There seems to be a lot of cries of plagiarism lately. Some of it founded, but a lot of it unfounded, and based in something I like to call Convergent Creativity.

The same way Convergent Evolution works, so does the creative process.

In convergent evolution, two species in two entirely different environments, on opposite sides of the world, may evolve the exact same new traits at the exact same time! For example, two species of birds, one in Asia, one in Canada, both develop the same shape beak without ever having come into contact with each other.

Now, say instead of birds, we use artists. A man in Canada and a woman in Japan both decide they want to paint an apple. So do several hundred artists around the world, but these two, the Canadian and Japanese, both paint it almost exactly the same. Neither has ever met, but they both painted the same thing.

People all over the place, without knowing each other or experiencing each other's creations, come up with the same idea at the same time. Whoever gets it out there first is "original", while the others, who had the idea at the same time but submitted it to the world half a second later, are set upon by angry mobs with cries of "Plagarism" and "Unoriginal!"

Next time you see something you think is "unoriginal", perhaps also consider this: Humans have been around for thousands of years. This whole time, they have been writing stories, drawing pictures, making sculptures. The world changes, and gives them new material to write about, or paint, or draw, but there are also more people with every passing year. More artists wanting a piece of the new materials to work with.

There are only so many ideas in the world, and even the most creative person alive will find themselves doing the exact same thing as someone else. We can't help it.

A good friend of mine theorized that the only way for anything to be original ever again would be to completely destroy every historical painting, sculpture, work of art, book, poem, story... and start again. Even then, it would not be original, but we wouldn't remember that the twins of these works had once existed. But we won't do that. That would be crazy.

Perhaps we need to stop qualifying art by how original it is, and stop qualifying an artist by how original they are. Let us all make art for the joy of making on, and if it's never been done before- awesome! If it has, take pleasure in knowing that this one was done by you, to the best of your ability, and you enjoyed yourself doing it.

We need to stop being so quick to get angry with creative people for what they can't control.


...

Now that isn't to say that tracers who surpass the people they traced from shouldn't be hacked into tiny bits and fed to hyenas.

But really, if it wasn't traced, instead of accusing them of plagiarism, accept the fact that that "totally awesome creative original idea" you had, maybe wasn't so original after all.

So since this features copyrighted characters (my own), I can't go putting this on Threadless, but I like getting the opinions of other shirt designers.


(click to enlarge)

It's a pretty big design that takes up a good huge chunk of the front real estate of the shirt. Thoughts? Opinions?

It changed! Everything changed! How will I deal with this?

And are people honestly buying $35 prints? Are they printed on the backs of the Dead Sea Scrolls? Is the ink made from the blood of royalty and unicorns?

Seems like no matter what color I design a shirt on, there's always someone who says "That is an awful color for a shirt. Why would you do that? Are you crazy? Were you in a horrible car crash as a kid that gouged out half your brain? Is that why you would make a shirt in this color?"

So I got to thinking. What is a good shirt color? I know everyone had their preferences, but is there any color that people can agree on? What's your favorite color for a shirt?

So in addition to submitting designs for Threadless, I also make some to go along with my comics (http://yume-comic.com).
(I can't submit them here, or I'm afraid I'd lose the rights to my own characters! Plus, when I do it this way, they always get printed!)
But I figure, with there being so many t-shirt designin' people here, maybe I could get some opinions on next month's "Shirt of the Month".



I'm just hoping the printer can get this level of detail. To date, I've only done 1-color designs with simpler, bigger shapes.

So... any thoughts?

I have been looking through a looooooooooot of designs lately. And a lot of them aren't entirely original. About 10% of the submissions seem to have a link somewhere in the comments to another design very close to it. Cries of plagiarism are hurled back and forth.
But most of it isn't plagiarism. (Though granted, some of it is.) Some of these ideas just occur to multiple people at the same time. Whatever muse there is of t-shirt design, she's got so many people trying to come up with ideas, that she thinks she can just hand out the same idea to lots of people and maybe no one will notice.
But the great thing about the internet is that there're search engines all over the place. Do a little research. See if your design has been done before. (Or at least, if it's been done before, it's only been done a couple times, and in different ways than your idea, rather than a hundred times with every variation possible.)
You'd be surprised how many original ideas are out there. You still might not get printed, but at least you'll know you did something you're proud of, and that not everybody in the world already thought of.

I scored all of the designs that are active right now. O.O
260 of them.
what am I going to do when I'm slacking off at work now?
I suppose I could come up with more of my own designs.
Don't want to force it, though. I'll let them come to me.

I have web presence!
My comics:
yume-comic.com
lesbo-vision.com

They are fun and you should read them!