Corrado wrote:Based on reject reason give for the other two, I don't think the beef is copyright or right-to-reproduce. The problem was that Van Gogh created the art, not Josephus. I don't know if combining two pieces of other artists' work counts as 'original.' Glad I don't have to make the call. 
But mine wasn't a copy of starry night at all. Sure, I followed the basics of it, but I did draw each pixel by hand, and placed them in much different places than Van Gogh's painting. My design is focussed on the church, which I greatly enlarged. I removed his big bush, and altered the placement of most of the sky's stars and moon. I even changed the design from a landscape shape to a portrait.
And my new design is even more different from either of the originals. This is squarely in the center of parody- as I said when I entered it, the screamer is driven mad by the weird looking sky, and lets loose with his primal scream. This time, the sky has only hints of similarity to Starry Night. It is much darker (black) and the color is very muted. The scream guy is the only portion of that design to appear. Behind him is a very dark countryside with no sign of that town at all. The big bush is also gone. The only really recognizable element from Starry night is the bright moon.
Overall, I think I made a very different, new design that has recognizable bits from each of the inspiration paintings, but a much different focus and feel than either one.
-a6o746-d.jpg)
(Please vote!)
If this is too much like the inspiration paintings, then there's a real problem with a large number of previous entries that were deemed OK. Including more than a few that were printed.
I just reread the rejection, and I don't see any conclusion to make from it except that the rejector thought the painting was copyrighted.
"Rejected because: This is really neat looking, but we can't reproduce someone else's art/composition even if it's been altered. And no I don't think this will qualify for parody."
To say we "can't" and then in the next breath say that it doesn't qualify as parody, he can only be talking about copyright. Otherwise, why specifically talk about the two reasons shirts get rejected for copyright violations?
This was the design that was rejected:
This is my starry night design, which I didn't submit:
even that design was quite a bit different in composition from the original. I rearranged things to make it into a portrait orientation also, and compressed the sky elements together.
