Deluge! Boat! Help!

It's always exciting to see Design By Humans come through in the clutch for a contest watch piece. Their schedule allows a turnaround time far longer than most other sites, so when they make a selection we at the blog get all atwitter about, it's usually with the added bonus of total surprise. It's the Christmas effect... it's great to know something awesome is coming up, but when it comes out of nowhere, it can be so much better.

This time around, DBH gives us The Lost Gondolier, by Timizy01. It's an all-over piece that works so well due to that full-print aspect. The waves which cover the shirt do so subtly enough to be simply a backdrop, but swirl and spume up in a quite lovely manner around the gondolier focal point, making them quite worth the notice. The gondolier himself breaks out against all this froth in bold, chunky black lines and fills, helping cement his place alone among a vast world of waves. My only gripe on this is, sadly, one I've had on a number of recent DBH prints of this size... the screen seems to have been made way too large, taking away some of the better aspects of the print. Here, it takes away the prior effect of the moon parting the top of the waters as in the original submission, which I felt added a great void to the piece. Still, the overall product looks great, and will most definitely be a temptation during any sales which may happen over the holiday.

For those of you who want to secure your copy now, and wish DBH was still offering their prior first-day discounts (believe me, you're not alone), try code TNQCQK for 10% off anything in the store 'til Nov. 15.

Apples to Apples

Among the newer sites we're keeping tabs on here is SwishSwosh, from the UK. It has quite the unique contest scheme, which is part of why we're so intrigued... Every cycle (currently it seems monthly, but who knows what will happen as time goes on), the top 10 voted tees go up for pre-sale. These tees fight it out for a grand prize, which will eventually go to the tee which has had the most pre-sale purchases. All ten print, all ten get rewarded, but the most purchased gets the biggest reward.

What intrigues me most about this is that it is such a hybrid. There seems to be an element of your classic, quality-driven site, where ten pieces are selected each week, but there's also an element of the popularity driven contest, with each purchase pushing a piece closer to winning the grand prize. It could be a "best of both worlds" scenario for both artists and the site if implemented correctly, which makes it a site that is firmly on my radar.

Another perk to the site? This cycle, Contest Watch favorite Original Sin (by RecycledWax) is up for that grand prize. That means the shirt IS technically in print... you can buy it and will receive it when it goes to print, unlike a site like Cameesa where you'd possibly need to wait months upon months. Purchasing now, of course, is to your benefit... SwishSwosh is limited edition, for starters, and being a UK shop, saving a couple pounds is highly to a foreigner's benefit (prices are decidedly steep on this side of the pond, especially considering shipping). The biggest reason to snag one now, though, is to help RecycledWax win the well-deserved grand prize for most sold. I am sure he'll thank you if you can swing the expense.

Better Late Than Never

I find myself forgetting about some sites more than others, regardless of my initial excitement, and one such casualty is Ink-Hound. It's a site I haven't even ordered from, despite a few tees I quite wanted early on. So it brings me great joy to be able to speak of them again today.

Their current shirt (available for about another week) is Ghost Ship. It's a little late for prime appreciation, Halloween being a week gone by now, but the style here is something that could easily be a year-round wear. The color scheme is one that I'm ever in love with... the softness of the ink palette looks quite nice against the bold red. The characters are what make it, though. There's a cartoony cuteness that is very appealing, and even with nothing but dead skulls, each crew member has their own personality: the stoic captain, looking dead ahead unflinchingly... the weathered first mate, face drooping as he is long weathered and weary from a life at sea... and my favorite, the bumbling crewman at the back, his big empty skull bobbling aimlessly in the sea air. Personally, that's all fun enough to justify the purchase, wouldn't you say?

Contest Watch: Week of October 29

If it seems, dear readers, that I have been neglecting you... well, OK, I have. You got me. I've actually found it hard to buckle down and blog lately. Or really stay up past 9pm. But when I start neglecting the most important post of the week, that is when I clearly need to rein it in. So without further adieu, the latest crop of awesome for the annals of to-be-printed.

