It must have been determined that this falls in the "grey-zone" of copyright and fair use/parody/etc.

it's parody because there are 2 of them?

There's a lot of "parody" that is by no means parody. Blanket terms; perhaps misnomers.

It's freakin' fan art submitted to a site, maaaaaaaaaaaan.

I imagine whoever approved it doesn't play Halo. It's a popular game with gamers but I don't think it has the same level of recognition as Mario etc.

But then even, I look at it and see all the glows and gradients and think could they even print that so big on a tee?

I'm sorry, but what exactly are you insinuating?

How did this get approved?

It's just a trace of somebody else's photo of a celebrity and the shape it's cut out of is his logo. There's no parody. I don't know what the text is, but if they're his lyrics or something that's another copyright issue. But I can't make out any of that guy's "lyrics" so who knows maybe it's just random words. The guy even says in the description it's a fan shirt.

I know that saying anyone at Threadless would not know who Skrillex is is a bit hard to swallow considering the Skrillex has been such a large figure in the dubstep world (my grandmother even recognises him!) combined with the Threadless's expertise required to handle so many various gaming, movie and music based submissions daily. But they've dropped the ball on two designs lately which have no chance of printing for legal reasons and I really feel could have been politely declined on the basis of copyright which would reduce, albeit in a very small way, the huge amount of submissions up at once that voters find so daunting without offending the creators' talent.

I think it's still just Rachel who goes through the subs?

Everything is not all about you.

This is not a low blow thread on any artist.

This is somebody posing the question: why did this design get approved for voting?

It does not put the design down in any way, or say anything negative at all about your skills as an artist. It is not asking: why did this get approved because it is crap? It is asking: why did this get approved when it uses the likeness of trademarked characters? It is asking a question surrounding the very confusing issue of using copyrighted/trademarked material on Threadless.

It has nothing to do with you. It has to do with the overworked girl at Threadless who must trawl through every submitted design to the website and approve them for voting.

This is not about you.

No one in the Critique section works for Threadless. No one on gaming forums works for Threadless. Not everyone who scores designs sees every single design in the Critiques before they go up for scoring. They cannot be expected to ask this question of you in the Critiques. They can only do it once they see it. And when they do, they're going to ask.

The reason you weren't "invited" was because this is a blog posted in the public blog forum, which you are welcome to see and participate in any time you like. I find it a bit weird you know of 3 artists who have been discouraged by me, did they blog about it or did the four of you have a secret little meeting somewhere that I should be worrying myself silly over?

Why should I submit a design? I'm tired of that criticism. It's an invalid criticism.

This is all because I left that criticism on your design which you agreed with isn't it?

It's straight up offensive that you come in here and leave pissy little remarks and accusations about me simply because I answered the question posed in the title of the blog with a perfectly valid answer that had nothing to do with you.

I did not send you an "anonymous" email.

I did not vote for this design and if I had, "one look at my profile" would suggest I'd given it a 5.

Don't come in here making stupid accusations about people you don't know.

the designs isn't that bad, whats bad is you took a character some one else created, drew them (with out changing or doing anything original to him) and put it on a shirt.
your trying to make money off of someone else's creation

About the design: that's not the Mjolnir armor you see in the games. To me, it looks like a collection of bits and pieces from Halo armors, some Gundams or other mecha and Samus' helmet from Metroid with Master Chief's color scheme on top. The biggest reasons it will not get printed are the lack of technical quality (it's fuzzy and low res) and concept (it's just two guys in armor standing around).

And unfortunately, the critique section is often useless as not many people go there to look at stuff.

The fact of the matter is do not submit fan art to threadless, it is dangerous ground not only for threadless flat out rejecting your submissions but threads like this will more than likely occurr, that being said if you are happy dealing with these consequences continue doing the same thing and see what happens.
Threadless generally prefers an intelligent parody when it comes to pop culture subjects as opposed to submissions such as yours regardless of how well drawn or how many hours it took to complete an image. This is by no means a personal attack on you more over an education on the rules and etiquette of the site.
Good luck with your future work, perhaps post blogs for opinions with your next design to try and get a better grasp of what the community likes.

SIR LAZY J on Dec 19 '11 at 7:34am
Jeez SJ easy mate.

I find it hard to believe you can say this is not a low blow. A picture and a simple "HOW DID THIS GET THROUGH TO VOTING?" is not a discussion that has anything to do with skills, trademarked characters, copyright or any other matter.

Exactly. But notice that the three people who commented on the blog all knew immediately that it was referring to the resemblance to Halo characters and was not calling the quality of the art itself into question.

I had a whole lot of other shit typed out, a response to every one of your stupid accusations, but I'm tired of caring about this stuff. I can't force you to see sense, so why waste my time on it? And why make myself look just as insane as you?

The most important thing I can say though, is have a little think about how many people saw this blog in the first place. Three. Then the blog died. You resurrected this blog after three days of inactivity and now a lot more people have seen it than ever did three days ago. And if you keep fighting with people in here, you'll just keep bumping it and the controversy will attract even more attention.

So who's really responsible for the negative attention your design is getting?

You need to accept that you submitted a piece of fan art and you shouldn't have and not do it in the future.

And you need to accept that sometimes people will not like your design. It's not a personal criticism, it's just a statement of their opinion that they wouldn't wear a t-shirt with your design on it. They have the right to discuss their reasons on your design or in a blog. You're really going to have to learn that if you want to have any future in art.

Dude, I can't get over the fact that you're calling me a well-established artist with a fan following. :P

holy crap, there are way too many words in this blog

yeah, way too many words. The bottom line is this artwork contains copyrighted material that even if this scored off the charts we could never print it. It never should have gone up in the first place but slipped through our pre-screening process. Sorry.

GOOD JOB RACHEL

Gee, good to hear you weren't offended.

Yeah, in the interest of keeping the peace you might actually want to apologise to the people that you offended, with your unsubstantiated claims that turned out to be false.

This is obviously going nowhere, guys. haha

SIR LAZY J - keep at it, you've got skills.

SJ - quit being a bully