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The detail on this design is exquisite. I like the placement and color scheme as well. Good job.

Still not Art Deco enough for me.
The gears at an angle just don't look right for what the style is supposed to be.

When I picture Art Deco gears, I see them as being viewed straight on from the axial position (down the axle).

While it's a nice image, it doesn't seem Art Deco in the slightest. It honestly looks like the author had made this previously and used it for a derby.

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I love the illustration... just doesn't have enough "deco" feel to it for the theme. Would still buy it anyway...

Sakumi wrote:While it's a nice image, it doesn't seem Art Deco in the slightest. It honestly looks like the author had made this previously and used it for a derby.

I can assure you that I most certainly did not have this before the derby, nor did I think of the picture before seeing the theme.

I don't know anything about Art Deco, or art styles in general, but I like this, ramy.

I think this is another very good departure from what we usually see from you. I am encouraged that we are seeing more and more variety from you. Great job.


voTED!

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The gear rings make it seem very futuristic, like a high-tech science fiction object.

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I like the design but I can't say it's art deco.

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This is a cool design, but it does feel more like deconstructionism or futurism than deco. But I'd wear it for sure.

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I want my chance to say the same thing again too. Really cool, but not art deco. Not even a little bit. I'm curious, did you have a deco reference that dealt with gears? Because I've never seen one, but if you did that might prove it to be more on topic.

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I glad it's not button-eyed animals. I'd buy one of these for sure.

jewelwing wrote:I want my chance to say the same thing again too. Really cool, but not art deco. Not even a little bit. I'm curious, did you have a deco reference that dealt with gears? Because I've never seen one, but if you did that might prove it to be more on topic.

To be completely honest, I know very little about art deco, and so all my knowledge is based on what I was able to take from the woot writeup, the wiki page, a few other google sources, and what was said on the thread before I started working on my picture. For some reason, gears were the first thing that came to mind when thinking geometric and futuristic simultaneously, which may not have been the right strategy (and it looks like I'm not the only one who made this association), but I looked at a lot of art deco posters to try to see different structures that were commonly used, then I tilted the picture on an axis to make it more interesting to me. The design was actually rotated 180 degrees before, and the projection that now faces the bottom right corner was to represent a skyscraper, but I prefered the design in this orientation, even if the skyscraper doesn't read as well anymore. I also google searched "art deco gears" and used some things that I found in google images for inspiration, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they were actually art deco :P Maybe I took "Splash some stylized geometrical cool onto a t-shirt" a bit too far, but I hope that people will be able to appreciate this as an interpretation of the theme on some level

ramyb wrote:*snip*

I've always liked the concept of gears in an Art Deco design, so that's cool with me.

But, for example, look at this submission:
http://shirt.woot.com/Derby/Entry.aspx?id=29411

That's what I was talking about with the axial view.

Here's another good example:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/201/518511429_a041f94f00.jpg?v=0

SeraphSix wrote:I've always liked the concept of gears in an Art Deco design, so that's cool with me.

But, for example, look at this submission:
http://shirt.woot.com/Derby/Entry.aspx?id=29411

That's what I was talking about with the axial view.

Here's another good example:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/201/518511429_a041f94f00.jpg?v=0

I think part of my confusion is that when people refer to gears in my picture, I think of the ones in the back, which are in the axial view, because the others weren't specifically meant to be gears. The image to which you linked though is actually one of the references I used for art deco gears for the ones in the background

ramyb wrote:I think part of my confusion is that when people refer to gears in my picture, I think of the ones in the back, which are in the axial view, because the others weren't specifically meant to be gears. The image to which you linked though is actually one of the references I used for art deco gears for the ones in the background

Yeah, the ones in the background I love! I'm just not too keen on the angled ones.
Most of the "angled" objects I see in Deco-style are curved to indicate angle... hard to explain, but look at jewelwing's submission: http://shirt.woot.com/Derby/Entry.aspx?id=29408

Honestly, I think you did an amazing job, I just....




I guess I find it boring

Not my style anyway.


Still, nice work.

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It's a cool design, no doubt, but once again, falls just short of the theme. It seems purely industrial...

Same problem I had with your Sonic shirt...great idea, but a noticeable flaw subtracts from it so much I just can't vote. It seems like you always quit 1 stop short of great. I know other Wooters disagree, because you do win a lot, but I just wish your designs didn't always have some fundamental problem.

This needs something else to make it art deco, something that takes it from industrial to fitting the theme.

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This isn't art deco. I like it, but it doesn't fit the theme.

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Very Cool! +1

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So, I am told that it is not art deco I really like the design, though, and though I wish I was voting for something that better fit the art style, I would definitely wear this, and it was at least inspired by art deco so I'll give it points for that. GMV

tenieldjo wrote:So, I am told that it is not art deco I really like the design, though, and though I wish I was voting for something that better fit the art style, I would definitely wear this, and it was at least inspired by art deco so I'll give it points for that. GMV

The overwhelming majority of the submissions to this derby do not even begin to approach art deco. But then, who is to judge? This entry may not be exactly within the rules of the genre, but it certainly is true to the spirit in a futuristic sort of way.

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I am really confused by this design... as someone with an art history degree, I have no idea how to relate this to art deco? Maybe you can explain it to me better...

reganrai wrote:I am really confused by this design... as someone with an art history degree, I have no idea how to relate this to art deco? Maybe you can explain it to me better...

i can explain.
you see here at woot, the prevailing designers at any given time are not required to follow rules to secure a win. it has always been this way. and by looking at the reckoning list, you will find that this particular artist is the current designer exempt from any and all rules pertinent to a derby. dont blame the designer for flaunting the rules more and more obviously each week. blame woot for not caring. once mermaid man and barnacle boy fall from grace, another will take their place and do precisely the same thing.
i hope this has cleared up any confusion for you.

peppersagooddog wrote:i can explain.
you see here at woot, the prevailing designers at any given time are not required to follow rules to secure a win. it has always been this way. and by looking at the reckoning list, you will find that this particular artist is the current designer exempt from any and all rules pertinent to a derby. dont blame the designer for flaunting the rules more and more obviously each week. blame woot for not caring. once mermaid man and barnacle boy fall from grace, another will take their place and do precisely the same thing.
i hope this has cleared up any confusion for you.

It also makes for a fantastic shirt.

peppersagooddog wrote:i can explain.
you see here at woot, the prevailing designers at any given time are not required to follow rules to secure a win. it has always been this way. and by looking at the reckoning list, you will find that this particular artist is the current designer exempt from any and all rules pertinent to a derby. dont blame the designer for flaunting the rules more and more obviously each week. blame woot for not caring. once mermaid man and barnacle boy fall from grace, another will take their place and do precisely the same thing.
i hope this has cleared up any confusion for you.

Agreed.

What's even sadder is that when Ramyb first posted this design, everyone said it had nothing to do with art-deco yet of course he wouldn't have changed anything because that would require actual work.

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A nice shirt, yes, but it doesn't read "art deco" to me. It seems more industrial.

peppersagooddog wrote:i can explain... i hope this has cleared up any confusion for you.

This is why you rule.

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Needs more tigers.

peppersagooddog wrote:i can explain.
you see here at woot, the prevailing designers at any given time are not required to follow rules to secure a win. it has always been this way. and by looking at the reckoning list, you will find that this particular artist is the current designer exempt from any and all rules pertinent to a derby. dont blame the designer for flaunting the rules more and more obviously each week. blame woot for not caring. once mermaid man and barnacle boy fall from grace, another will take their place and do precisely the same thing.
i hope this has cleared up any confusion for you.

Kdeuce is even back this week

It'll be like "war of the twits who know nothing about art and somehow win dramatically every time"

Stormink wrote:Agreed.

What's even sadder is that when Ramyb first posted this design, everyone said it had nothing to do with art-deco yet of course he wouldn't have changed anything because that would require actual work.

That's because they still voted, despite posting that it didn't follow the theme. :/

It's a great-looking design, but it not following the theme is frustrating.

peppersagooddog wrote:i can explain.
you see here at woot, the prevailing designers at any given time are not required to follow rules to secure a win. it has always been this way. and by looking at the reckoning list, you will find that this particular artist is the current designer exempt from any and all rules pertinent to a derby. dont blame the designer for flaunting the rules more and more obviously each week. blame woot for not caring. once mermaid man and barnacle boy fall from grace, another will take their place and do precisely the same thing.
i hope this has cleared up any confusion for you.

Thank you.

