Compete-tee-tion

Threadless is taking a break from sponsored theme competitions for a new one that’s totally original, Odd Couples. It’s a deep concept to mine, and Threadless further fleshes it out by saying, “Your challenge is to pick any two unrelated characters or figures and show us how they’d interact. Would they be BFF or mortal enemies? Would they fight? Hug? Compete? Quilt? You’re the only one who knows.” Sounds good to me!

Enter before May 28th, 2013 for your chance to win. One winner will earn $2000 cash, a $500 Threadless gift code, a pair of drumsticks and a remote control helicopter, as well as 100 buttons of your design and a set of kickball bases.

Threadless is teaming up with MTV’s high school comedy Awkward for a contest that is, quite naturally, looking for Awkward shirt designs. Thankfully there’s no need to make your design have anything to do with the show (which is great, just not terribly shirt-y)- Threadless just wants designs about awkwardness. Or, as they put it, “conjure up all the social grace and assurance you (think you) lack, and channel it into an awesome and awkward t-shirt design! Pull out your most awkward family photo for inspiration. Reminisce about the good ol’ days of braces and the horrible haircut you gave yourself once. Think very hard about an embarrassing experience you tried to forget. And get to work creating your most awkward design yet!”

Enter before May 27th, 2013 for your chance to win. Only entrants from the contiguous United States and D.C. are eligible to win. One winner will earn $2000 cash, a $250 Threadless gift code, a trip for 2 to the Los Angeles set of MTV’s Awkward (includes round trip flight, one night hotel stay, personal tour of the set, and transportation), your design featured in Jenna’s room on Awkward, and your design printed on t-shirts and wall art. Other designs chosen to print (including those from outside the contiguous United States and D.C.) will be compensated based on product printed on and quantity produced.

Shirt.Woot‘s latest derby theme is Nightlife, asking for designs about city lights and having fun. Here’s their full description:

Cue the smoky saxophones, clinking glasses, and violent retching: this week we’re taking the Derby to the heart of the city under the neon lights. Show us a shirt design that captures the smell of wine and cheap perfume, the giddy anticipation of striding past the velvet rope, the desperation of closing time.

Designs must be on Black, Brown, Royal, or Navy shirts.

No pop-culture references.

No text.

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 voters and Woot staff), 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.

Amaze Red by Cheok Siew Yen (bubusam) is my favorite design this week, a fun envisioning of the Little Red Riding Hood story that shows the wolf as a maze that Red has to navigate to get to Grandma’s house. I like the way it makes the wolf more a metaphor for the challenges everyone faces than a literal animal villain, and the wolf’s cartooned shape feels enjoyably sinister and foreboding. But the shirt’s print doesn’t feel as strong as the design itself to me, because by printing on the lower corner the art is made to feel really small. The blank orange fabric becomes overpowering, almost as much a focal point as the art just due to its size and height. So that’s kind of a bummer, it’s disappointing that there wasn’t a solution that gave the art more prominence on the chest (which is also a more flattering look for wearers).

A Tiger for 100 Arrows by Dina Prasetyawan (kooky love) isn’t a design I expected to like, because at first glance it seemed like a less fun take on the tiger/arrows idea that we saw in a previous Threadless design, T Minus (less color, smaller print, and the tiger dies? NO FUN). But thankfully, my first impression was extremely incorrect, and this design really sings on the shirt. This is largely due to the proportions of the art, which were perfectly chosen to fill the full front of the tee. And on top of that, all the lovely angles of the arrows (and the spark of their red endcaps) keeps the eye moving and excited. The heavy dark stripes of the tiger’s face ensures that, no matter what else is going on, that face is a clear and distinct focal point.

Nar Wars by Austin Frankel (Rebelart) is another deja vu inducing design this week, doing the same thing as Re-Told With Unicorns except, uh, with narwhals. And unfortunately, it stands up a lot less well against the original, as the artwork on this one is weaker. While the unicorn version really fleshed out the dark side with Darth-like mechanical protrusions and even mirrored the movie with a missing hoof on the light unicorn, the narwhal version is content to leave all the focus on the horns. Both versions give us a Death Star for the moon, although the unicorn one is more realistic. It’s just tough to identify any way in which the narwhal version is superior, which sucks because this one had the benefit of seeing what worked and what didn’t about the prior unicorn shirt. Narwhals are a bit funnier than unicorns, but that’s not capitalized on by the art.

