And Your Bird Can Sing

The other day, blogger was being a temperamental little jerk, so I was unable to tell y'all of the wonderful event which occurred at Tilteed. Namely, Song Bird by Lunchboxbrain, a contest watch favorite, is now available for purchase. It's an exceptional collage-style piece... all the elements flow masterfully in both layout and style, and the color choices are earthy and perfect for the olive blank. When I see it, it also gives a certain Imaginary Foundation feel, for a far discounted price from some of their work. Overall, though, an excellent piece for anyone into music. Grab it now while it's $12!

Gotta Catch 'Em All

Excitement comes from the other side of the pond this week, from German site A Better Tomorrow. ABT has some great tees, and were I able to read German, or afford Euros, you would be seeing lots of their stuff up here. As it is, I tend to only mosey over there when I see a tee that is worth the extra effort.

Today, they bring us a tee that is certainly that tee: a contest watch favorite from a while back, Againstbound's "Kleptonaut." I don't know if there can be a negative to this shirt: the palette drew me in before I realized my biases toward it. The concept is both spacy and humorous... what I like most about the joke is that each jar of space has its own punchline, from videogame ephemera to oddities you would not expect to see in space (from goldfish to that lost sock of yours). This guy has even captured infinity. It's like the Pokemon of the universe. Except good. Still, his collection is subtle enough and individual enough that each joke is easily integrated into a whole which is far more about skillful and charming cartooning and the imaginative aspects of the vastness of space than reliant on punchlines. That's a big part of what makes this so successful as a shirt, and a big part of why it's going on ye olde holiday list for me this year. Consider treating yourself and hit up Babelfish. It'll be worth it.

FM365: Week the First

This week heralded one of the most exciting happenings in the tee world. No, not a pact to end the proliferation of Live-Traced Photos As Art, but almost as great... the opening of one of the most ambitious single-artist shops out there: Flying Mouse 365.

To me, there is one thing that should come tantamount to all things when designing: a sense of drive, determination, and respect for your artistry. You should be creating because you love creating. You should be pushing yourself because art is in your blood. So early in the year, when I first saw Flying Mouse announce his intentions to create a new design every day for a full year, I was duly impressed. It was a project clearly born of a creative mind that needed to push itself, and as time went on, and I saw the execution and conceptual quality put into the majority of pieces, I saw that this was a project that wasn't going to be skimped on. It was nice to see that kind of work ethic for any reason in a market that often seems to be all about doing just enough simple, generic work to rake in a payday.

Anyway, some of the FM365 pieces have been optioned throughout the web, as well they should have been, and as the year ends, the man behind the art is putting his money where his mouth is and taking the risk of creating his own site. It's a big leap, and that he's willing to put that sort of money and time upfront for the sake of his art is just one more proof of the dedication in his work. I'm not about to say it's all amazing work, but there's some incredibly diverse stuff that should find favor with pretty much any sort of shirt-wearer, and a lot of it is definitely top-notch.

I've decided to take the opportunity to support one of the best out there in this ballsy, huge-scale project by dedicating a post every weekend to his current lineup. This week, I'm featuring Piggy Bank, selected partially for my sister, and also for being on the ballsiest colour out there: pink. Believe me, I've got a pink AA tee, and it is CERTAINLY a ballsy tee to wear, and perfect for such a bold storefront. The piece does hit on one of Flying Mouse's favorite themes... taking simple things and making them not what they seem. I really like the style on the little pigs here, as they emerge from their bank prison, as well as the conceptual layers... a piggy bank, a bank that stores pigs, and even an element of birthing going on, as the real pigs come from their porcelain hold. If you know a pig lover, it'd make a great holiday gift. Actually, given the diversity of these prints, you could probably knock something off the list for any shirt lover you may know by December.

Each week, FM is going to be releasing 7 tees (and from the looks of it, potential hoodies, as well) for the extent of the week, and while it seems like reprints are indeed possible down the road, you're probably gonna want to grab what you want when you see it. There are discounts if you're planning to buy a few tees, also, which is excellent for a project like this (especially if you know some people who might want to go in with you on an order). Just be sure to keep an eye on that countdown clock... there are going to be some awesome tees printing here, and it would be a shame to miss out. There's always going to be more on the site itself, but we'll be sure to steer you to the best of the bunch.

Contest Watch Plus: Week of November 5

We'll get right into it this week, a week that is quite Threadless heavy due to that all-important "plus" in our title. A week that starts with the bizarre and doesn't quit. Take The Watchers in Technicolor, for example. This DontCallMeBlanket joint is simple in both linework and placement, but it's full of arresting characters and a brilliant color scheme that would make me purchase it in half a heartbeat. I love how the characters are framed by the external, octopodian vampire-thing, which lends a gorgeous border, but those creatures are no less full of charm individually. It's all about being a brilliant graphic tee, with no further pretense or purpose, and it succeeds immensely on that front.

