smogon tshirts

[chaos]

Serious this time. Brainstorm ideas for a Smogon shirt, and artists, contribute designs for an art badge!?

No recognizable Pokemon, unfortunately. Nintendo doesn't like that.

Maybe a college style

with Smogon instead? We are Smogon University...

At the moment, we are going with printfection to sell stuff. From what I've read, their prices are the lowest and the quality of shirts is the best.

 

[MegaKick]

hmmm, not sure if smogon would be allowed. It is the name of koffing in german, so nintendo still owns it. Mayby something like "get your smog-on" or something. Cheesy, but it gets the job done. Maybe a skull and crossbones symbol to represent koffing.

 

[Despotar]

Is something like this illegal?

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[Rename Card]

That hat and shirt are actually pretty cool.

 

[jumpluff]

Just letting you know that Printfection does not accept PayPal, if that's a problem; Zazzle does. P.S. Despotar: that looks awesome.

 

[Kinneas]

Do you think it would be possible to get away with stylized versions of the Ho-Oh and lugia wings for something like this:

(very rough)

I'm just wondering what we could get away with. For example, the koffing on there would be easily recognizable to pokemon fans despite not being an actual Koffing silhouette. The wings would be recognizable as Ho-Oh and lugia wings despite only sharing colours and similar shapes. So how far is too far? It's very difficult to come up with any sort of art for smogon without using anything remotely pokemon related.

 

[undisputed]

i am no artist, but i always wanted to try out photoshop, so this is what i made. yes its not very high quality, but if someone liked the idea and/or wanted to get rid of the pokemon i couldnt, feel free.

The Shirt

Basically the Smogon logo, I got rid of the Pokemon I could, then put in the Logos of 3 major recurring Smogon Tournaments. So yeah. Enjoy my work, or dont enjoy it. I dont really care, I just wanted to offer some ideas! :)

edit: I made one with Kinneas' Koffing because it is too cute to reject, and this way, I guess its less recognizable as a real Koffing, although anyone with Pokemon expertise would know.

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[Mentlegen]

What does Nil Sine Pokemon mean? Because I could see that being potentially useful, although is the word Pokemon not usable?

 

[makiri]

YEAHYEAHYEAH

Though honestly if I got in trouble for THIS, I can hardly see those other designs being approved by NOA, TPCi, or whoever the fuck is in charge. It was simple, stylistic, no names, just a simple skull and crossbones design that got removed. I've got the emails and all that junk from the lawyers explaining exactly what I couldn't use, though it was sketchy reasoning and stuff, I don't have the resources to fight a multinational corporation. Though if you need some help chaos, I can give you the designs for this, original image files and all that. Art badge ;)

 

[Naxte]

Thought this over for a bit, but I was confused as to what we could do for this without it just saying "Smogon University" and leaving it at that, while also trying to avoid copyrights and such. Seen as how the first shirt was so simple, but we still got in trouble for it, this gave me a lot of trouble. But then a brilliant idea came to me: the regions in the game.

As long as we don't put in the towns or routes or anything, and just leave them as a blank map of the region or something, TPCi, NOA & co shouldn't be able to file a trademark/copyright complaint against it, since the regions are pretty much nothing more than parts of Japan in the first place. Thinking down that road, I came up with an idea based on that (of course, I definitely don't expect mine to actually be used (though of course I wouldn't mind if it was) as my Photoshop skills are craptastic, but just to give an idea of what I mean):

Front:

Back:

For the front, I just took a blank map of Japan I found online, then cropped it to the bulk of Hokkaido, which was used for Sinnoh. After that, since "Smogon" comes from Koffing, I filled the Hookaido-map with a purple-circle gradient, to give it a poison/acid bubble feel. Then I just copied/pasted to a blank-shirt, added the text and background fill, and finished off by doing likewise for the back.

Like I said though, this is just a rough idea, and I don't have the Photoshop skills to do much better than this myself. But if someone else were to use this as the basis for the actual design, I think we would be able to get a pretty awesome shirt made that TPCi & co wouldn't be able to make any solid claims against.