Parachute Moon by Arian Rrecaj (arianrrecaj) delivers a very dreamy scene, where a lone traveller floats through space using the crescent moon as their parachute. It’s a beautiful concept, speaking to feelings of peace, adventure, and independence all at once. By using a photorealistic moon, the viewer is invited to imagine this as real. The parachuter is less strong, a vague silhouette filled with a space-y texture. I think the choice to make the person a symbol rather than a unique character is a good one (because it lets you easily see yourself in their place), but theshape is so hard to read it’s unclear what the person is doing with their body. Some clarity there could have raised the level of the design overall, I think.

World of Bike by Matt Hoch (conceptart12) won Threadless’s Bicycles design challenge. As someone who hasn’t owned a functioning bike in about a decade, I wouldn’t have expected to like the winner of this contest. But you know what? It’s pretty charming. Seeing bikes filling out the shapes of the continents makes me imagine the different styles of bikes people all over the globe use (and indeed, several bike shapes are used in this), and the different places they go to on them. Plus, due to the circular nature of bike tires and their differing sizes, the eye naturally wants to hop around the composition. Good stuff.

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.

In honor of May the 4th (be with you), Shirt.Woot rolled out some sci-fi designs in their Star Wear II: The Empire Strikes Trek reprint collection. As you’d expect, there’s a lot of Star Wars in the mix. And also some Star Trek, presumably just because Woot are expert trolls.

Best of the Bunch: It’s a Trap is basically a classic, especially since it lets the viewer supply the punchline rather than writing it out in the art.

Nicest Surprise: Let the Cookie Win is arguably the greatest Star Wars apron of all time.

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

One of Shirt.Woot’s fan favorite artists is highlighted in the Artist Spotlight: Walmazan reprint collection. It’s cartoony, hilarious, and totally awesome.

Best of the Bunch: Fresh Cake nabs it’s third shirt color in this Grass remix.

Nicest Surprise: Don’t Judge Me is an apron made just for barbecues!

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!

Seibei has a neat idea for generating more t-shirt ideas: the 50 Tees Challenge. The idea is to stop yourself from overthinking it and just get as many ideas (terrible or wonderful) out of your head and on to paper as quickly as possible (there’s a 2 minute limit to each sketch).

I could see this being a really smart strategy for designers who want to enter a contest- sketch up a bunch of ideas, and choose the best to develop into full-fledged shirts.

White Elk Spirit by kdeuce has a lot going on, with the titular elk surrounded by a variety of white and red flourishes and fades. And to be honest, it feels a bit excessive. I feel like people who love this design will be most attracted to the elk’s spooky, mysterious face and the red circuitry that starts taking over one antler. The rest starts to feel like a distraction, and an unfortunate one because it doesn’t communicate a strong sense of place, tell a story, or highlight the animal’s personality. It just feels like it’s filling space.

Love Till Death by vad_ns is my favorite DBH print this week. There’s something really cool about the way it’s set up, showing both the protagonist’s life and death in the same moment, like a crack in time. Like some sort of exquisite zombie, skin slowly dissipating while determination and lust for life live on in clear blue eyes. Paired with the squawking raven, it feels magical. Epic, even, like the beginning of an amazing journey.

Eye of Prism by StevenToang has solid geometric structure, stacking two triangles on top of each other. The top continues along those geometric lines with a background of circles and a center that houses a diamond and more circles, forming an eye or lens-like object. It feels mechanical and strange, like something built by alien hands, but also alive. The lower triangle spills out into a paint splattered rainbow, injecting chaos into the design’s precision. The art’s theme of mystery, brightness, and change make it feel more interesting than the average geometry-heavy tee.

Black Metal Cats by ADAMLAWLESS uses as its base some very realistic white cats, arranged to stare directly at the viewer in a way that feels a lot like those cute cat shirts grandmothers like to wear. But the black face paint and sharp eyes of the cats quickly turn that association on its head, and make it clear that these cats are demons at heart. There are some neat touches, but my favorite bit is the beard on the third cat down. So fierce! This is a beautifully rendered piece, and a great reflection of the love metal fans often have for their cats.

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