I recently got an email with some questions about what is acceptable for submissions. If you have some more, I'll try to answer them.
Nudity, Is a nude rear too much? Topless male?
Typically nudity is avoided since our market is family friendly, approximately PG-13. Exception. We did have a Smurf butt once, and that did not cause an outrage. ;)
How much is teefury interested in trying to uphold satire. Such as taking a company slogan and changing it around.
We print satire and parody within reason. If we feel that it crosses too far into the ambiguous zone that could get us into trouble, then we will avoid printing such designs.
These are examples of printed satire/parody:
http://www.teefury.com/archive/964/CheFC/
http://www.teefury.com/archive/822/Major_League_Zombie/
We were going to print FACEBOOK: Reminding you why you lost touch in the first place, but we decided that it wasn't parody/satire enough, so the line is very vague.
Likeness and the extent of satire/parody are both very important evalutations we take into consideration.
Copyrights: so lets say I upload an image with fonts on it, lets say these are not free fonts. So technically this is violated the copyright...
In our artist's agreement, there is a statement that requires the artist to claim ownership of the art, and this would cover fonts. Even though we exercise due diligence, we also rely that the artist is honest in submitting work that is own by them.
Nudity, Is a nude rear too much? Topless male?
Typically nudity is avoided since our market is family friendly, approximately PG-13. Exception. We did have a Smurf butt once, and that did not cause an outrage. ;)
How much is teefury interested in trying to uphold satire. Such as taking a company slogan and changing it around.
We print satire and parody within reason. If we feel that it crosses too far into the ambiguous zone that could get us into trouble, then we will avoid printing such designs.
These are examples of printed satire/parody:
http://www.teefury.com/archive/964/CheFC/
http://www.teefury.com/archive/822/Major_League_Zombie/
We were going to print FACEBOOK: Reminding you why you lost touch in the first place, but we decided that it wasn't parody/satire enough, so the line is very vague.
Likeness and the extent of satire/parody are both very important evalutations we take into consideration.
Copyrights: so lets say I upload an image with fonts on it, lets say these are not free fonts. So technically this is violated the copyright...
In our artist's agreement, there is a statement that requires the artist to claim ownership of the art, and this would cover fonts. Even though we exercise due diligence, we also rely that the artist is honest in submitting work that is own by them.
We accept designs from a day to months old. It varies.If not accepted, do you tell me why?
No, we have too many submissions to give critiques. Please post in our forums to get community feedback.Can i touch up the design and try again?
Yes.Once accepted, how long until my shirt is sold?
We are usually ahead of schedule about 4-12 weeks. Should i make a paypal account now, or can i wait until my first design is accepted?
We don't mind if you don't have a paypal before submitting, but paypal is a useful site if you are going to consider making money online through your art.
Yes, typically at 100% opacity. If you lower the opacity, depending on the layers beneath it, it would increase the color count because of the multiple tones.
Or do you have the ability to convert full color images to your 6 color silk screen printing setup?
We do have the ability to extract colors from a flattened image provided it's solid colors, but beware, it rare that we run photographic images that are gradient-y, if that's what you mean by "full color"
Have the design on a separate layer from the background. We reserve the right to modify the background color (and the art itself) to suit the shirt blank.
How many designs can i submit to you? Must I wait till one image has been printed before I can submit another?
You can submit as many designs as you like. BUT it's much more efficient and staff friendly to space out submissions. We're more likely to remember your name fondly if you don't spam us.
Do you include a shirt as payment along with payment for the artist?
No, but we pay more than is actually sold to cover defectives, exchanges, etc so the funding you get should cover the price of a shirt or two.
If the design is to be sold on a white shirt, yes.
Can we suggest T-Shirt colors?
Yes, but we reserve the right to alter the shirt blank color as well as the colors in the art, and in extreme cases the art itself to suit our market.
Do you want us to submit a picture just of the design itself, or on models as well (like "photo-shopping" them onto the traditional TeeFury models)?
Just the design itself.
Will we receive an E-Mail whether or not our design will be printed ("We received your submission, but that's not what we are looking for, etc.")?
