I want to preface this by saying, I saw this shirt and liked it, so I voted for it. In the process, I noticed a very long comment thread and was curious as to what so many people could have to say about this design, so I started to read, and that's when I realized it was a Ramyb shirt.
stokastik wrote:Unfortunately, most people who see these such comments are seeing criticism of Ramy for the first time - clearly evident by the abundance of posts saying "I don't understand why all you people are dissing this shirt design! It's the best evarrrr!!"
So really, what you call "regurgitation of past discussions" I would call giving new visitors to these forums the benefit of knowing the full context of Ramy's latest derby submission.
I'm fairly new here, this is about my fourth week following the derby now, and I've read most of the ramyb debates so far, and never felt compelled to get involved until now.
First off, I think a design should be evaluated solely based on the design itself, provided it is not in direct infringement of the rules or copyright laws. I feel that good designs often get discounted in the derby because they are not a well known artist, and designers current designs are getting criticized based on past work done by the designer.
Besides that, it is unfair to criticize an artist for being "lazy" because they simply weren't able to churn out a completely spectacular design every single week. The time window is very small, approximately 24 hours to develop an idea and bring it through all the phases of completion and turn out a polished drawing. Remember, this is a t shirt design competition, people are not going to be going over your shirt with a fine comb while you wear it complaining about how the shading isn't perfect.
Now I'm not just defending ramyb, I've read some of the debates from the last few derbies, but I think that the criticisms people are making are very unfair. They saw no actual rules that were being broken that they could complain about, somebody said "lazy" and people started to jump on the bandwagon. I don't know how many of you are designers or not, but drawing similar characters is not laziness, it's having a distinctive style, something many artists strive to achieve.
If you don't like a design, either don't vote for it or offer constructive criticism on it, don't make personal attacks.