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Ramyb,
I'm not sure what you've done to the people of woot, but I would imagine your back is killing you from all the knives that have to be sticking out of it. I am just a lowly peon who purchases woot shirts, I cannot even begin to imagine how to design a shirt...so I wouldn't presume to dictate to others how they design theirs. That being said, I like your designs, obviously a considerable amount of the public likes your designs and the last I checked that's what this site was about. I sincerly hope that you will ignore the acrimonious remarks by your fellow wooters (who are supposed to be adults, and should act accordingly I might add), and continue submitting your shirts....simply my two cents. That being said...I didn't vote for your entry...I like the bunny, LOL!

sonotthereason wrote:Ramyb,
I'm not sure what you've done to the people of woot, but I would imagine your back is killing you from all the knives that have to be sticking out of it. I am just a lowly peon who purchases woot shirts, I cannot even begin to imagine how to design a shirt...so I wouldn't presume to dictate to others how they design theirs. That being said, I like your designs, obviously a considerable amount of the public likes your designs and the last I checked that's what this site was about. I sincerly hope that you will ignore the acrimonious remarks by your fellow wooters (who are supposed to be adults, and should act accordingly I might add), and continue submitting your shirts....simply my two cents. That being said...I didn't vote for your entry...I like the bunny, LOL!

I completely agree. I read these boards every week, and it's amazing to me that people can get so hateful over a bunch of tshirts. It's like a group of sixth grade girls squabbling over a boy, sickening and tiresome. Maybe if they spent less time being jealous of someone else's success, and more time on their own designs, assuming they have any, they'd win occasionally, too.

^If only the last two posters knew the back story behind ramyb...

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will it ever end? woot needs to get them out of the derby and give them one day a week. btw off topic again

nbrosas wrote:^If only the last two posters knew the back story behind ramyb...

Well, how about fill us in? I also don't agree with all of the bashing. I for one enjoy most of Ramy's designs, and he admitted himself that he was not familiar with the art deco style.

cpospisil wrote:I completely agree. I read these boards every week, and it's amazing to me that people can get so hateful over a bunch of tshirts. It's like a group of sixth grade girls squabbling over a boy, sickening and tiresome. Maybe if they spent less time being jealous of someone else's success, and more time on their own designs, assuming they have any, they'd win occasionally, too.

Because the only reason someone might make a post offering criticism is jealousy. *eyeroll*

Nobody is literally trying to stick a knife in ramyb's back (I sure hope not anyway, I wish nothing bad on him). However, some of us who frequent this site and these boards tend to get a little bored with the same old same old winning week after week, when the designs are flawed, and far superior designs lag behind.

I don't care if he wins every week, if he was delivering something that was worth the win. Case in point, a few weeks ago, ramyb did a beautiful scene of a woman holding a bird, with water in the background that was pretty great, and...it went nowhere. So he went back to the same old same old. Guess you can't blame him, but it gets old after a few months.

This week is a beautiful example of why he gets negative comments. He posted his design on the boards, and received pretty much overwhelming feedback that the design was off-topic and didn't fit the theme, and he changed...nothing. He submitted as it was and guess what? He didn't need to change anything, here he is in the fog again, unrejected. He's developed a reputation of same old and same old and lazy designs, and he deserves it.

Of course he's laughing all the way to the bank, so it doesn't matter much to him, but the negative comments are not without basis, and the longer it goes on, the worse it's going to get.

There are many of us who have been here a while and remember the days when clever ideas and well done designs were rewarded with votes. Nowadays anime/chibi/flawed designs win consistently. The entire dynamic of the site has changed to one the community is increasingly getting sick of, and ramyb is one of the artists that represents that change, and therefore get the bulk of people's ire.

paulkremer wrote:I don't care if he wins every week, if he was delivering something that was worth the win. Case in point, a few weeks ago, ramyb did a beautiful scene of a woman holding a bird, with water in the background that was pretty great, and...it went nowhere. So he went back to the same old same old. Guess you can't blame him, but it gets old after a few months.

This week is a beautiful example of why he gets negative comments. He posted his design on the boards, and received pretty much overwhelming feedback that the design was off-topic and didn't fit the theme, and he changed...nothing. He submitted as it was and guess what? He didn't need to change anything, here he is in the fog again, unrejected. He's developed a reputation of same old and same old and lazy designs, and he deserves it.

I want to respond to several parts of your post here. First of all, my girl with the bird that "went nowhere" was in the fog until the very end of the contest, and in 2nd place for most of it and was pushed out of the top 3 by a very narrow margin, which has happened to other designs of mine, so I would hardly call it a failed design. I'm not sure how this design in any way can be considered same old same old, but that's beside the point. I received "overwhelming feedback" that the design was off-topic, but I disagreed. After having spent around 8 hours on the design, I wasn't ready to abandon it, and so I google searched "art deco gears" and looked at several reference images and redrew the gears in the image and added a lot more detail to them in an attempt to give it more of an art deco flair. In addition, the theme is called art deco, but the description says as the design challenge:

"Splash some stylized geometrical cool onto a t-shirt that embodies all the aerodynamic modernism of the '20s and '30s"

To me, this picture very much embodies aerodynamic modernism, and is stylized geometrical cool at the best that I can do it. I took this theme very seriously and put a lot of thought into my entry. I took your suggestion into account, but could not find a way to work it into an already finished design, and was afraid of it becoming too similar to the design that drakxxx was working on already, and therefore decided to keep the entry as it was. This entry is neither lazy, nor is it in any way similar to anything else that I've submitted, so it's hard not to take angry comments as a personal attack rather than an attempt at constructive criticism. I'm not saying anything about jealousy, nor have I ever, but half of the negative comments on the thread have nothing to do with the design itself.

There are many of us who have been here a while and remember the days when clever ideas and well done designs were rewarded with votes. Nowadays anime/chibi/flawed designs win consistently. The entire dynamic of the site has changed to one the community is increasingly getting sick of, and ramyb is one of the artists that represents that change, and therefore get the bulk of people's ire.[/quote]

But see, here's the thing. He does get the votes, so the majority must like his designs. It's not "the community" that is upset, it's a vocal minority. Apparently a minority of people who have been posting for awhile and what they perceive as change. Who's to say that his designs are inferior? You? Adder?Who decided that you should be the arbiter of taste for the rest of us?

As for as this week's design, I don't particularly care for it myself, but that's just me. Other people obviously disagree or it wouldn't be in the fog. Since it is in the fog, it seems that his decision to not make changes just because a few people said he should was the right one. I don't see this as a perfect example of anything except someone standing his ground, and maybe prevailing. We'll find out next week.

ramyb wrote:I received "overwhelming feedback" that the design was off-topic, but I disagreed. After having spent around 8 hours on the design, I wasn't ready to abandon it, and so I google searched "art deco gears" and looked at several reference images and redrew the gears in the image and added a lot more detail to them in an attempt to give it more of an art deco flair.

And that's more than fine. Part of what art IS is how it is interpreted, and disagreement of interpretation is part and parcel of it. I never said you made no effort, it's just that it doesn't say art deco to me personally. It says, "almost art deco." It's your design and your submission, so you are entitled your interpretation, even as I am entitled to disagree.

ramyb wrote:This entry is neither lazy, nor is it in any way similar to anything else that I've submitted, so it's hard not to take angry comments as a personal attack rather than an attempt at constructive criticism.

I apologize if I offended you, although I must say that I am glad that you can be offended. It tells me you are passionate about your work, which goes against some of the criticism against you.

cpospisil wrote: But see, here's the thing. He does get the votes, so the majority must like his designs. It's not "the community" that is upset, it's a vocal minority. Apparently a minority of people who have been posting for awhile and what they perceive as change. Who's to say that his designs are inferior? You? Adder?Who decided that you should be the arbiter of taste for the rest of us?

Winning designs end up with more often than not over 1000 votes. The most popular end up with 2000. The Woot "community" I am referring to is not everyone who votes. A person who just passes by, doesn't even click the detail or read one word of a post (which represents the VAST majority of voters, from what I've been told), could hardly be considered part of the community. If half the comments in a thread feel the entry is off topic or have a negative comment, doesn't that qualify as the community disagreeing?

I don't believe that the voters who just scream in, click a bunch of "I'd want one's" and leave represent the will of the artists and vocal fans that frequent the boards...otherwise, the boards wouldn't be so full of negative comments lately about the shift of focus on this site.

paulkremer wrote:Winning designs end up with more often than not over 1000 votes. The most popular end up with 2000. The Woot "community" I am referring to is not everyone who votes. A person who just passes by, doesn't even click the detail or read one word of a post (which represents the VAST majority of voters, from what I've been told), could hardly be considered part of the community. If half the comments in a thread feel the entry is off topic or have a negative comment, doesn't that qualify as the community disagreeing?

I don't believe that the voters who just scream in, click a bunch of "I'd want one's" and leave represent the will of the artists and vocal fans that frequent the boards...otherwise, the boards wouldn't be so full of negative comments lately about the shift of focus on this site.

Honestly though, this design really is as far as I've gotten from the types of designs that I've submitted before, but the same people who have been complaining continue to complain on my thread. There are plenty of designs that are just entirely off topic with no attempt to follow the theme at all, and there are even designs with cute animals, but my thread is still the one that garners the most the complaints.

