As Shirt.Woot Derby #122: Family finished out its first day of voting, my first submitted design was not going anywhere. I decided to do something less cartoony and more illustrated.

I had been playing around with the idea of doing a starfish design for awhile, but until this point I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do with it. I was always intrigued by the idea of the starfish’s ability to regenerate limbs and more astonishingly, the ability of the limb to become a new starfish. I played on this idea to make my design.

Rejected!

Rejected

Shortly after finishing the design, I made my second entry in the derby. It was moving up the ranks and gaining votes at a quick pace. To my surprise however, the design was rejected on the basis that it contained gradients. Gradients are listed as a no no on Shirt.Woot rule list. The design contains no gradients, which I knew it didn’t, but apparently the size of the dots from the halftone weren’t convincing enough to prevent the rejection.

I plan on reworking this design in the future. It is a strong design and I feel that with some improvements, it will be print quality. Any takers?