AdderXYU wrote:You don't get it because you didn't understand my multiple tirades to begin with.
It's hardly high art, but what it is is a smart design choice. It has a concept that required thinking up and uses the shirt well. The style, while simple, is distinctive... while it has similarities to Boots' waterslide ponderer, you couldn't mistake the two (unlike Pom and Poko's entries, which may as well be the same person).
It's not my favorite thing in the derby by a long shot, but it is my favorite in the fog because of how it works the shirt. Sort of like how you might not like an actor's offscreen persona, but you can't help but enjoy how he inhabits a role. This design just works as a shirt, largely due to it's self-referentiality. Stick figures don't work as anything (and when you can create a more distinctive bubbly guy like this with not so much effort, why would you choose something as inherently ugly as stick figures anyway?), anime is trite and mindless, and simplicity is only bad when it's synonymous with thoughtless. Careful readers would note that I've praised many a simpler piece because its concept was solid or else its lines, few though they might be, were well chosen. They'll also note I've laid into a number of "artistic" shirts for making no statement and bringing nothing interesting to the table... lines impersonating artistry. It might be unexpected, but it shouldn't be that hard to grasp.
I guess where we've disagreed then is on whether or not a concept was good. I appreciate that it uses the shirt as a shirt in a creative way that other concepts that I consider good didn't, but that doesn't mean that the clever or witty concepts are any less deserving of a print.
I guess the distinctiveness kind of throws me off. I wouldn't consider this really any more or less distinctive than the varying stick figures that we've seen in the last few derbies, and yes, the styles have varied.
As I've argued in the appropriate threads where we've HAD this argument, while I would prefer a guy like this over any stick figure, sometimes a guy like this, stylistically, just doesn't seem to click in the same way. I guess what causes the most confusion/lack of understanding seems to be your rather fluid determinations of what constitutes a solid concept or making a statement or other such criteria. I'm not berating this. Opinions should change. But when you're as vocal as you are, it seems hard to follow because the way in which you present your opinion makes it seem like it is and should be superior to that of everyone else's (tone and such essentially berating people that buy shirts that you don't seem to like).
I'll concede the anime point. It is an art style, but it tends to produce shirts that look like they could have been designed by the same person when, in reality, they were designed by two drastically different people. If a designer can incorporate anime elements or the entire style while still making it unique (not something that I'm saying HAS happened), then that's fine by me.
As for simplicity, once again, we approach a rather vague area of what you consider to be a thoughtless concept. One could argue (I wouldn't because I like the shirt) that this shirt is "thoughtless." I know you don't feel that way, but there's many times when you reach that conclusion without too much clue as to exactly why.
That's where the confusion is for me.
But it's hidden behind a rather snarky style of posting, and you do have the shiny crown that I bestowed upon you recently, so <3!
