ochopika wrote:It's a nice design and really mimics Banksy-style stencil art. I think it would be better without the poster as well. Simple is better most of the time in my experience.
However, I just have to ask the question here: Is it okay to use photos like this or not?[/img]
It looks like you traced it and cleaned it up in some places, but the shading and most of the detail are directly from the photo.
I'm getting a little confused about that since a couple of designs this time were rejected for using photos, but this one hasn't been. I'm not trying to put your design down, I'm just wondering what the real restrictions are. I know it's already been discussed here many times but I just haven't seen any consistency with this rule.
I do think this is a very good design. It also shows a lot of artistic improvement in your work as far as design skills go. I'm just getting more and more confused about the photo rules.
Actually, that was the context of my initial comment - In the past (even in the original graffiti derby), Woot has allowed the use of historical images (like the Mona Lisa, Abraham Lincoln, etc.) as reference images, but not modern photographs (which have copyright issues associated with them). They even referenced Banksy in the rules of the original derby, and all of Banksy's work used historical images of some sort, put into a different context. Doing Banksy without historical images references is like doing Psychadelica in black and white. (Thus my original intent to submit this as daily, not a derby, until the theme was announced and fit this.)
There are only a few images we have of Poe, and I chose the one from Wikimedia (which insists on copyright-free pictures) as my reference. I didn't do a direct trace of it (there are several changes, mostly minor - like him looking up, but if it doesn't look like Poe, the joke doesn't work), but I did use the shading, etc. as my guide when drawing it out and creating a stencil from that.
As for the Poster, I understand that some don't like it (and the "less is more" thing). I made the choice to try and follow Banksy's habit of using items on the wall (signs, posters, windows, etc.) as props in his design.