 

[Fuzzberry]

Just to clarify, the word "Smogon" is allowed to be on there, yes? Nintendo of Europe or wherever wouldn't be coming after us?


Here's a really rough design I managed to concoct in Paint. I promise a cleaner version if I can get access to a vector-based program in the near future.

It's based off of a generic team/college t-shirt; the design would look best against black or a very dark shade of purple.

Should the letters of "Smogon" be connected, like a cursive font, or should I leave it as is?

 

[Acklow]

hmmm, not sure if smogon would be allowed. It is the name of koffing in german, so nintendo still owns it.

Wait, so "Smogon" truly means Koffing in English?? I mean, I tried using some translators online and the only one that seems to translate Smogon into Koffing is Google's Translator...

 

[DjGopher]

Well zazzle is a terrible option, I've used them before and the quality is just not worth it.

Technically smogon is general enough to not cause any harm,
and technically you are allowed to violate copyright for personal use within your cooperation.
If we sell to those with no account, it becomes a violation.
So if you require users to have a password to buy the shirt, and have the password in an announcement hidden from the public, you should be fine if you change the password from time to time.

If you check out redbubble.com, you can get pretty top quality shirts for 19.95 without markup, and their user liability is pretty airtight.
I've seen pokemon, and other 'owned' images used there.

Of course ours would be mass production..

 

[Alan]

help its ugly!

"Keep on Smogon in the free world" is a play on "Keep on rockin' in the free world" in retrospect there should be probably be commas surrouding Smogon, fuck it ill fix it later.

I know the koffing thing is pretty bad with the poorly drawn 3 bumps on the top but apparently i am spaztastic with a tablet. :'(

so yeah

 

[Headpunch]

Simple athletic-style tee. I'd like to take up more of the background, but there's really not much relevant info to use for that.

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What I need from you guys:
-What color shirt(s) would you like to see this printed on?
-What changes to this design would you like to see?
-Athletic is simpler and more universally appealing. Would you like to see a more band-style shirt featuring Smogon?

 

[az]

Wait, so "Smogon" truly means Koffing in English?? I mean, I tried using some translators online and the only one that seems to translate Smogon into Koffing is Google's Translator...

of course it doesn't "mean" koffing; koffing isn't an english word! smogon is just the german name for the pokemon that got given the name koffing in america

edit: do we have any way of knowing how much we can get away with? i know zw's shirts (which are awesome) got us into trouble, but a stylised koffing, like kinneas' design? is that more acceptable?

also fuzzberry the "S" with the koffing outline in the middle actually looks great, but i don't think the smog works for the rest of the word

maybe try blowing up the first letter and dropping the rest?

 

[Atlas]

just wondering, how do other sites that take and or steal pop culture references able to get away with it

 

[Expert Evan]

Cool stuff here as I'd definitely be interested in one particularly for VGC or other pokemon event purposes.

 

[Optimusje]

Most in this topic is way too complicated. Keep stuff simple for a shirt, thats easiest. (also, refrain from black shirts please, those are just fugly).

Kineas' one could be cool, wihtout the text (or better text) and possible just make the koffing a purple ball instead. The wings could be anything, copyright is not that tight, dont worry ;).

 

[Aura Guardian]

I don't know how to do transparant backgrounds, sorry. Also added "Home of the Elites" as a reference to "Home of the Titans" in "Remember the Titans", though this could change to "Home of the Battlers", but Elites sounds better to me.

EDIT: might edit this with an improvement, like an image on the front and the text moved to the back, or something like that.

 

[Arb]

i tried to stylize koffing's little symbol thing and make it almost 3d ish and i came up with this

i thought it went best with a purple backround because thats koffings other color but i included it without the backround too just in case

I know it look pretty bad but both my mouse and photoshop mysteriously stopped working so i am stuck using my touch pad and paint

if someone with allitlle more skill wanted to copy my idea and redo it, thats fine


As for the words i was thinking either breaking it up like by putting smog on the front then on, on the back that way its only really reconizable to pokemon fans, either that or mess with smogons name so it sounds like a really univeresity , or just remove smogon from the shirt entirley.

