Because EBW needs more sniping and bitterness from teh T-shirt derby.

Contest: T-shirt derby, Aug. 17, theme: "Maps"
Note: the theme statement said globes were OK.

Here is the design I entered late Sunday.



It's "Jormungand," the "Midgard Serpent." In Norse myths, J. is a giant snake that encircled the Earth and is the son of Loki. At Ragnarok, the end of the universe, Thor and J. kill each other.

Things that I think hurt its chances:
1. Entered late Sunday; Friday would have been a lot better.
2. I must have screwed up the color, I think the (navy blue) background is a little off from the shirt color.
3. Snakes... not appealing to the chicks.
4. Jormungand is too obscure.
5. "Funny" shirts are more popular.

Comments?

no1 wrote:Things that I think hurt its chances:
1. Entered late Sunday; Friday would have been a lot better.
2. I must have screwed up the color, I think the (navy blue) background is a little off from the shirt color.

5. "Funny" shirts are more popular.

Comments?

1. Not necessarily true, but may not have hurt.
2.Navy blue background is proper for the shirt, since you can no longer use black. I would suggest changing the land to another color.
5. Seems so, sorry.

darkzero wrote:I would suggest changing the land to another color.

Mr. Zero,

I appreciate your comments.

I was originally going to use these six colors (the limit):
Light blue (Earth water)
Yellow (Earth earth, snake eyes)
Dark gray (Shading on earth)
Green (snake)
Dark green (shading on snake)
white (snake teeth)

The dirt color couldn't be too dark, because I needed something for the snake eyes, and I thought yellow eyes would be better than blue. I ended up not shading the Earth, so I could have used a different color for dirt, but it was getting so late in the derby anyway so I just entered what I had.

I was thinking of putting the snake and Earth at the bottom of the square and sticking a white or yellow sun or moon at the top, but I thought that was too much stuff for a T-shirt. (That's also why I didn't shade the Earth, I thought mabe I was overdoing it. I almost dropped the shading on the snake too.)

What color would have been better?

no1 wrote:Things that I think hurt its chances:

3. Snakes... not appealing to the chicks.
4. Jormungand is too obscure.
5. "Funny" shirts are more popular.

Comments?

3. Good chance.
4. No he is not! Do you really want to dumb things down to the lowest common denominator?
5. People don't want to think about shirts, so you are correct there.

When my wife was in the hospital I threatened to name our son Thor Heimdall, so I might be to close to your target audience.

pretty obscure.
I think the resampling hurts it. I'd suggest submitting your pics as .png files They seem to resample better for me.
I think the teeth don't look right- maybe because they come out past the edge of the mouth, they just look wrong. I know that's not so helpful, but there's something 'wrong' about them to me.
Probably could use more definition of the edge of the snake, might use one of your colors for that edge.

When I first saw the shirt, I really liked the concept. Hovever, I thought the picture was too bright for the blue shirt color. Maybe the picture with different coloring (more earth toned) would have been better.
P.S. I likes the snake and I'm a chick.

3. Snakes... not appealing to the chicks.

I cannot stand snakes at all, anywhere.
Sorry, but I could never, ever vote for anything with a snake.
You asked for opinions, I still like you as a friend.
Just leave your snakes at home.

Josephus wrote:pretty obscure.
I think the resampling hurts it. I'd suggest submitting your pics as .png files They seem to resample better for me.
I think the teeth don't look right- maybe because they come out past the edge of the mouth, they just look wrong. I know that's not so helpful, but there's something 'wrong' about them to me.
Probably could use more definition of the edge of the snake, might use one of your colors for that edge.

Wouldn't it be best to enter it as a .jpg at the correct size?

daj59 wrote:I think the snake needs to be more "powerful." I don't know how to describe it but I want his face to stand out more. More color, perhaps, some darker shades. Does that make sense?

Ms. Daj, thanks for your comments. One feature I seriously considered was using a black or dark gray for the inside of his mouth, using the same color to give him slitted pupils, and putting in a red forked tongue. I also thought of putting a crosshatch pattern (scales) on the snake. However, I thought too much detail would make him too "busy," esp. since I don't really know how to draw a snake, and it's hard to do "research" when the weekend is the best time I have to be with the baby. (Plus the tongue might have taken me to seven colors.) I do agree that the snake should have been more "powerful," but I just don't know how to draw animals.