We'll start today at shirt.woot with EdgarRMcHerly's "Lon and Mr. C Visit God," which is as appropriate a title as we're apt to get for this. It's no secret there's a lot of Edgar love 'round these parts, and it's nice to once again have something to really represent why we love him so much. This really has the best of all worlds, with his wonderful, charming and odd characters, his skill with halftone textures, his glorious oddball themes, and his ability to make anything look awesome on white. For me, a big part of the charm is some ballsy color choices. Pink and lime green are hard sells for just about any piece, but here and together, they work and shine. The colors are bold in choice, but muted in hue, which is quite lovely. The winner here, though, is the abstraction of "God". His representation is little more than iconic, with a tie hung to look "official" and angels, with their faces censor-barred, holding this effigy up. It's a visually intriguing piece largely for this characterization. Hopefully it is something we'll see again.

Threadless, as the case is for many weeks, holds court this one. Oddly enough, their now ending "Pop Life" contest is dominating the proceedings: odd because I generally cite Warhol as being at fault for the gross commercialization and ergo downfall of ethics in modern art (one has to wonder if we'd have such blatant disregard for copyright and intellectual property without his influence). The nice thing is, many people really looked at the more avant-garde and inspiring aspects of pop-art, such as in ilovedoodle's "Perception x Reception". This feels like it could fit any number of other "Loves" topics better: Innovation, Geeks, New Art/New Ideas... I simply love the way the piece imagines something as simple as our sight, with the character here holding an antenna, as if looking for reception for his vision. The huge glasses representing sight are a nice bizarre move, but what I like most is the use of color being projected from those huge, floating lenses. It's a piece you can really sit and consider, but the colors and layout makes it hugely wearable as well.

Elsewhere in Pop Life, we see Ste7en's "Hybrid," which just feels nostalgic for me for a handful of reasons. Besides the colors feeling, for reasons uncertain to me, a bit '80s, the illustrations themselves remind me of those incredibly awesome Hot Wheels cars which all were both roadsters AND bizarre creatures all at once. I bought the hell out of those as a kid, and hope to buy the hell out of this when it prints. Besides those similarities that touch a chord in my oft-neglected nostalgia center, the idea is nice in that it plays on two popular ideas: the current green revolution turning "hybrid" into a buzzword in the auto industry, as well as the concept of combining two things to get an unexpected, fantastical result. Here it is cars with creatures, which is outlandish enough for the concept that it is only later that you realize that you're looking at a Ram... a Beetle... a Mustang. It's really sharp conceptually, and even without that sharpness, the lines and construction of these special hybrids are wonderful to look at. Sealing the deal, though, is that I've been pretty in love with stripes lately. I hear they're flattering. Maybe.

Surprisingly, the most "pop" of all the Threadless pieces I'm discussing this week (by my perception of the style, at least) isn't part of the competition at all... A Sound More Interesting, by WanderingBert, takes a crack at re-imagining Nipper, the classic RCA dog. The reference is clear right away... ol' Nippy is suddenly drawn away from that old gramophone and over to a small hole in the floor. One of the smartest UV Ink pieces I've seen (though my saying this is often a kiss of death... sorry WB), the sun brings out a score of colourful cat-ghosties, which may not make a whole bunch of sense (the dog seems pretty calm if what he's looking at is a world of cats), but certainly delivers with some wonderful color and flow. I think what works best here, though, is that it is not a regular "parody". There's no attempt at a real joke, more of an homage, but the more serious approach makes this more respectful than the average reference. It uses the imagery (and a different style of it, no less) to comment on how there is more to life than the same single note... the phonograph might be fine most days, but sometimes you need something surprising, colorful, and different. Be artistically curious, it seems to say. Not bad for an animal known to be colourblind!

Of course, if Nipper's phonograph was anything like Lunchboxbrain's Song Bird, he might never have gotten bored in the first place! Song Bird (up for votes at Tilteed) is one of those hardest-to-wrap-my-head-around pieces: the dreaded Found Art Collage. It's something I can't understand, even as a creative mind with a hand that couldn't draw attention... when I deign to create something, I'd rather it be imperfect and purely mine than perfect and otherwise. Still, it is hard to fault the designer here for some impeccable choices. The colors are perfect together, the pieces were selected as if they were made for each other, and the layout is ideal. The backdrop of musical score really seals it for me. The great thing about artistry is that sometimes it all just works, no matter how hard you may want to fight it. This piece is one of those sorts, and deserves recognition for just how flawless it comes out... even with the art done for you, it is a rare collage work that is done so impeccably.