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While I normally don't care for Ramy's designs, I actually kind of like this one. Unfortunately, I don't see this a being art deco at all. So sorry, no vote.

Darksaber99999 wrote:Needs more tigers.

got a l.o.l from me...

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I keep thinking iron man when I look at this design. Personally, I like this style of yours. I much more prefer this type of shirt to the bulk of your entries. And I know that if it works, you should keep doing it, but I would like to see woot move away from the uber cute stuff we've all become accustomed to.

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I keep thinking iron man when I look at this design. Personally, I like this style of yours. I much more prefer this type of shirt to the bulk of your entries. And I know that if it works, you should keep doing it, but I would like to see woot move away from the uber cute stuff we've all become accustomed to.

Darksaber99999 wrote:Needs more tigers.

ELL OH ELL

ramyb wrote:Honestly though, this design really is as far as I've gotten from the types of designs that I've submitted before, but the same people who have been complaining continue to complain on my thread. There are plenty of designs that are just entirely off topic with no attempt to follow the theme at all, and there are even designs with cute animals, but my thread is still the one that garners the most the complaints.

Because your design is in the fog and is probably going to get printed, giving you $1,000 more for not following the theme. This is not art deco. And whomever said above that art is what you make it or whatever, true, but when there is a specific theme to follow, you can't put a stick figure up and say, "Look! It's realism." This is not art deco. I appreciate the 8 hours of work but that doesn't mean it deserves to be printed. Wait until there's a machine derby or something like that. 8 hours of work and almost fits the theme ("but there are others who don't fit the theme at all") does not justify submitting it.

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This design, while neat, is most definitely NOT Art Deco. Do people vote on derby designs simply because they are cool here? Or is there actually any oversight? An ART DECO competition should have ART DECO designs.

wallyrit wrote:The overwhelming majority of the submissions to this derby do not even begin to approach art deco. But then, who is to judge? This entry may not be exactly within the rules of the genre, but it certainly is true to the spirit in a futuristic sort of way.

Who is to judge? We are! Thats why we have a "tattle" button. If it's not Art Deco it shouldn't be here!

cbelk wrote:Who is to judge? We are! Thats why we have a "tattle" button. If it's not Art Deco it shouldn't be here!

I've said it before and I'll say it again- woot's writeup says: "Splash some stylized geometrical cool onto a t-shirt that embodies all the aerodynamic modernism of the '20s and '30s"- and I feel that I did just that. You can feel free to disagree and I'm not going to try to change your mind, it's ultimately up to you what you want to do or think, but I'm just explaining that I think that this picture belongs in this derby, and that's why I did it and why I posted it.

And thanks to everyone who likes the design and voted.

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So do you get quality posts by bashing people's designs like that kitty dude...or by defending your designs like ramyb has been trying to do?

FuzzyCircles wrote:So do you get quality posts by bashing people's designs like that kitty dude...or by defending your designs like ramyb has been trying to do?

are you dyslexic?

kyle mittskus != kitty

assuming quality post ratings are given for adding something valid to a thread; for which neither of our posts qualify...

i like the tripe: saves me $ and makes for interesting boards.

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Man, it's like every week your designs get bashed Ramyb. I love your designs and usually buy them. Keep up the good work!

Though this is much better than many designs I've seen from you, it still doesn't really fit the theme. Definitely isn't Art Deco.

This was supposed to be a comment on the design Ramyb submitted. I think I may have accidentally posted it in the wrong place, sorry about that. <3

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I am torn. Visually, I really like this, and is something I would wear. But as has been said before, it really doesn't fit the theme. (in my opinion). Beautiful work though.

I don't feel I can vote for it, but should it win, I will buy one.

ZG.

eag01 wrote:Man, it's like every week your designs get bashed Ramyb. I love your designs and usually buy them. Keep up the good work!

Yeah, it's almost as if he does a piss-poor job on a weekly basis...

>.<

People can love the design all they want but it ISN'T DECO. Period.

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I've been trying to figure out why this doesn't feel like art deco.

I can't decide whether it is the color scheme or something else. While art deco had a "looking to the future" feel to it, it was still very grounded in the experience of the artists of the 20s. This feels more futuristic than that.

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Like others before have said, it doesn't particularly like art deco, but from looking at it, it does look as you took art deco's inspiration and went your own direction with it, and I like the design. Lastly I do enjoy your cartoony shirts, but it's definitely nice to see a different style, always refreshing!

FuzzyCircles wrote:So do you get quality posts by bashing people's designs like that kitty dude...or by defending your designs like ramyb has been trying to do?

Assuming there's a real question in that (which might not be the case), "quality posts" are the ones woot likes from the discussion of whatever the current daily deal is (on any woot). On regular woot they show up on the main page, on shirt.woot you have to join the discussion to see them - they're added to woot's first post.

I'm pretty sure there are no such thing as quality posts garnered from derby threads.

i finished my first deco shirts

they were hard to make

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What is Art Deco then? I looked it up on the Internet and came up with a lot of differences in the definition from one source to another? Did you know you are not supposed to refer to designs as Art Deco unless they originate from France? Well By One definition this is true. I looked at some of the rejected entries and gave my take on them and also found a common factor between them. You can read about it on the blog... It is far to long winded (IT IS LONG) to post here.

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Ramyb, I think this one doesn't look like Art Deco because of the 3D gears. Most Art Deco I saw looks flatish.

But the without the 3D gears, this design wouldn't be as good.

But I never even heard of Art Deco until today so I may be way off.

databit wrote:Did you know you are not supposed to refer to designs as Art Deco unless they originate from France? Well By One definition this is true.

the quote appearing in your blog says from France "and those from countries directly influenced by France." Arguably this includes every country in the world.

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nice! personally i think it should be a left or right side design instead of straight center.

no1 wrote:the quote appearing in your blog says from France "and those from countries directly influenced by France." Arguably this includes every country in the world.

Yeah, I know... but I kept harping on that for the absurdity of it because there are so many definitions of what Art Deco is. They are so varied that one of them even says it has to be from France or a country influenced by France as you say.

Good catch.. I think you just saved every entry here since that definition actually does include every country in the world. Unless there is an entry you are rooting for that actually IS from France. Then we can disquaify every other one. Depends on your definition.

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This design is not art deco. I'm not even an artist and I can tell that, which makes the fact that ramyb doesn't get it even more astounding. I would honestly feel extremely embarrassed if I were in your position. As an artist you need to know major art styles and movements.

Art deco is flatter, less gritty, more flowing, round, shapes instead of sharp, 3d gears. Hell, just look at other entries to figure out what real art deco is!

albinoapple wrote:This design is not art deco. I'm not even an artist and I can tell that, which makes the fact that ramyb doesn't get it even more astounding. I would honestly feel extremely embarrassed if I were in your position. As an artist you need to know major art styles and movements.

Art deco is flatter, less gritty, more flowing, round, shapes instead of sharp, 3d gears. Hell, just look at other entries to figure out what real art deco is!

You'd think people would at least look it up on Wikipedia or something before giving a crack at it. Not meaning to jump on the bash bandwagon or anything but really, when I see a theme I would expect the theme to be followed rather than throw any ol' thing together and pray people vote for it because of who made it or that it may make a fairly interesting shirt design. If that was the case, why make themes every week? FOLLOW THEM.

While not everyone can be expected to mimic deco to perfection, it shouldn't be much to ask for them to at least understand and capture the essence of the style for the sake of the integrity of the theme. Come on guys, art history is fun, give it a shot.

Tabernack wrote:You'd think people would at least look it up on Wikipedia or something before giving a crack at it. Not meaning to jump on the bash bandwagon or anything but really, when I see a theme I would expect the theme to be followed rather than throw any ol' thing together and pray people vote for it because of who made it or that it may make a fairly interesting shirt design. If that was the case, why make themes every week? FOLLOW THEM.

While not everyone can be expected to mimic deco to perfection, it shouldn't be much to ask for them to at least understand and capture the essence of the style for the sake of the integrity of the theme. Come on guys, art history is fun, give it a shot.

It is perhaps worth noting that the designer was informed that it was not deco long before submitting, yet did it anyway.

It's sooo awesome coming to lurk around the derby every week and watching (reading) people argue and complain! It gives me something to do while being bored at work.

Yay.

Re: Construct

Sorry, but this is something that no one would notice or take a second glance at, once it is on a shirt. Add some skulls, and it would look like just another t-shirt from target. I find this to be a reoccurring problem with wooters; voting for things that make good art, but not good t-shirt art, though I will say that the theme in general is not a good "t-shirt" theme. There also seems to be a sort of 'groupie' following behind certain artists, where it starts to not matter what they submit, they have a fan-base that will vote it into the fog.

Let's think about this, people. Is it good art? Yes. But is it clever? Will someone see you wearing this and actually remember it one second later? The answer is no, they will not.

Re: Construct

ramyb this design is VERY VERY good!