Josephus wrote:pretty obscure.
I think the resampling hurts it. I'd suggest submitting your pics as .png files They seem to resample better for me.
I think the teeth don't look right- maybe because they come out past the edge of the mouth, they just look wrong. I know that's not so helpful, but there's something 'wrong' about them to me.
Probably could use more definition of the edge of the snake, might use one of your colors for that edge.

Thank you for your comments Dr. J.

Not having a snake facing me with his mouth open for me to study, I can't say what's wrong with it. I realize I probably didn't get the anatomy right. I thought the teeth stayed within the dark green mouth, I'll check when I get home. Or do you mean the teeth just look too long so that they stick out when he closes his mouth?

I thought the contrasting colors would provide enough definition, unless you mean between snake coils. I was tring to let your eyes infer an edge from the end of the shadow to the indentation between coils.

not a fan of the snakes either, but i still voted for you...

i think the picture ended up having some bad compression artifacts or something that made it not look so good, and like you said the blue in the background ended up slightly off. i guess i ought to look at what it takes to submit. what program did you use to make the image? i know your loyalty to MSPaint, but would you be willing to try Paint.NET? It's almost as easy to use as MSPaint, was originally going to be the new paint in Windows Vista, and it offers a lot more features to help keep images looking more polished (as opposed to the dodgeball/chop entries, where jaggies don't really hurt your hand-drawn submissions), which I'm sure is your goal with the derby... the drawing was good, but the image quality seemed to have suffered along the line...

edit: oh yeah, i didn't get it until you explained the shirt here... my norse mythology is woefully lacking (given my norse heritage)

no1 wrote:
Things that I think hurt its chances:
1. Entered late Sunday; Friday would have been a lot better.
2. I must have screwed up the color, I think the (navy blue) background is a little off from the shirt color.
3. Snakes... not appealing to the chicks.
4. Jormungand is too obscure.
5. "Funny" shirts are more popular.

Comments?

1. I am not sure, with the new happy stampy rejection that happened this week. Sunday may not be the fatal bullet it was thought to be.
2. I like Navy blue, so that doesn't bother me. I am not too happy about the no black thing (have any of the black shirts won yet?)
3. I dig snakes, but then I am weird. (ohh yeah I'm of the feminine gender also)
4. Jormungand is kinda obscure. I am not as up on my Norse mythology as I would like to be. . . so much to learn so little time to do it in. I hope there comes a point when the contest allows those of us without mainstream tastes and junior high sensibilities to do well, however; I don't think that time is now.
5. See above. Also, when I was in high school it wasn't the kid that was most qualified and cared the most that was elected to the student body offices, it was the one that people thought was funny or cool, the one that dipped to the lowest common denominator and was an average student who wasn't going to change things, but rather sit in the position and do what he/she was told by the administration. In an open electoral forum in our culture, look at the results.

I think the snake is getting lost. The shadow is good, but an outline would be most helpful, especially in the face. Maybe centering the face over the earth to bring it out or just exaggerating it. I feel it kinda should be your focal point and it is not popping off the shirt. Another thing that may help would be to use the shirt color for an accent when appropriate. Not sure if you could do that in this shirt, (unless you did a faux outline or scales on said snake in the navy blue).

Additional - I think it is great when EBW members post their shirts in their siggys or maybe on a thread here. I don't look at who makes what, but I like to know when someone I know has made a shirt. So I for one want you all to post your shirts where I can find them!

BrotherJ wrote:4. No he is not! Do you really want to dumb things down to the lowest common denominator?

Thank you for your comments, Brother J. No, I don't want to dumb things down to the lowest common denominator. I'm not going to win with a common-denom. idea; there are graphics artistes who can do that sort of thing a lot better and faster than me. My only hope is to make something that someone else won't think of by the time I can finish one. Also it takes me so long to do one, it has to be at least a little bit interesting to me. I just wish that interesting stuff was a little more popular. I mean, geez, people were saying the Ouroboros/infinity shirt was a sexual reference.

Raining wrote:3. Snakes... not appealing to the chicks.

