguin, no hint to what music is being heard, no scrap of background establishing the environment. Similarly, there’s no great leap forward in the art style. There are definitely things to enjoy about the design, like the way it fills so much of the tee, the silly idea, and the slight flair in the spiraling of the cord. I could see a lot of people wearing it. But it’s still not the kind of design that gets me very excited, and I do feel it could have been a better design if taken further.

welcome to mad city by kharmazero basically looks like a blasted out shell of a building, where only steel beams are left. The grimness is offset by one intriguing beacon of hope, a single hot air balloon floating over the scene. It’s a neat moment, because the balloon also represents an older standard of technology- there’s a sense that the destruction of this city might have lead to the resurgence of something slower, more peaceful. That said, it’s not a perfect piece- I found myself wishing that the art gave a clearer sense of an entire city being destroyed rather than just one building. I’d have liked to see more structure, or at least more crispness so it was more obvious what I’m looking at. It might have also been positive to increase the height of the piece so that it would better suit the length of the tee. But despite my reservations, I think that one moment of the balloon passing over the building is so strong that it makes the shirt pretty worthwhile regardless.

Winners at Design By Humans earn $1000 and six shirts of their victorious design.