Pinkyderm

Just a quickie note to state that today is the day of our choice of Teextile print of the week. Word 2 tha' Herd by biotwist is a fun and bold piece, swarming with elephants covering every last inch of the front, with a single pink specimen over the heart, standing apart from the tight-packed herd while being no less part of it. The pink on the silver actually is a rather nice color contrast, especially with the thick outlines, and while the particulars aren't groundbreaking, the boldness of the execution is nevertheless something quite special. My only qualm is not knowing if this will wrap around or simply stop past the front. Given a warning on another tee this week, I fear it may do the latter, which diminishes it a bit, yet not so much as to make it any less worth the wear.

It's been on sale since Monday, and will be for the rest of the week, but today is the day to grab a copy for $12 and save a little on a tee which certainly is worth far more.

Travelling Without Moving

Today, for one day only, Threadless is slashing shipping. And by slashing, I mean there is none. For anyone. So if you happen to be in England, or Mexico, or New Zealand, or Mars (presuming they ship to Mars), your shipping is just as free as ours here in the states. It's from now til Tuesday, 11am Eastern (that's like 3p GMT, for the rest of y'all to base off of), so now's a great time to make those small orders that you might otherwise have put off for too much shipping.

Since it's all about Travel at Threadless today, how about checking out last week's brilliant "Void" while you're there? This band-it piece is simply brilliant in execution and concept, and truly makes for a striking double-sided piece. The stark black-on-white color scheme really reflects the infinite nature of space, as well as its mysteries, and the nice big print shines in such a simple palette. It's an iconic image of seeking out the unknown, made doubly wonderful with the back-print that conveys the infinite, magical nature of space by portraying the void as so easy to traverse. Definitely a great buy, and an appropriate one for today's promo.

Trick or Trick

Oh what a week for Threadless... with no less than four awesome tees making their way immediately into my cart, it's easy enough to call this one of their best weeks ever. We may end up saying more about more of them later, but for now, let us focus on a former star of film, screen and contest watch.

Cruel Joke garners tenso his alumni shield, and a deserving win it is from a guy that seems to be chock full of puns and non sequitors. It's a totally Threadless joke tee... any good one should have a solid punchline and a style that doesn't distract from that joke. This one delivers with a little dark humor, with a simple but attractive style that has wide appeal. It would feel at home in a Far Side collection, with that crisp comic style and the personified slugs. To me, that means the nail has been hit on the head. If I had any critiques, it would be that the size is maybe a titch too big for the simplicity, but nevertheless, it's a soon-to-be classic from an account that I'd be shocked to not see often in Threadless' print schedule.

Contest Watch: Week of October 15

Before we begin this week, recent contest-watch designer ChuckU contacted us in thanks for our support and write-up. He included a link to his site, which has some incredibly sick art. Check out his store for some truly hot prints, and then browse back to his site for more awesome.

We start this week at Design By Humans. Our subject: Ra/Sun God, by wowrainbows. It's a lost entry from the world of Threadless (from a remake community collab), and it's gloriously red. It's also very mysterious and moody... there's a calm to the sunny scene, with its clouds adding character without shrouding the piece. The all-seeing eye of the sun and the floating pyramids add an inscrutability about the piece, too, inviting the imagination and sense of wonder that both nature and such iconic man-made items can instill. It has definite power as an image, but is still totally shirtable. And holy crap does it need more votes.

When I was gathering info for this week, I'd remarked to some colleagues that I simply couldn't justify talking up anything from shirt.woot unless there was a slow week elsewhere... their Halloween derby was among the most pathetic showings the site has allowed. But even in a slow week, there is a sheer charm to dekonstruct's "Saddest Ghost Ever." It's a perfect storm, if you will, of melancholy and despondency. There seriously is no way you cannot look at this and have that sadness evoked. Look at him! He's stuck in the rain with no candy! And a patch! It's such a downtrodden little ghost that you can't help but have your heart go out, but also it's so extreme in its heart-wrenching that it borders into dark humor... he's so bad off that it becomes schadenfreude. Not only that, I think the cartoon style works well here, and love the rain effect, which not only hammers home a damp depression, but looks so attractive. One of very few shining lights this week.

At Threadless this week, ilovedoodle's "Happy Birthday to Me" is an incredibly peaceful piece, which is nice (especially after their horror-riddled releases this week). It gives a very seasonal feel, too, with the scarf and the bare tree, while not forcing itself into a seasonal niche (this would certainly be wearable year-round). The flow of the light definitely reflects the idea of candles being blown out, and the bend of the tree helps reaffirm it. Granted, when I think huffing and puffing, I think of wolves first, but I find the bear quite charming. Also, purple. There's just not enough of it.