I cannot stand snakes at all, anywhere.
Sorry, but I could never, ever vote for anything with a snake.
You asked for opinions, I still like you as a friend.
Just leave your snakes at home.

Thank you for your comments, Ms. Raining. I'm not surprised, a lot of people don't like snakes. I promise not to bring you any snakes.

jqubed wrote:not a fan of the snakes either, but i still voted for you...

i think the picture ended up having some bad compression artifacts or something that made it not look so good, and like you said the blue in the background ended up slightly off. i guess i ought to look at what it takes to submit. what program did you use to make the image? i know your loyalty to MSPaint, but would you be willing to try Paint.NET? It's almost as easy to use as MSPaint, was originally going to be the new paint in Windows Vista, and it offers a lot more features to help keep images looking more polished (as opposed to the dodgeball/chop entries, where jaggies don't really hurt your hand-drawn submissions), which I'm sure is your goal with the derby... the drawing was good, but the image quality seemed to have suffered along the line...

edit: oh yeah, i didn't get it until you explained the shirt here... my norse mythology is woefully lacking (given my norse heritage)

Thanks for your comments and your vote, Mr. Qubed. I haven't settled on a method to do these T-shirts yet. The first derby I used Paint. Didn't enter the second. The third derby I used Gimp (at home). This time I sketched two drawings (snake and Earth separately) in pencil, inked them with a Sharpie, scanned them, colored it in GIMP, edited out the black borders and recolored, redrew the mouth in GIMP (I had a lot of trouble with the head!), rescaled for teh T-shirt comp and detail image in GIMP, and generated the print-ready vector graphic using Inkscape. That took forever! The rescaling might have hurt the comp and "detail" files, mabe I'll try posting the 4800x4800 pic here...!

no1 wrote:Thank you for your comments Dr. J.

Not having a snake facing me with his mouth open for me to study, I can't say what's wrong with it. I realize I probably didn't get the anatomy right. I thought the teeth stayed within the dark green mouth, I'll check when I get home. Or do you mean the teeth just look too long so that they stick out when he closes his mouth?

I thought the contrasting colors would provide enough definition, unless you mean between snake coils. I was tring to let your eyes infer an edge from the end of the shadow to the indentation between coils.

OK, looking at it, I do think the teeth are too long. I also think the green is too light- more like a garter snake- not scary. As far as the edge goes, I do think it'll work without outlining, but only if the darker contrasting color is much darker than you have it. more like this.

KtCallista wrote:4. Jormungand is kinda obscure. I am not as up on my Norse mythology as I would like to be. . . so much to learn so little time to do it in. I hope there comes a point when the contest allows those of us without mainstream tastes and junior high sensibilities to do well, however; I don't think that time is now.

I think the snake is getting lost. The shadow is good, but an outline would be most helpful, especially in the face. Maybe centering the face over the earth to bring it out or just exaggerating it. I feel it kinda should be your focal point and it is not popping off the shirt. Another thing that may help would be to use the shirt color for an accent when appropriate. Not sure if you could do that in this shirt, (unless you did a faux outline or scales on said snake in the navy blue).

Thanks for your comments, Ms. Callista. If this was teh regular chopping contest, I think it might have done better. I'm almost certain the contest judges are familiar with the Midgard Serpent.

Your point about the face not popping off the shirt is well taken. That is why I left the shading on the snake, to give it some depth. Unfortunately, I can't draw snake heads with any detail; my "concept" sketches of snake heads looked awful, so I left out the deatils. I thought of using the background navy blue color for the snake shading, but I thought it would look weird with the snake side sort of appearing from nowhere, without an edge.

Josephus wrote:OK, looking at it, I do think the teeth are too long. I also think the green is too light- more like a garter snake- not scary. As far as the edge goes, I do think it'll work without outlining, but only if the darker contrasting color is much darker than you have it. more like this.

I don't know, Dr. J, I liked the lighter green, I thought it helped bring him out from the dark sky. The darker shading does look nice, though.

no1 wrote:I'm almost certain the contest judges are familiar with the Midgard Serpent

because I think at least Mr. Toon has read Thor.

Josephus wrote:OK, looking at it, I do think the teeth are too long. I also think the green is too light- more like a garter snake- not scary.