Im very curious how you made it, as Ive been learning illustrator and trying to make gears ^_^

Though I do sorta agree with some other wooters that this didnt scream "art deco" to me, at least not in the 1920-1930's sense, I shall give it my vote, because I would still wear it.

Re: Construct

If Woot wants to discourage cleverness and creativity by not rejecting this mundane, rule-breaking piece, then they can reap what they have sown when people naturally follow in Ramyb's foot steps and violate every theme to whatever extent is possible in order to adhere to the basic principles of "successful" shirt making. If Woot thinks their site will survive falling into a repetitive, forgettable pattern of production than that is their business decision, and we will have to see what happens. But ultimately, sad as it is, the responsibility falls on Woot to police things.

They have made their position clear by not rejecting this shirt.

lwoodnj wrote:If Woot wants to discourage cleverness and creativity by not rejecting this mundane, rule-breaking piece, then they can reap what they have sown when people naturally follow in Ramyb's foot steps and violate every theme to whatever extent is possible in order to adhere to the basic principles of "successful" shirt making. If Woot thinks their site will survive falling into a repetitive, forgettable pattern of production than that is their business decision, and we will have to see what happens. But ultimately, sad as it is, the responsibility falls on Woot to police things.

They have made their position clear by not rejecting this shirt.

Woot reaps a lot of money off this hack. They're in no mood to start quality-controlling any time soon. when the good stuff makes it, it undersells, especially lately.

lwoodnj wrote:

They have made their position clear by not rejecting this shirt.

People, again, this shirt was in the fog when rejections hit and they haven't rejected anything since. It not being rejected has nothing to do with anything but the rule woot has not to reject when things are in the fog until they can discuss it on Monday and make a consensus decision.

AdderXYU wrote:Woot reaps a lot of money off this hack. They're in no mood to start quality-controlling any time soon. when the good stuff makes it, it undersells, especially lately.

This is NOT Art Deco - not even close. I think it's terrible that there are some designs that are definately Art Deco (and so much better than this) who won't even see the fog because so many people have mindlessly voted for this design (like they do every week) not caring that it isn't on theme.

starlux wrote:It's sooo awesome coming to lurk around the derby every week and watching (reading) people argue and complain! It gives me something to do while being bored at work.

Yay.

Aren't internet arguments the greatest?

Re: Construct

I know that supposedly the woot judges won't weigh in on a design in the fog for a while, but honestly, this is not art deco in the slightest.

I don't even know why they need to discuss it? IMO, there is nothing to discuss. It's NOT deco. It's not even kinda deco.

This design is taking up a valuable slot that another far more deserving design should have.

And this is not about ramyb. I love ramy's shirts. I have bought them. And I will defend, to the death, his right to put cute animals on t-shirts.

But fair is fair, and this shirt needs to be rejected. What's the point of having a topic if the popular designers don't have to adhere to it? I thought the whole point of the difficulty of entering the derby is to design a shirt that not only withstands public scrutiny, but is also on topic.



p.s.
I totally agree with stuntdummy. I do think the popular artists have a cult following who mindlessly vote for them no matter if the shirt is good or bad. And that's really too bad, because a lot of good designs here fall by the wayside.

Re: Construct

When I first looked at this design, I thought "cool". But upon closer inspection, it really did not have enough art deco in it to warrant my vote.

I, for one, vote based on nice design AND meeting the theme of the derby. If there were no theme, this would be a cool shirt to have. I just have a feeling that many people here vote solely based on looks, theme be damned. But that's sadly intrinsic to our culture where style is more important than substance.

Finally I really like one of your designs.. kind of amazed you were able to make one without chibi of any kind in it. ;)

But I won't vote for it because it's totally off-theme. Just because it HAS gears doesn't make it art deco.

albinoapple wrote:Aren't internet arguments the greatest?

not until nazis are mentioned.

tgentry wrote:...the rule woot has not to reject when things are in the fog until they can discuss it on Monday and make a consensus decision.

Interesting, I didn't realize there was such a rule. But it makes sense. Thanks for "learning" me something ^_^

re: construct

Internet forums are generally free reign for people to say whatever they want. Bashing is going to happen.

Ramy is going to get criticism. That means they are doing something right. If Ramy wasn't the designs wouldn't get votes and would be ignored.

That being said, Ramy gets votes. People, in general, get what they want. That's what this whole thing is all about.

Saying that as design doesn't fit topic is okay to me. I just don't see the point of getting angry when they don't change -their- design.

Ramy will continue to get votes. People will continue to complain. It's all part of the process of exposure. Ramy might change style, start changing designs, but not everyone is going to be pleased.

Regardless, I say do what makes the money. I hope for the next ground breaking artist who's designs I like as much as Ramy's to come along. Until then congrats on another design I'm voting for Ramy.

tgentry wrote:People, again, this shirt was in the fog when rejections hit and they haven't rejected anything since. It not being rejected has nothing to do with anything but the rule woot has not to reject when things are in the fog until they can discuss it on Monday and make a consensus decision.

Ok...

NOW they have made their position clear.

Monday Rejections are in, and Ramyb remains.

Thank you for your statement, Woot.

I encourage everyone to ignore the rules to whatever extent you feel is possible from this point onwards.

tgentry wrote:People, again, this shirt was in the fog when rejections hit and they haven't rejected anything since. It not being rejected has nothing to do with anything but the rule woot has not to reject when things are in the fog until they can discuss it on Monday and make a consensus decision.

Ok...

NOW Woot has made their position clear.

Monday rejections are in and Ramyb remains.

Thank you for making your statement, Woot.

I now encourage everyone to break the rules as much as you deem possible in order to create a cliche, "catchy" shirt. I hope this ends up working out for you, Woot.

tgentry wrote:People, again, this shirt was in the fog when rejections hit and they haven't rejected anything since. It not being rejected has nothing to do with anything but the rule woot has not to reject when things are in the fog until they can discuss it on Monday and make a consensus decision.

Ok...

NOW Woot has made their position clear.

Monday rejections are in and Ramyb remains.

Thank you for making your statement, Woot.

I now encourage everyone to break the rules as much as you deem possible in order to create a cliche, "catchy" shirt. I hope this ends up working out for you, Woot.

kylemittskus wrote:Because your design is in the fog and is probably going to get printed, giving you $1,000 more for not following the theme. This is not art deco. And whomever said above that art is what you make it or whatever, true, but when there is a specific theme to follow, you can't put a stick figure up and say, "Look! It's realism." This is not art deco. I appreciate the 8 hours of work but that doesn't mean it deserves to be printed. Wait until there's a machine derby or something like that. 8 hours of work and almost fits the theme ("but there are others who don't fit the theme at all") does not justify submitting it.

I have to agree with this.

And again, I will say that I love Ramy's designs. I buy them. So this is no personal dig at the artist. It's not bashing, and I certainly harbor no hatred or ill will towards ramy.
In fact I'm still waiting for my circus tiger shirt to arrive.
*dang it woot! where's my shirt??!! It's been over a week now!!**

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. The fact of the matter is that ramy's current design, as neat as it is to look at, is simply NOT deco. I did not vote for this shirt because it is OFF TOPIC.

The fact that it has not been rejected for being off topic when there are other shirts that were rejected and were way closer to being deco than this shirt. Does not sit right with me at all. Did those other rejected shirts have a chance of being in the fog? Probably not. But it's the principle of the thing. Woot is showing a clear double standard for popular artists. That's not right. I know it's just a t-shirt site, but it's discouraging for the artists who are trying to get noticed and who are playing by the rules.

quite frankly, if having ramy's designs on sale every week is so good for woot's sale then they should simply put him on the payroll and have him roll out a new shirt for sale every week and leave the derby to others.

Ramy states that he thought it was deco. But honestly, if you look at any examples of deco, then you can tell that it's not. You don't need an art degree. But He's welcome to his interpretation.

The problem is not ramy. It's woot.
They post a topic for the derby. It's a difficult topic.
in the day leading up to the opening of this derby, SEVERAL people asked woot to weigh in with more exact guidelines about what would be rejected and what wouldn't.
No response from woot. I have noticed that they never respond to questions in their forum which is very poor service to the fans of the site and customers. I suppose they simply can't be bothered to spend 5 minutes to clarify something that people obviously care about and ultimately spend money on. This tells me, woot doesn't care.
The rejections have started. And so far they have been inconsistent. Personally I just want to see consistency in the rejections. If ramy's design gets to stay in then several other designs should have been allowed to stay in.

I have not been rejected for being off topic yet, but I can imagine that I would be mighty upset to spend the kinda time needed to create a design (as other artists know, these are not created in an hour) only to be rejected for not being Deco enough and then to watch ramy's design sail on through.

Anyway, it's about woot showing some integrity and consistency in the judging.
And in this case, they are really letting people down.