Due to overwhelming submissions, we only send notifications when we choose a design.
A design sits in the queue until it is rejected or accepted. We only send notification if it is accepted since it is not humanly possible to notify every who is not accepted. Typically, if a design is not accepted within 2-4 weeks, the likelihood it will be chosen is low.
On a rare occasion, a design may sit in purgatory for a longer time and then be kicked out of inception to be printed.
Can I resubmit a design?
If the design has been altered/improved, you can submit the design, but if it's the same design, and we've already seen it, we'll be more likely to be annoyed that it's been resubmitted since it requires a second rejection.
No. You will get paid for more than what is sold to cover exchanges, returns, defectives, which should cover the of at least a shirt if not two or more.
Also do you keep the rights to the images used or do they remain with the artists?
No, we borrow it from the artists for the 24 hours, and that's it. We do keep images of the design in our gallery and facebook albums for archiving only.
Lastly how quickly do you make decisions on submissions and how quickly after that decision are they put on sale?
Decisions are made within 2 weeks, although sometimes a design may site in the sub queue while we consider it for more than 2 weeks. As far as sale date, we are usually ahead 3-6 weeks, but even then designs may not go on sale exactly within that time. It varies.
Selection is internal.
Submissions are not posted in the forums unless posted by artists themselves, which we don't recommend since if it's a great idea, someone might steal your idea.
Does the community have any pull on which shirts are chosen?
We ask for opinions on occasions, and test the waters, but ultimately, we utilize many factors to decide what gets printed. If we printed only what the internet said and thinks it wants, we'd be out of business.
also, what is your average response time for a selected shirt, and do you respond to a declined shirt?
If your design isn't selected within 2 weeks then it gets progressively unlikely that it will get printed.
We do not respond to declined shirts. There are too many.
say i were to submit a tee in the future, could it be hanging in limbo for weeks before decided on?
Yes.
if it were not chosen would i be informed to keep from considering the previous question?
What?
SO MANY QUESTIONS. Shouldn't you be like Captain Ribman and cranking out a ton of designs and befriending Lady Luck by the law of large numbers? Also you'll get better the more designs you create, and you get to understanding what we do want.
If the design is awesome but breaks rules, we will accept it and alter it on our end to suit our ink limits, shirt blank colors, and market sensibilities.
It depends on the quote. We haven't run too many of those, but it would seemed based on similar pop culture sites that quotes from movies seem to be fair game.
Black and white are considered ink colors. Technically, they are not if you are talking about the science of color, but in tshirt design, the ink is in a bucket, and gets squeegeed onto the shirt, so yes the printer will charge for black and white ink.
And can I use gradients in the designs, or do the colors have to be solid?
Yes, but it's not the norm. If your design is good enough, we'll review/modify the image to suit our color count. Gradients can be halftoned on our end.
The size doesn't really matter than much except to keep file sizes down and asserting a standard. It still shows up.
It'd have to be very compelling. The last I spoke with the powers that be, they rejected the possibility of from the seam printing because of possible higher production cost.
Unfortunately, we are not available to teach users how to utilize shirt creation tools.
It varies over time, sales velocity, monthly averages, genre, etcetera.
Because of you. :D
We don't post those details.
(Example: "...yes, I already have the design in an Inkscape document. It's not bigger than 19" by 15". I've used layers. And why yes, there ARE six layers and each layer exclusively holds just one of the six colors...")
Using the latest version of Safari on OS X 10.6, by the way.
Also tried using Internet Explorer (sorry for any possible duplicates). Again: just a blank screen.
On my options, I have the option to have design submissions posted to Facebook. I have received no updates on my Facebook profile for any submissions.
I'm sorry, I don't understand the reply. If a shirt is only available one day, how can it be based as stated in your reply. Is the Hot Cakes logo not determined by how well a particular shirt sells during the duration of it's sale time?
It varies over time meaning they have different criteria on what number of sales constitutes a 'hot selling item' based on all those factors listed. It's a by-the-day/based-on-each-individual-shirt type of number, not a set in stone "Anything over 1,000 shirts is a hot seller" figure.