Compete-tee-tion

Threadless is giving designers the opportunity to indulge in some casual narcissism with their latest Loves contest, YOU! The idea is to design a shirt about yourself, which is certainly one good way to ensure a lot of variety in submissions. I’m very interested to see how this turns out.

Enter before February 14th, 2012 for your chance to win. One winner will receive $2000 cash, a $500 Threadless gift certificate, a mysterious gift from Threadless based on what they now know about you ($50 value), handwritten love notes from five Threadless staff members, and an artist spotlight.

Shirt.Woot is veering a bit more artistic with their latest derby, Watercolors. While the technique might prove taxing to the skills of some regular participants, it’ll be interesting to see what artists who haven’t used the style previously do with it. Here’s the full derby description from Woot:

It’s time to get all aquarelle! This week we want you to take inspiration from pigments suspended in a water-soluble vehicle. Think Kandinsky, Schiele, and O’Keeffe. Keep in mind the rich history of wildlife and botanical illustration from naturalists, too. And before you think something ridiculous like, “I’ll just color a penguin in pastels and call it a day,” hear us out: this is a stylistic derby, and it’s going to be one of the more challenging we’ve arranged.

You’ll definitely want to check out our previous blog entry on Halftones on them (with updated advice courtesy of patrickspens), and lastly: your biggest resource is probably each other. We’ve got a great little community; bounce ideas off each other, seek out style tips, and get crankin’!

Now for the rules:

The ONLY shirt colors you can use are Creme, Lemon, and White.

No pop culture riffs. Keep it original.

No text.

We reserve the right to reject any design that will give our production crew headaches. Adhere rigidly to our halftone requirements to avoid last-minute heartbreak.

Our rules on halftones:

Halftones created in Photoshop must be 30 LPI.

In Photoshop, each color should be on its own layer.

Halftone dots must be only one color each, and not overlap.

If using Illustrator, your final print-ready art should remain as gradients and we will create the halftones. (Your Derby entry should still display halftones though.)

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. Three winners will be printed the following weekend (as chosen by site members), with the printed designers earning $1000 for the first night of sales and a potential $2 per shirt sold on any sales after that date.

Adopt a Dire Wolf by Sean A. Husbands (Winter the artist) is a reasonably subtle tee for Game of Thrones fans, focusing on one of the series’s earliest and most memorable moment, when the Stark children discover and adopt their direwolf puppies. The story of their link with their animals is one that continues through the series, with the animals often reflecting aspects of their owners’ personalities in their behavior. In other words, it’s a set of relationships that help shape the series and that pet owners greatly identify with- prime for t-shirt immortality. It’s also a great choice to use Jon Snow’s albino wolf Ghost, as he’s both immediately recognizable and pretty crucial to the story. A highly appealing concept solidly executed.

Do of the Dead by Jorge Garza (qetza) isn’t the kind of design you’d expect to see at Threadless, which is probably what makes it interesting. Day of the dead style imagery and a plethora of detail fill the tee’s canvas in shades of white and grey. The elegance of the drawing helps it to stand out from other art in the style, as does the artist’s quirky choice of adorning the main figure with a collection of tombstones in place of a wig. It feels a bit different (maybe even smarter) than what else I’ve seen done in this vein. While still not something I’d buy (neither style nor subject matter speaks to my interests, though it is well-made), I definitely enjoy the variety it brings to the catalog.

Pulp Fixie by Dina Prasetyawan (kooky love) really throws me for a loop because while I enjoy the idea, the style just doesn’t sit right. I mean, there’s inherently a lot to enjoy about the idea of going out for a bike ride and being interrupted by a huge T-Rex. That’s exciting, cinematic even. But the art doesn’t rise to the same level of perfection. I’m not at all opposed to watercolor, I even think that’d be a cool treatment for this piece. Where my objection comes in is the strangely splattered effects it employs. It causes the design to look rushed instead of classic, and cluttered instead of sophisticated. The sky’s multi-colored splotches looking like fireworks is especially disappointing, and I’m also having a hard time with the Rex’s bright red eyes. The color is applied in a way that, overall, seems to work in opposition to the great choices made in the illustration itself.

Turbulence by John Tibbott (quick-brown-fox) is neat in the way it seems to communicate fragility and strength in the same glance. The front half of the hawk screams power, so the crystal-like structure feels like diamond. But as its body progresses, so does the decay and it ultimately ends in a tail of thin, brittle shards that already seem to be disintegrating. The shift gives the idea of speed, like as strong as the bird is, it has still managed to move at so fast a speed that its body can’t handle it. Unique, and all the little shapes make it fun to look at.