That being said, I didn't vote for this design. I don't particularly like it. It's way off topic. It does look like a shirt that I could pick up at Target, but I look forward to other designs from ramy.

yea, Im done.

akumachan wrote:I have to agree with this.

And again, I will say that I love Ramy's designs. I buy them. So this is no personal dig at the artist. It's not bashing, and I certainly harbor no hatred or ill will towards ramy.
In fact I'm still waiting for my circus tiger shirt to arrive.
*dang it woot! where's my shirt??!! It's been over a week now!!**

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. The fact of the matter is that ramy's current design, as neat as it is to look at, is simply NOT deco. I did not vote for this shirt because it is OFF TOPIC.

The fact that it has not been rejected for being off topic when there are other shirts that were rejected and were way closer to being deco than this shirt. Does not sit right with me at all. Did those other rejected shirts have a chance of being in the fog? Probably not. But it's the principle of the thing. Woot is showing a clear double standard for popular artists. That's not right. I know it's just a t-shirt site, but it's discouraging for the artists who are trying to get noticed and who are playing by the rules.

quite frankly, if having ramy's designs on sale every week is so good for woot's sale then they should simply put him on the payroll and have him roll out a new shirt for sale every week and leave the derby to others.

Ramy states that he thought it was deco. But honestly, if you look at any examples of deco, then you can tell that it's not. You don't need an art degree. But He's welcome to his interpretation.

The problem is not ramy. It's woot.
They post a topic for the derby. It's a difficult topic.
in the day leading up to the opening of this derby, SEVERAL people asked woot to weigh in with more exact guidelines about what would be rejected and what wouldn't.
No response from woot. I have noticed that they never respond to questions in their forum which is very poor service to the fans of the site and customers. I suppose they simply can't be bothered to spend 5 minutes to clarify something that people obviously care about and ultimately spend money on. This tells me, woot doesn't care.
The rejections have started. And so far they have been inconsistent. Personally I just want to see consistency in the rejections. If ramy's design gets to stay in then several other designs should have been allowed to stay in.

I have not been rejected for being off topic yet, but I can imagine that I would be mighty upset to spend the kinda time needed to create a design (as other artists know, these are not created in an hour) only to be rejected for not being Deco enough and then to watch ramy's design sail on through.

Anyway, it's about woot showing some integrity and consistency in the judging.
And in this case, they are really letting people down.

That being said, I didn't vote for this design. I don't particularly like it. It's way off topic. It does look like a shirt that I could pick up at Target, but I look forward to other designs from ramy.

yea, Im done.

Truth.

Art deco is a really hard genre to define. I don't think the pages upon pages of descriptions backed up by the volumes of circa-1920s art works as examples are sufficient to get a real idea of what the whole art deco movement was about. Really, shouldn't anything with bold colors, geometric shapes, and sunrays be considered deco? Unless, of course, that whole France thing bears any significance...

akumachan wrote:The fact that it has not been rejected for being off topic when there are other shirts that were rejected and were way closer to being deco than this shirt. Does not sit right with me at all. Did those other rejected shirts have a chance of being in the fog? Probably not. But it's the principle of the thing. Woot is showing a clear double standard for popular artists. That's not right. I know it's just a t-shirt site, but it's discouraging for the artists who are trying to get noticed and who are playing by the rules.

Honestly, I think it's much less a double-standard, and much more the fact that I defended the relevance to the theme of my entry and others did not.

The main issue is that everyone has their own expectations when coming to look at a derby. Some people pay no attention to the theme at all, and just vote for designs that they like. Others look at the name of the theme, and then make decisions about whether or not entries are on topic just based on that. For me, when doing an entry, I pay less attention to the name of the theme and more attention to woot's writeup. While this may not always make sense, and it may not always be the case, sometimes woot's writeup leaves what I consider to be enough of an opening to take the theme in a different direction from what I expect others to do with it.

A good example is the Cabin Fever theme. Although the name of the theme was cabin fever, the writeup said "Use this week's Derby as an outlet for your claustrophobe tendencies." I took this to mean that any entry that bore relevance to claustrophobia would be considered on-theme. Some people criticized that the entry I did had nothing to do with cabin fever, but I believe it was still entirely on theme, even though it was not specifically cabin-fever related.

In the case of this derby, I wanted to take this theme as a design challenge and do something different from what I normally do. When woot confines the derby to a particular style, it becomes much more difficult for artists to show their personal flair, so different people take different approaches to this. Tgentry's entry for example, while on-theme and clearly related to art deco, contains elements that are clearly not art deco at all, making it unique relative to the rest of the derby. What I decided to do for my entry was take the part of the writeup that says "splash some stylized geometrical cool onto a t-shirt" as far as I could take it, extending and exaggerating the futuristic part. While this may have taken the entry a bit further from art deco than most people would have liked, I still included elements that I believe to be art deco inspired (such as the gears in the background), and the way I approached the coloring was in a way that can be seen in a lot of art deco pieces, with overlapping elements being affected in coloration by the ones below them. The combination of the elements with art deco inspiration, as well as the relevance to various parts of the woot writeup, make this entry on theme in my opinion. I entered it knowing that some people would not think it was on theme, but I preferred to do an entry like this rather than do one that I felt would be more similar to the others in the derby. The potential for rejection was obviously there, but I think that there is enough tying this entry to woot's writeup that it should be allowed to stay in the derby.

I fully respect anyone's decision not to vote because they believe that this theme should have been solely about art deco, and that I should not have taken this approach, but I also want you to recognize that, while I may not have done what you wanted to see with the theme, I most certainly did not default on anything that I'm used to and still took this theme seriously and tried to produce something of merit. As things look now, it is extremely unlikely that this will print anyway, and more than likely its downfall was due to the fact that too many people considered it to be off topic judging by the number of people who commented that they enjoyed the design but cannot vote in good conscience, but I stand by my entry and I don't think that it is worthy of rejection based on being off topic. It is not too late, though, and woot may still decide to reject it, but either way, I can't imagine this making it to print so I don't think that woot's decision will at all be related to the fact that this entry is in the fog.

Oh and as a sidenote, a few people suggested that woot is keeping this around because my other designs have made money for them, but I really doubt that's the case, especially since this is so different from my previous designs. There's really no reason for them to expect this to do any better than other pictures that would potentially win this derby.

ramyb wrote:ramy says lots of things

I appreciate your candor and defense of your design, so I'll put in a few words about my feelings about the design's merits and possibly echo the sentiments of others on why this doesn't so much fit the theme of art deco.

In my opinion, art deco brings up visions of big, clunky machinery, solid shapes, and a stripping down of a detailed design to simplistic essentials of shape and shading.

In your design, you do have gears, but to a futuristic design, with what seems to be circuitry running through them -- to which I have to reference the original post (as you like to do), which regards Nintendo as a point of interest about including futuristic items in your design as subject matter. I wouldn't really have a huge problem with the 3D gears either, if they were stylized in a way that have made me think of art deco, but they make me think of a 3D modeling program and the effect of having the gears in the first place is lost. The gradient background is kind of neat, but it seems like it's just there for the heck of it, really.

Do I think it's a neat design? Yes - I may even make the full comp into a background for my iPhone. But does it tie to art deco? Personally, I think it's stretching to say the least. I admire your defense of it, but I think if you're going to hold tight to the original post as your reasoning, it has just enough in there to also poke a hole in the lifeboat it created for you.

Now, speaking of art deco.. I'm going to go play Bioshock.

tom cruise would like this.

wizard7926 wrote:In your design, you do have gears, but to a futuristic design, with what seems to be circuitry running through them -- to which I have to reference the original post (as you like to do), which regards Nintendo as a point of interest about including futuristic items in your design as subject matter.

I believe the purpose in including that remark was to try to stop people from doing nintendo reference shirts as opposed to stopping people from doing futuristic designs (although I may be wrong). Again, I appreciate that everyone has their own opinion of what should be considered on-theme, but I just wanted to explain my own reasoning in doing the entry, which I believe is also the reason that it is still in the derby, much to the chagrin of many of the posters on this thread (although, like I said, woot may still be deliberating and planning to reject this entry, and it is entirely their right to do so, just as it's my right to try my hand at some adaptation of the theme and hope for the best)- And while you may disagree that it's on theme, I'm glad at least that you enjoyed the design

wizard7926 wrote:

Now, speaking of art deco.. I'm going to go play Bioshock.

those are the gears i think of when i think Art Deco. ramy, you have the right gears in the background, but i feel like they should have been more pronounced than the design you have in the foreground. your foreground image shouldn't have been futuristic in the style that you have it; i don't know of any art deco pieces (mind you i haven't looked in a while) that have straight lines on an angle (usually they become curved). it may have held your interest better, but you need to find a happy medium between your interests and the themes from now on. who knows, being more on theme and maybe less into yourself will stop the bashings.

with the work that you typically do, i expected a more stylized design from you, which i feel you could have pulled off in this derby a lot better than this design. this would have been the perfect opportunity for you to take your cute designs one or two steps further.

ramyb wrote:
...The main issue is that everyone has their own expectations when coming to look at a derby. Some people pay no attention to the theme at all...

boy howdy. ;^)

ramyb, I've read both of your attempts to justify the design as 'on theme'. or 'on write-up'.