"Watchers" is wonderful for the way its craziness solidifies into a definite charm and a solid, tasteful graphic. On the other hand, though, there's sweet n sour's Pandatankhorse, which totally eschews any sort of solidification or tastefulness and instead revels in pure, unadulterated ridiculousness. It's a pick that I hardly feel needs justifying, because it's a pick I've made purely due to how intensely weird the entire thing is. It's brilliance is in that absurdity, starting with the title, which speaks exactly to what the tee's subject is, a zany mutated mess of ridiculousness. The colors perpetuate the mood, with the pinks and greens straddling a hazy, almost sickly feeling that makes the entire piece feel like a hallucination. The style rounds it out... the panda element is blissfully out of its gourd, the tank is pink and friendly and also has eyes for some reason, and the horse, tattooed, hardcore, yet still with a shred of my little pony, seems to have a mouth in its chest. I'm not sure what part of that isn't pure win, even if every part of it is pure odd.

As a music fan, I'm really loving Walmazan's "Seeing Music Everywhere." It takes a pretty simple punny concept and elevates it quite a bit. It's nothing new, not even to Threadless, for a shirt to exist representing musical genres in a cartoony, literal way, but it is the style here that makes this so great... the designer's trademark work truly brings the characters he creates here to life. Some of them ooze charm, like the little Soul ghost... others are wonderful for the dramatic contrast between the genre itself, like the happy gift praising Rap music, or the baby bottle resting by New Age. All of them, however, are brought to life in a stellar color palette that makes this utterly wearable and a must for any audiophile.

Finally from the wild wild world of Threadless, we have a vision in purple. I'm not going to lie, that gorgeous purple in the mock is a big part of my choice of biotwist's "...well I'm just as confused as you are,"but conceptually, it is a powerhouse as well. For starters, the placement is perfect, setting it apart immediately. The diagonal flow is unique, as is the dual edge print, allowing one character to come from the top and one from the bottom, emerging from off-canvas. The juxtaposition of the characters is great, too... the diver and the spaceman have similar getups, but couldn't be more wrong for each other's setting. As the diver plunges down, the astronaut floats ever upward, and both meet in some undefined void. You can get that feeling that neither character is quite sure what is going on, but the meeting is as enjoyable for us as it is baffling for them. The design echoes between the two really help tie the piece together, from the bulky suits and heavy helmets right down to the lengthy, snaking air-tubes (and you guys know how I feel about pretty much anything snaking and the visual interest it lends). I'd be seriously surprised if Threadless didn't give this one a nod.

Finally, we abandon Threadless in favor of Tilteed for our endpoint. Omnitarian's Deep Blue Destroyer is the subject of our study there. Much as we started, this piece is strongest on palette. It's just brilliantly moody, with colors that evoke shadows even despite the decided "lightness" of some of them. The sharks here are almost invisible for it, which really helps the concept of them hiding within the huge, bomb-like shelters. Also strong is the designer's distinct cartoon style, which imbues his work with so much personality. It's a common theme this week, and an important thing to seek out when looking for deserving work. This is certainly deserving.

Of course, a Contest Watch Plus means Double Plus Awesome. Or at least it means a shirt.woot Doubletake Derby has just ended. While the actual winners are probably meaningless to you unless you REALLY like fake national parks, we here at Singularitee have made it a habit to postulate just what woot will print as editor's choices now that the apparently totally A-OK fake accounts and nitwits have gotten it wrong again. As always, I work on a complex scale that combines what I believe SHOULD print with what I believe they WILL print, and seeks out the finest four. And what a four they are! Tgentry and EdgarRMcHerly's "Here, Friend" is one of the sweetest little tees I ever did see, and a print here would appease loyal fans of two of woot's most creative minds. Yeohgh's "Two, Be Friends" is not only a rare appearance from a Threadless great, but a rare instance where a shirt on woot is legitimately cute instead of being trashy and mediocre and trying to hold the same title. Cashland's "Spaghetti" is simply one of my favorite derby pieces in a long time, and I can only hope I can be so lucky as to own it. And Omnitarian rounds this round out as well with "It's A Cactus With A Fez," self explanatory goofiness from a designer who is undeniably woot's most deserving unprinted one.

We're not expecting to be right (though this lineup would get a $20 out of us), and there are many past CW entries in the running as well that we're hoping for good things from, but these are the horses we're predicting nevertheless. As always, barring another total crapshoot of prints such as last November's ECs (NO MORE SNOWMAN!), we'll be bringing you the report next weekend. If you're hoping to catch 'em at $10, you may wish to be browsing the site M-Th.

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.