Levitation Cat by Louis Roskosch (louisroskosch) is a pretty badass cat. His appeal to me is in just what an odd character he is- chowing down in a very human sort of way, and sporting a bizarre fur pattern that looks more like a beard and Charlie Brown-like pajamas than anything realistic. Plus his face and paws are blue for no reason, which is always cool. The randomness of the concept draws me in, and the quirky details keep me there.

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 celebrates the best tees of 2011 in their T-List Awards- three blog posts spell out who’s won what and why, and there’s a great selection of designs back up for sale. The big surprise this week is Woot’s collection of 5 posters, but there are also tees, hoodies and long sleeve shirts in the mix.

Best of the batch: Ro-Boss zip-up hoodie (A classy front graphic makes the design look even cooler)

Nicest surprise: Reading Rocket Ship poster (How great would this be for a kid’s room?)

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!

Goodjoe is getting prepared for Valentine’s Day with their latest contest, Love Conquers All. Their contest blurb hints at some of the variety in concepts that artists may want to delve into: “Love gives mothers the strength to move mountains off their babies! Love causes men to wear too much hair gel! Love is blind, love is a battlefield, and most importantly love can conquer all!”

Enter before Saturday, January 28th, 2011 for your chance to win. Two winners will be chosen by Goodjoe, one from the top ten scored/voted designs and one from anywhere in the contest. Each winner will earn $500 cash, $100 store credit and 6% royalty per shirt sold.

The Beginning… by daleconcepts dishes out some classic DBH subject matter- planets and trees. But at least for me, this particular arrangement falls just short of pulling it all together. It feels like two separate images to me, especially since a dark red stripe divides the top planets from the bottom tree. The tree itself tends toward a solid-color blotchiness that I don’t think does the scene any favors, particularly because it is so much in contrast to the grittier, more realistic space scene above. There are elements that I enjoy- particularly the use of a city skyline to bridge the tree and planet sections. But for me, even those are not executed as well as they could be. I feel like I’m looking at draft 3 of a design that would have a really amazing 7th draft. There’s just more to be done here.

The Diver (Trapped) by fathi_dhia shares a lot in common with past DBH tees (I think any customer or fan can name a bunch of diver prints, or prints with helmets placed in about the same area). That said, I think this design’s bubble-filled approach does a lot to set it apart from the others. There’s something really urgent and active about the sheer amount of bubbles rising throughout the piece. His huge size on shirt helps to make him seem constrained, reinforcing the theme. The crack in the faceplate directs your eye, at which point you’re rewarded with the reflection of a huge, gaping shark maw. That process of discovery helps invest you in the design and makes it’s dramatic punchline that much sweeter.

Night Fliers by Ingkong is a pretty nice arrangement of elements. Where I run into trouble, though, is in those bird silhouettes- that specific set of vectors is so ubiquitous in shirt design (particularly at DBH) that it stands out to me like Papyrus or Comic Sans every time I see it. This is especially rough here, since they’re basically the focal point of the piece as the only active element in the scene. It’s not that those silhouettes are necessarily a bad choice, just that they’re a lot of people’s default choice and that makes each instance of them feel less special. I’d have loved to see a more unique approach, especially since the gradient background and its slow fade behind the trees is so genuinely beautiful.

Midnight Sailing by rejagalu is my favorite this week, having first caught my eye with its quirky colors. Normally with a sea or sky image, you expect to see a bunch of blues, greens or purples. But by going with tan, the whole scene is suddenly imbued with a kind of ominous, otherworldly feel. The white ink on tan looks almost bleached, which is very neat. Oh yeah, and check out the stars within the black ship. It’s fairly subtle, but a great idea to transform the ship into night itself. It’s an alien and exciting piece.

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

Springleap‘s recent winner Mr. Nick of Time by daleconcepts has a lot of neat things going on. The main figure’s face is obscured by a clock, and his head is topped with antlers, branches, and even some kind of birdhouse structure. Although he has an owl perched where you’d expect to see a shirt pocket, he’s still a fancy fellow, posing seriously with his hat. It’s an appealing mix of nature and society, though there are some aspects of the piece that I think could stand to be finessed. For starters, the splash of green does a great job of making the clockface a focal point, but it seems odd (and more than a bit haphazard) to see the dome of the hat treated the same way- surely the drips could have been used to draw a bit of attention there without overwhelming it, as it is now. I’m also not crazy about the way the art abruptly cuts off at the mid-thigh, which draws attention to the smaller print size. A better solution might have been to not show the legs at all and sketch in the tails of the coat.

Winners at Springleap earn R$4000 (about US $500) and R2 per reprinted shirt sold.