My big dissatisfaction with your design winning, or sitting in the fog and the hotness, taking away a place for something, oh, maybe Art Deco, is just that it clearly isn't Art Deco. Sure, there are elements that have some resemblance to Art Deco: you have some repeated geometric forms, you have quite a few gears (which at most have been a minimally 'art deco' motif), and apparently you feel that drawing something like a tall building, and then hiding that feature, is enough Art Deco to allow you to fit the theme. Yet, anyone who sees the design will never think "ooh, what a clever use of Art Deco in a novel way".

The contest is an Art Deco Contest. While woot's drunken writers may have described it in a less than perfect way, my impression from the writeup was more that they were trying to describe what Art Deco is, and failing, rather than that they were spelling out requirements for what is on-topic.

For a design to quite possibly win it that has virtually nothing to do with Art Deco is just wrong. If the theme is that boring to you, that to hold your interest you have to mess around so far from the actual theme that no-one who is honest with themselves can call it Art Deco, then why did you enter at all? You're allowed to take a week off, for Pete's sake.

Re: Construct

Well, after all the discussions, I still don't see what this has to do with the actual theme. It's not deco, in my opinion.

Josephus wrote:If the theme is that boring to you, that to hold your interest you have to mess around so far from the actual theme that no-one who is honest with themselves can call it Art Deco, then why did you enter at all? You're allowed to take a week off, for Pete's sake.

Very good point here.
There's no reason to push the envelope when you have nothing to mail :P

re: construct

I don't see how this fits the theme. It was discussed pre-derby that it did not quite fit. Damn the rule torpedoes and let the legions of fans vote for it anyways.

Oh well, I guess that's why I am not a "real artist" but still try to bring something different and on topic when I do submit, (and end up unsuccesful in votes.) Meh, back to my engineering job...

Re: Construct

Alright Ramyb... It's time to come clean... Although I think you are a fantastic artist and you've had some pretty good shirt ideas in the past, I feel that your recent shirts have been very overrated. Unless woot has a ratio of 75% asian girls on their site, I don't see how your cutesie Chinese Zodiac shirt won in the last derby. And now your piano key shirt and this one are very highly ranked in another derby. I don't get it. Although both of these shirts are good, they don't seem good enough to be in the fog. Did you get a bunch of your friends to buy a leak frog each on woot so they can vote on your shirt designs? I'm not an artist by any means... but it just doesn't seem add up to me.

mitchellp wrote:...I don't see how your cutesie Chinese Zodiac shirt won in the last derby...

That was sekiyoku, but the styles are very similar.

SeraphSix wrote:That was sekiyoku, but the styles are very similar.

Ok.. Sorry, so the Chinese Zodiac shirt wasn't Ramyb's shirt design. But that doesn't dispute the fact that both of Ramyb's current shirts seem to be highly overranked in this derby. Does anybody else feel this way? I'll shut up if its only me. I'm just saying.

Josephus wrote:My big dissatisfaction with your design winning, or sitting in the fog and the hotness, taking away a place for something, oh, maybe Art Deco, is just that it clearly isn't Art Deco. Sure, there are elements that have some resemblance to Art Deco: you have some repeated geometric forms, you have quite a few gears (which at most have been a minimally 'art deco' motif), and apparently you feel that drawing something like a tall building, and then hiding that feature, is enough Art Deco to allow you to fit the theme. Yet, anyone who sees the design will never think "ooh, what a clever use of Art Deco in a novel way".

This is exactly my point about the expectations of people coming into the derby, because you want only designs that can be recognized as art deco without the context of the theme to be allowed in the derby. For me, I feel that this kind of strict limitation in style would lead to an uninteresting derby. It has nothing to do with whether or not the theme interests me, but if woot were going to be as strict as you want them to be, there would be very few pictures left. Woot makes the final decision, I'm sure a hundred people tattled on this design for being off theme, so if woot decides not to reject it, then it means my interpretation and approach to the theme was deemed acceptable, and that the writeups are, in fact, subject to interpretation, even if you don't think they should be. If it gets rejected, then I was wrong, but I'm the one who takes the punishment anyway, so it works out. I don't think it's worth discussing anymore, and either way I have no problems holding to the theme more closely in the future after the response to this entry. You've made your point, and even though I've been arguing on the other side, I wanted to say that I still hear you and I still can understand what your saying and will try to change my approach in the future.

ramyb wrote:...then it means my interpretation and approach to the theme was deemed acceptable, and that the writeups are, in fact, subject to interpretation, even if you don't think they should be.

Because you've quoted it before:
"Splash some stylized geometrical cool onto a t-shirt that embodies all the aerodynamic modernism of the '20s and '30s."

I see stylized geometrical cool and aerodynamic modernism, sure... but stylized geometrical cool and aerodynamic modernism of the '20s and '30s? Not at all.

This screams futuristic, not classic. I don't see how you are interpreting futuristic from the 1920s...

Edit: Unless you're referring to the 2020s and 2030s? But I don't see that flying.

SeraphSix wrote:Because you've quoted it before:
"Splash some stylized geometrical cool onto a t-shirt that embodies all the aerodynamic modernism of the '20s and '30s."

I see stylized geometrical cool and aerodynamic modernism, sure... but stylized geometrical cool and aerodynamic modernism of the '20s and '30s? Not at all.

This screams futuristic, not classic. I don't see how you are interpreting futuristic from the 1920s...

Edit: Unless you're referring to the 2020s and 2030s? But I don't see that flying.

Heh I hadn't inteded it to be 2020s and 2030s, although that's sort of clever. But my intention was to have the spirit of stylized geometrical cool and aerodynamic modernism in a present-day context. What is depicted isn't exactly futuristic in the sense that it's nothing that doesn't currently exist, so it was my way of taking the feel of art deco in the 20s and 30s and making it to be what I thought it would represent today. Like I said, anyone can feel free to disagree with this as an interpretation of the theme, I just wanted to explain my thought process and show where this entry came from, because it really wasn't just an attempt to avoid the theme. If I wanted to do that, I wouldn't have tried something new.

ramyb wrote:Heh I hadn't inteded it to be 2020s and 2030s, although that's sort of clever. But my intention was to have the spirit of stylized geometrical cool and aerodynamic modernism in a present-day context. What is depicted isn't exactly futuristic in the sense that it's nothing that doesn't currently exist, so it was my way of taking the feel of art deco in the 20s and 30s and making it to be what I thought it would represent today. Like I said, anyone can feel free to disagree with this as an interpretation of the theme, I just wanted to explain my thought process and show where this entry came from, because it really wasn't just an attempt to avoid the theme. If I wanted to do that, I wouldn't have tried something new.

Then you should have included a Nintendo reference. ;c)

ramyb wrote:Heh I hadn't inteded it to be 2020s and 2030s, although that's sort of clever. But my intention was to have the spirit of stylized geometrical cool and aerodynamic modernism in a present-day context. What is depicted isn't exactly futuristic in the sense that it's nothing that doesn't currently exist, so it was my way of taking the feel of art deco in the 20s and 30s and making it to be what I thought it would represent today. Like I said, anyone can feel free to disagree with this as an interpretation of the theme, I just wanted to explain my thought process and show where this entry came from, because it really wasn't just an attempt to avoid the theme. If I wanted to do that, I wouldn't have tried something new.

I have to say...regardless of all this back and forth about the design...I have to give Ramby props. I dont think I could take this much poo from people EVERY WEEK about EVERY design I did and still remain civil in my responses and still submit new designs. Kudos to you Ramy for having patience that I cannot even being to understand. If it were me, I would have gone effing postal by now.

Re: Construct

I just wanted to say that it's unbelievable just getting enough votes to even be able to compete with you. That's no easy task!

'kay, lets throw some more useless observations into the fire...
In my opinion, I think the discussion over RamyB's design would all be moot IF the color schemes where changed. Seriously. Stop, look at it. Think of it with golden gears and blue, gray or dark amber bark ground, or even a halftone from amber to black. I think the coldenss of the colors isolate it from relating to directly to Art deco; if looks like some futuristic space battle station! It's like, I made a reference to darth vadar's helmet as art deco style in the forum before submissions. But if I were to have seriously subbed it, I would have melded it with some egyptian style. Art deco is classy to the point of gaudy. I agree that it not art deco; BUT with small tweeks it could be. Although, it may not have made it to the fog, if it had been modded as such.

erina7262 wrote:Kudos to you Ramy for having patience that I cannot even being to understand.

For every criticism there are a hundred votes and a thousand dollars, and I imagine that helps ease the pain.