On the other end of the Threadless spectrum from adorable cartooning, we have Fawn in Headlight by jstumpenhorst. The immediate likability here is the hugeness and boldness... it's art for its own sake, not complex and colorful like some pieces, but steeped in solid graphic design, big and stark against the tee. There are four color options, all inherently wearable, but the one I offer here is the one that seems to capture the most nuances in the ear area (while the magenta option is simply most striking visually to me). Others highlight the wonderful linework in the face, while the eye is ever spotlighted. The eye of a deer is big and deep as it is (hence the term "doe-eyed"), so the highlighting of an already attention-grabbing feature just brings all the more attention to it. There's a fragility in all this bold power, too... the lines highlighted by the eye look almost cracked, about to shatter, as if foreshadowing the possible reality of what is behind that illuminating headlight. It's a dramatic piece that may not really fit Threadless, but sure as hell would look hot on a tee.

Finally, back to DBH, for something we've seen surprisingly little of there, despite its reputation for bold, complex prints. What mj00's Little Bird of Fall lacks in timeliness (if printed, it would likely find itself doing so 'round spring, or else waiting a year for it), it makes up for in charm and collage-done-right. The way the textures flesh out the bird makes each leaf seem perfectly chosen for its role, from the slender point of beak to the stems sticking out as legs. The leaves mimic the normal plumage of a bird (the red leaf at the head is a marking that adds a lot of character), and the shape is that of an adorable youngster, no less, not a mature adult, which ratchets up the cute. Most importantly, I just love seeing collages that not only make a degree of sense (taking a bird in a tree's leaves, and making a bird of tree leaves), but prove that, contrary to what many do, photo art and design can still be relevant and fresh, not just clunky, stolen dreck under the guise of avant garde. Not that birds are truly "fresh," but anything well done and differently done certainly cannot be rightly called stale. It's only a matter of time before DBH takes someone up on the offer of this style, and there's no reason not to be this one.

Matching Towels

Since longtime readers, collaborators, and all around friends-of-the-blog JadenKale and MJ are both involved in tonight's offering from RIPT Apparel, I feel I'd be remiss to not mention that the former's first curation and the latter's second print will be appearing at the site this evening.
The tee is Rock Lobster, which I like for the simple bold colors and of course topic matter (longtime readers know I have a soft spot for crustaceans and palettes like this). This particular piece is especially charming to me for the unique style, simplicity, and the lobster's transparency, which adds an intriguing effect. Definitely worth checking out if you've got a soft spot for cheesy jokes or sea life.

Overall, I'd like to note that even in its infancy, this whole "curator" thing at RIPT seems to be boosting their overall quality immediately. I am all for this, and I look forward to getting acquainted with each curator's personal style and preferences. Jaden has personally been dropping some tantalizingly vague hints my way, but besides this, I think we'll finally see RIPT come into its own as quality increases. Or at least that's my hope. We could have one more depository for Star Wars rips and traced photos. But hope... it doth spring eternal, and the early days gives me much to hope for.

Don't forget, you can't stop the rock, but the lobster gets boiled at midnight Central tomorrow.

Going Green

This week was a bit of a chaos-fest in Adderland, so we were not able to tell you all about the amazing Wise Old Master printing at Goodjoe. It was a hopeful Editor's Choice at woot a long time ago, but is just now finally printing. Oddly enough, while Drakxxx, the designer, is best known for his more horror-tinged work, this is easily one of my favorite pieces from him despite the huge topical departure. That also means that, while it's a much more spring/summer design, the mid-October printing is right on schedule for him.

The overall design is just an incredibly peaceful, happy setting. It doesn't hurt that the smiling tree reminds me of an old He-Man mini-comic I had in my youth, which gives a nostalgia along with the skilled linework and attractive green palette. I think it's also going to give Goodjoe a good workout as far as their print capabilities... I've been happy with my tees from there so far (even mine looks 100x crisper printed than I'd have thought), but they've had predominantly simpler pieces, and if they can pull off this sort of detail with ease, they're definitely ready for the big time. I think it's a risk worth taking, especially if you grab it before the weekend is over... the Goodjoe presale saves you quite a bit at $10, so take advantage of it!