Dr. J,

Besides, dark green is the color of spinach. Not scary. Light green is the color of kiIIer radiation or mutant kiIIer slime. Scary!

Josephus wrote:OK, looking at it, I do think the teeth are too long. I also think the green is too light- more like a garter snake- not scary. As far as the edge goes, I do think it'll work without outlining, but only if the darker contrasting color is much darker than you have it. more like this.

I think Northern lights would also help it. You're going for ominous, right? and even darker color for the snake itself. Maybe make it a dark grey as if its a blacksnake . or a dark reddish hue.

Josephus wrote:I think Northern lights would also help it. You're going for ominous, right? and even darker color for the snake itself. Maybe make it a dark grey as if its a blacksnake . or a dark reddish hue.

Dr. J, what do northern lights look like from space? How big are they? What color (I've never seen them)?

If he's too dark, he blends in with the night sky. Darkish red might work.

Josephus wrote:I think Northern lights would also help it. You're going for ominous, right?

Dr. J, I don't think adding Northern Lights made it ominouser.

no1 wrote:Dr. J, I don't think adding Northern Lights made it ominouser.

Where's the feet?? it looks like the earth impaled the snake and split it's body into two segments. Either that are they are doing something kinky...

FenStar wrote:Where's the feet?? it looks like the earth impaled the snake and split it's body into two segments. Either that are they are doing something kinky...

Sigh. Just for you, Ms. Star.

I see what you mean.

still, this is better, I think.

EBW derby

Dr. J: 59
Ms. kt: 42
me: 38

no1 wrote:EBW derby

Dr. J: 59
Ms. kt: 42
me: 38

and circuit USA, in the last 3 hours since it was submitted- maybe less: 61 by goelzjs

Josephus wrote:and circuit USA, in the last 3 hours since it was submitted- maybe less: 61 by goelzjs

Dr. J, I don't get it, why is it called "take it back?"

no1 wrote:Dr. J, I don't get it, why is it called "take it back?"

blue takes back the US from red, I guess.

Josephus wrote:blue takes back the US from red, I guess.

Dr. J, pardon me, but: Huh? What does that have to do with a circuit board?

I'll never understand art. Artists. Whatever.

OK, enough blather about the woot T-shirt derby. I've renamed the thread to expand its horizons.

Announcing a new contest in the tradition of Dodgeball, but with a more exclusive eligibility list!

Participants: you can only participate if your user name is no1!
Voters: you can only vote if your user name is no1!
Theme: Something Yellow
Misc. Admin: no width limit, but it has to be visibile to no1 as an image in this thread
Time: From now until the next 1

no1 wrote:Theme: Something Yellow

no1 wrote:Theme: Something Yellow

no1 wrote:Dr. J, pardon me, but: Huh? What does that have to do with a circuit board?

I'll never understand art. Artists. Whatever.

politics, I think. has nothing to do with a circuit board. still, the circuit board is quite cool.

no1 wrote:Thanks for your comments and your vote, Mr. Qubed. I haven't settled on a method to do these T-shirts yet. The first derby I used Paint. Didn't enter the second. The third derby I used Gimp (at home). This time I sketched two drawings (snake and Earth separately) in pencil, inked them with a Sharpie, scanned them, colored it in GIMP, edited out the black borders and recolored, redrew the mouth in GIMP (I had a lot of trouble with the head!), rescaled for teh T-shirt comp and detail image in GIMP, and generated the print-ready vector graphic using Inkscape. That took forever! The rescaling might have hurt the comp and "detail" files, mabe I'll try posting the 4800x4800 pic here...!

wow that's a complicated process! i know you cracked that joke about the pen tablet, but if you're going to try something like that, you probably would find it easier. a lot of comic strip artists used to scan in an inked drawing that would be sent to their syndicate electronically, but more and more are switching to the tablets because it's easier, and they can get pretty much the same look they got with their preferred pencils and pens. You should be able to use it drawing directly in Inkscape (dunno if it would support pressure gradients though), and then vector graphics work like I think they do/should, you wouldn't have any issues going to different sizes. if you found a pencil a more useful tool for drawing, a tablet would be a similar tool with fewer steps (and less places for quality to degrade).