Me, I'm neither a fan nor a detractor, particularly. But I find the Ramyb controversy fascinating.

ramyb wrote:Honestly, I think it's much less a double-standard, and much more the fact that I defended the relevance to the theme of my entry and others did not.

oh come on now ramy. You defended your theme?
You think that's why woot didn't reject your design??
You're kidding yourself.

The artist who did the miami themed design that was rejected defended his theme and the reject-o-hammer still fell.

Do you honestly believe that the other artists were rejected because they didn't apply proper defense??

Do you really think that theory holds any water or is more believeable than woot simply protecting a money-making asset?

This is called a double-standard. And the people who benefit fromt he double standard rarely realize that it's a double standard.

The main issue is that everyone has their own expectations when coming to look at a derby. Some people pay no attention to the theme at all, and just vote for designs that they like. Others look at the name of the theme, and then make decisions about whether or not entries are on topic just based on that. For me, when doing an entry, I pay less attention to the name of the theme and more attention to woot's writeup.

I entered it knowing that some people would not think it was on theme, but I preferred to do an entry like this rather than do one that I felt would be more similar to the others in the derby. The potential for rejection was obviously there, but I think that there is enough tying this entry to woot's writeup that it should be allowed to stay in the derby.

You misunderstand my point ramy. I'm not saying that everyone has to interpret deco the way I see it. My point is that the woot judges are INCONSISTENT.

I have already stated that you have every right to your interpretation of deco. But if YOU have every right to your interpretation, then so does everyone else.

My gripe with this situation is not YOU. It's the fact that woot seems to widen and narrow its interpretation of what is on or off topic depending on who the artist is. And that, my dear ramy, is not fair.

There are rejections that should have been rejected. However, there are some rejected designs that were far less obtuse in their interpretation of Art Deco than your own piece.

My point here is not to bash you or your design, but to simply point out that there have been unfair inconsistencies in rejections. And your design simply is the biggest example of this inconsistency.

Oh and as a sidenote, a few people suggested that woot is keeping this around because my other designs have made money for them, but I really doubt that's the case, especially since this is so different from my previous designs. There's really no reason for them to expect this to do any better than other pictures that would potentially win this derby.

Don't be foolish ramy. Woot is a business. They are not here to make us happy. They are not here to be nice to the artists. They are not here to promote new talent. They are here to make money. And if anyone believes anything different, they are kidding themselves.

When a business has a cash cow, they protect it.

Right now, woot has around 500 reasons to not reject your design. Not to mention all the untold thousands of previous sales that your designs have brought them. And the voters are proving that even though this is a departure from your previous work, they are still willing to vote and most likely open their wallets. Woot has zero reasons to subject you to the same rules. That's all the reason ANY business needs to make somewhat unethical decisions when it comes to its bottom line.

In fact, playing devils advocate and looking at this from a pure profit perspective, woot would be INSANE to reject your designs when they make the fog almost every week. You may have a design or two that isn't AS successful as some of your others, but statistically speaking, the odds that they will profit from you versus another new artist that does not come with a pre-installed fanbase are very much in their favor.

Anyway, keep the designs coming. I am a fan. And my tiger shirt should be here on thursday.

ramyb wrote:This is exactly my point about the expectations of people coming into the derby, because you want only designs that can be recognized as art deco without the context of the theme to be allowed in the derby. For me, I feel that this kind of strict limitation in style would lead to an uninteresting derby. It has nothing to do with whether or not the theme interests me, but if woot were going to be as strict as you want them to be, there would be very few pictures left. Woot makes the final decision, I'm sure a hundred people tattled on this design for being off theme, so if woot decides not to reject it, then it means my interpretation and approach to the theme was deemed acceptable, and that the writeups are, in fact, subject to interpretation, even if you don't think they should be. If it gets rejected, then I was wrong, but I'm the one who takes the punishment anyway, so it works out. I don't think it's worth discussing anymore, and either way I have no problems holding to the theme more closely in the future after the response to this entry. You've made your point, and even though I've been arguing on the other side, I wanted to say that I still hear you and I still can understand what your saying and will try to change my approach in the future.

whoa. hats off to you, ramyb.

erina7262 wrote:I have to say...regardless of all this back and forth about the design...I have to give Ramby props. I dont think I could take this much poo from people EVERY WEEK about EVERY design I did and still remain civil in my responses and still submit new designs. Kudos to you Ramy for having patience that I cannot even being to understand. If it were me, I would have gone effing postal by now.

I also agree with this.

Ramy takes a lot of unecessary poop for his designs because they have cute animals in them.
And i guess there is a large or vocal anti-cute animal faction out there.
and my suggestion to his detractors is, if you don't like his designs then don't vote for them. But bashing his designs simply because they aren't what you would buy is silly. There are a lot of designs i wouldnt buy here, but I don't feel the need to tell the artist that he or she is a no-talent hack.

The cool thing is that ramy is always civil when he responds.

If people want to be upset with someone, be upset with the community that is voting for him. If his designs were terrible, people wouldn't vote for him.

But when people dont like something, they assume the rest of the world MUST agree with them.

I will buy this shirt if it wins, but I won't vote for it given my previously mentioned points.

It is a great design, but not for an Art Deco derby.

My main beef, and the reason I keep arguing for the rejection/retraction, is that it's keeping other designs out of the running that are more on-topic than this one. That blimp would have been an epic shirt

Re: Construct

You know, I just don't see the appeal of this shirt. Usually his/seki stuff has the "Cute" angle working for it, but with this, its not that great of a design. Add to it that it's not really on topic, as it isn't Art Deco, and I am left bewildered with why anyone, nevertheless, 500+ people want to wear it. It's like hundreds people said, "Hey it's RamyB's design, let's vote for it!" "What is it?" "I dunno. Some machinery thingy, but who cares!"*Clicks*

Personally, I think his other entry is better this week, but it's more abstract than Art Deco itself. Why this one keeps battling for the Fog is beyond my grasp.

cobolisdead wrote:...I am left bewildered with why anyone, nevertheless, 500+ people want to wear it.

Because it looks industrial/steampunkish. A decent amount of people like that kind of stuff.

albinoapple wrote:Aren't internet arguments the greatest?

They gotta feel tough sometime in there life...

SeraphSix wrote:Because it looks industrial/steampunkish. A decent amount of people like that kind of stuff.

really? They think that is the steampunk look? or industrial? It just doesn't say that to me either. steampunk needs to be gritty, hand-welded or riveted together, and so does the clockwork type of design with lots of gears, gears that interact, and seem like they would actually do something. This reminds me a lot of those clipart collages we used to see that would occasionally win the derby- and no, I'm not saying it really looks like it's clipart, but just that the organization of it is similar to the organization that those artists used in putting together their designs. lots of repeated motifs, swirly bits. like this one.

Re: Construct

cool design nonetheless...

but im rooting for the armadillo

erina7262 wrote:I have to say...regardless of all this back and forth about the design...I have to give Ramby props. I dont think I could take this much poo from people EVERY WEEK about EVERY design I did and still remain civil in my responses and still submit new designs. Kudos to you Ramy for having patience that I cannot even being to understand. If it were me, I would have gone effing postal by now.

Not for nothing, but, if I was making bank regularly on this site like ramyb, I'd continue to submit regardless of the poo I get dumped on me week after week.

I don't wanna take sides. I'm just saying...it's not a bad deal for him. It's easier to put up with the poo-poo when you are in fact getting your designs printed and sold on a regular basis.

Re: Construct

Curious. Which is the prevailing theory on how Ramy gets vote every week? Is it drive by voters, who just look at the pictures and click "I want one" based on the thumbnail, not caring about the derby? Or is it individuals who vote purely because it is Ramy?

I ask because, even though Ramy's style is often obvious, I feel that these theorys contradict each other.

wizzdingo wrote:Curious. Which is the prevailing theory on how Ramy gets vote every week? Is it drive by voters, who just look at the pictures and click "I want one" based on the thumbnail, not caring about the derby? Or is it individuals who vote purely because it is Ramy?

Are those the only 2 options? God forbid someone looks at the full picture, maybe even reads the full thread, and still likes the design, regardless of who submitted it...
I understand what you're getting at, but you're awfully simplistic about it. I've voted for several of Ramy's shirts, though not this one, I always read the thread, and I have never (nor would ever) vote for a design simply because of the artist submitting it.

Reawen wrote:Are those the only 2 options? God forbid someone looks at the full picture, maybe even reads the full thread, and still likes the design, regardless of who submitted it...
I understand what you're getting at, but you're awfully simplistic about it. I've voted for several of Ramy's shirts, though not this one, I always read the thread, and I have never (nor would ever) vote for a design simply because of the artist submitting it.

Thank you, my thoughts exactly.
In addition, I never let the opinions of posters influence my vote.