Personally i would like to make the shirt so i could wear it in public without people knowing im a complete pokemon nerd

 

[makiri]

edit: do we have any way of knowing how much we can get away with? i know zw's shirts (which are awesome) got us into trouble, but a stylised koffing, like kinneas' design? is that more acceptable?

Here is the correspondence I had with the lawyer:

I first got this from CafePress, the site I had the shirts on:

Dear Shopkeeper,


Thank you for using CafePress!

In accordance with our Intellectual Property Rights Policy, Lawyer on behalf of The Pokemon Company International provided us with a notice stating that your use of "Smogon" infringes upon their intellectual property rights (copyright/trademark). Please click here for more information about intellectual property.

Accordingly, we have set the content that is alleged to infringe the rights of the third party to “pending status” which disables said content from being displayed in your shop or purchased by the public. You may review the content set to pending status by logging into your CafePress account and clicking on the “Media Basket” link. The content set to pending status will be located in a “pending images” folder, which can be accessed via the pull-down menu bar on the left hand side.



If you believe that you hold the rights to the content alleged to infringe the rights of the third party, we encourage you to contact the alleged rights holder directly for a resolution to this matter. Below please find the contact information for the party alleging infringement.



Lawyer's information

So I said, ok, I guess it's the name, and I decided to confirm with the lawyer what the problem was exactly:

Dear Lawyer man,

I recently received notice about a copyright infringement on my CafePress storefront, the item in question is a "Smogon T-shirt" which has been on the website for nearly a year. Now I wish to confirm that the only intellectual property I am infringing upon is the name "Smogon" as I hope to replace the shirt in the near future under a different name. Thank you.

Sincerely,
Me

And I got this reply:

Thank you for your note. I’m not aware that it’s been there for a year, although as I’m sure you can understand that doesn’t exactly make the situation better for you. In any event, any use of our Pokémon names in any language, as well as any use of any design elements from any of our Pokémon, would not be permitted.

Thanks for checking.

The whole "doesn't make the situation better for you" threw me off and made it seem like they were going to take even further action against me so I ended it right there and didn't bother replying. Colin and I looked into some of the laws surrounding this and it was really all vague, "design elements" and all that. I think even Smogon wasn't a registered trademark at the time, so it really seemed like someone picking on a little guy who can't do much back other than take it. I also know around this time Fish's Pokemon Dreams movie got taken down because of "copyright infringement." As for what Atlas brought up, it really seems like they pick and choose who to target at random as I still see all kinds of other Pokemon items on CafePress and other websites like that. Maybe it would be best to get permission from TPCi, but even then if they deny anything you're shit out of luck. It is really just a matter of how long you can keep it up on the internet until they decide they don't like what you're doing. What I would recommend is not making any money off of the item, you're not profiting off of their ip and it gives them less of a reason to target you. It is all fickle though and no one really has the resources to fight TPCi if they decide you are doing something wrong.

 

[cowboyforce]

they should have a shirt that says pokemon rocks!

 

[Fuzzberry]

also fuzzberry the "S" with the koffing outline in the middle actually looks great, but i don't think the smog works for the rest of the word

maybe try blowing up the first letter and dropping the rest?

So like this, maybe? This could be the central design, accompanied by a witty, Smogon-themed phrase on the front or back, since it seems we're not allowed to actually say "Smogon."

(also, refrain from black shirts please, those are just fugly).

Dully noted.

 

[Aura Guardian]

So like this, maybe? This could be the central design, accompanied by a witty, Smogon-themed phrase on the front or back, since it seems we're not allowed to actually say "Smogon."

They have not registered the name "Smogon", so they cannot enforce that bit until they do, or so my check on http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html#register indicates.