Re: Construct

Ramyb may in fact not violate the rules in the future, because he obviously lost a significant number of votes for doing so. He has been over taken and now the shirt probably won't print. I'd say he'll adhere to the rules in the future, so in a way justice may be served. But who knows. And Woot definitely learned nothing.

wizzdingo wrote:Curious. Which is the prevailing theory on how Ramy gets vote every week? Is it drive by voters, who just look at the pictures and click "I want one" based on the thumbnail, not caring about the derby? Or is it individuals who vote purely because it is Ramy?

I ask because, even though Ramy's style is often obvious, I feel that these theorys contradict each other.

I don't think anyone believes Ramy wins on thumbnails and not his name. That'd imply people find this wearable, and I would hate to believe people are really that ignorant

AdderXYU wrote:I don't think anyone believes Ramy wins on thumbnails and not his name. That'd imply people find this wearable, and I would hate to believe people are really that ignorant

Well, you have to admit my name does have a certain ring to it

ramyb wrote:Well, you have to admit my name does have a certain ring to it

I presume you mean "ding-dong" ;)

Sweet design!

akumachan wrote:I have to agree with this.

And again, I will say that I love Ramy's designs. I buy them. So this is no personal dig at the artist. It's not bashing, and I certainly harbor no hatred or ill will towards ramy.
In fact I'm still waiting for my circus tiger shirt to arrive.
*dang it woot! where's my shirt??!! It's been over a week now!!**

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. The fact of the matter is that ramy's current design, as neat as it is to look at, is simply NOT deco. I did not vote for this shirt because it is OFF TOPIC.

The fact that it has not been rejected for being off topic when there are other shirts that were rejected and were way closer to being deco than this shirt. Does not sit right with me at all. Did those other rejected shirts have a chance of being in the fog? Probably not. But it's the principle of the thing. Woot is showing a clear double standard for popular artists. That's not right. I know it's just a t-shirt site, but it's discouraging for the artists who are trying to get noticed and who are playing by the rules.

quite frankly, if having ramy's designs on sale every week is so good for woot's sale then they should simply put him on the payroll and have him roll out a new shirt for sale every week and leave the derby to others.

Ramy states that he thought it was deco. But honestly, if you look at any examples of deco, then you can tell that it's not. You don't need an art degree. But He's welcome to his interpretation.

The problem is not ramy. It's woot.
They post a topic for the derby. It's a difficult topic.
in the day leading up to the opening of this derby, SEVERAL people asked woot to weigh in with more exact guidelines about what would be rejected and what wouldn't.
No response from woot. I have noticed that they never respond to questions in their forum which is very poor service to the fans of the site and customers. I suppose they simply can't be bothered to spend 5 minutes to clarify something that people obviously care about and ultimately spend money on. This tells me, woot doesn't care.
The rejections have started. And so far they have been inconsistent. Personally I just want to see consistency in the rejections. If ramy's design gets to stay in then several other designs should have been allowed to stay in.

I have not been rejected for being off topic yet, but I can imagine that I would be mighty upset to spend the kinda time needed to create a design (as other artists know, these are not created in an hour) only to be rejected for not being Deco enough and then to watch ramy's design sail on through.

Anyway, it's about woot showing some integrity and consistency in the judging.
And in this case, they are really letting people down.

That being said, I didn't vote for this design. I don't particularly like it. It's way off topic. It does look like a shirt that I could pick up at Target, but I look forward to other designs from ramy.

yea, Im done.

agreed, especially. "If ramy's design gets to stay in then several other designs should have been allowed to stay in."

ramyb wrote:Honestly, I think it's much less a double-standard, and much more the fact that I defended the relevance to the theme of my entry and others did not.

The main issue is that everyone has their own expectations when coming to look at a derby. Some people pay no attention to the theme at all, and just vote for designs that they like. Others look at the name of the theme, and then make decisions about whether or not entries are on topic just based on that. For me, when doing an entry, I pay less attention to the name of the theme and more attention to woot's writeup. While this may not always make sense, and it may not always be the case, sometimes woot's writeup leaves what I consider to be enough of an opening to take the theme in a different direction from what I expect others to do with it.

A good example is the Cabin Fever theme. Although the name of the theme was cabin fever, the writeup said "Use this week's Derby as an outlet for your claustrophobe tendencies." I took this to mean that any entry that bore relevance to claustrophobia would be considered on-theme. Some people criticized that the entry I did had nothing to do with cabin fever, but I believe it was still entirely on theme, even though it was not specifically cabin-fever related.

In the case of this derby, I wanted to take this theme as a design challenge and do something different from what I normally do. When woot confines the derby to a particular style, it becomes much more difficult for artists to show their personal flair, so different people take different approaches to this. Tgentry's entry for example, while on-theme and clearly related to art deco, contains elements that are clearly not art deco at all, making it unique relative to the rest of the derby. What I decided to do for my entry was take the part of the writeup that says "splash some stylized geometrical cool onto a t-shirt" as far as I could take it, extending and exaggerating the futuristic part. While this may have taken the entry a bit further from art deco than most people would have liked, I still included elements that I believe to be art deco inspired (such as the gears in the background), and the way I approached the coloring was in a way that can be seen in a lot of art deco pieces, with overlapping elements being affected in coloration by the ones below them. The combination of the elements with art deco inspiration, as well as the relevance to various parts of the woot writeup, make this entry on theme in my opinion. I entered it knowing that some people would not think it was on theme, but I preferred to do an entry like this rather than do one that I felt would be more similar to the others in the derby. The potential for rejection was obviously there, but I think that there is enough tying this entry to woot's writeup that it should be allowed to stay in the derby.

I fully respect anyone's decision not to vote because they believe that this theme should have been solely about art deco, and that I should not have taken this approach, but I also want you to recognize that, while I may not have done what you wanted to see with the theme, I most certainly did not default on anything that I'm used to and still took this theme seriously and tried to produce something of merit. As things look now, it is extremely unlikely that this will print anyway, and more than likely its downfall was due to the fact that too many people considered it to be off topic judging by the number of people who commented that they enjoyed the design but cannot vote in good conscience, but I stand by my entry and I don't think that it is worthy of rejection based on being off topic. It is not too late, though, and woot may still decide to reject it, but either way, I can't imagine this making it to print so I don't think that woot's decision will at all be related to the fact that this entry is in the fog.

Oh and as a sidenote, a few people suggested that woot is keeping this around because my other designs have made money for them, but I really doubt that's the case, especially since this is so different from my previous designs. There's really no reason for them to expect this to do any better than other pictures that would potentially win this derby.

I also took the write up, and put futuristic, geomteric, bright colors, and other deco techniques only to be rejected for it being "more pop to me" they said [oh and believe me, I argued it tooth and nail in the submission]. Yours "is more grunge to me" yet... still here. They reject my stuff week after week and I keep trying... but to no avail. What would you suggest then for how to keep mine in the derbys? because woot has yet to even hesitate with me.

Re: Construct

So, which is more of a woot-sin. People who see Ramy's name on a submission and vote for it purely based on his name? Or those that see Ramy's name on a submission and deliberately *don't* vote based on his name?
This whole derby was kind of disappointing to me. It's not to say that I don't like art deco, but I just hate it on a t-shirt. Some of these entries I would grab up in a second if they were posters, but I really just don't see the appeal of wearing a building or a train on my chest.

You know what I think would be an interesting experiment Ramy? You should submit a design on a pseudonym, to see if it gets the same vitriol. I'm not saying everyone was wrong to critique him, but I have a feeling that some people may be scrutinizing his entries week to week just to find anything negative they can say. Which is just as wrong, imo, as mindlessly saying a design is good.

Re: Construct

I still think your design is the best in this derby. If only if were still in the fog!

cpospisil wrote:I completely agree. I read these boards every week, and it's amazing to me that people can get so hateful over a bunch of tshirts. It's like a group of sixth grade girls squabbling over a boy, sickening and tiresome. Maybe if they spent less time being jealous of someone else's success, and more time on their own designs, assuming they have any, they'd win occasionally, too.

This is why woot(!) artists have such a high turnover rate. Very few of the artists from, say, a year ago are still around.

ZMaiden wrote: You know what I think would be an interesting experiment Ramy? You should submit a design on a pseudonym, to see if it gets the same vitriol. I'm not saying everyone was wrong to critique him, but I have a feeling that some people may be scrutinizing his entries week to week just to find anything negative they can say. Which is just as wrong, imo, as mindlessly saying a design is good.

No offense, but his style wouldn't work with this experiment, as it's too recognizable here.

lunartan wrote:are you dyslexic?

kyle mittskus != kitty

assuming quality post ratings are given for adding something valid to a thread; for which neither of our posts qualify...

i like the tripe: saves me $ and makes for interesting boards.

You'll probably never read this, but, good one

I love this design! The mechanical engineer in me wants a sweet shirt like this with gears. Too bad it didn't get printed.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed it wins on a re-sub :D