Topic: Steven Harrington vs Chuck Anderson 10/12 / Conversation About The Match

Ok, maybe i’m stupid, but I can’t for the life of me figure out why some people’s names are red and some are grey?

(and yes, Julian, I lol’d at 7. go back a page for my brief commentary on it.)

Topic: Steven Harrington vs Chuck Anderson 10/12 / Conversation About The Match

Alright – my final comment on this match is that #2 was my favorite volley because I totally did not expect that. #1 was such an idyllic, boring teepee-scape that when suddenly the little guy freaks out under the advance of the psychedelic mountains and the sky gains its own menacing personality, I couldn’t help it; I just had to lol in pure joy.

Second-favorite moment was #7. Whereas #2 caught me off-gaurd in a positive, impressed-with-his-cleverness sort of fashion, #7 shocked me with its violence, and then I still had to lol. At the bird. That was funny. And on a slightly more deep note, I felt Steve was upset that nothing really cool was done with his cliff/ocean. “I don’t want a bird! I wanted fish scaling that ledge!” (Catch my pun on scales? heh.)

Peace :)

Topic: Steven Harrington vs Chuck Anderson 10/12 / Conversation About The Match

This week was (yet again) unique. We all won. Thanks to everyone involved.

Topic: Steven Harrington vs Chuck Anderson 10/12 / Conversation About The Match

Have you seen the print on the left of the billboard in #8? It’s gorgous. “Places you can’t imagine,” isn’t that its title?

Interesting, anyway, how this time he’s done putting Harrison’s stuff on the billboard. “Reject my peace offering? Alright, it’s nopattern from here on out…”

Topic: Steven Harrington vs Chuck Anderson 10/12 / Conversation About The Match

Agreed. Hard to find fault with kottke’s commentary!

Topic: Steven Harrington vs Chuck Anderson 10/12 / Conversation About The Match

No.6’s billboard is great. I love how it’s the first volley, which was by his “competitor,” so I see it as complete proof that they’re working “together.”

From this, may I humbly suggest Matchbox Twenty’s “How Far We’ve Come” as the song for this volley.

Topic: Neil Duerden vs. Mathew Star Thomas 10/5 / Conversation about the match

Will, I too think it would be good to have a decided policy on this kind of thing… but you need to cool down a bit; it seems like you have it in for Duerden. The guy came up with incredible designs in about 15 minutes each. I’m sure finding explicitly free images is pretty hard in such a short amount of time, and it’s not like he’s profiting from Googled images; I have no doubt his professional work strictly follows proper copyright protocol.

Topic: Neil Duerden vs. Mathew Star Thomas 10/5 / October 5th Match Remixes

Amber, the link doesn’t seem to work for me unless I click “view original” or whatever. But that’s really nice. I like it.

Topic: Neil Duerden vs. Mathew Star Thomas 10/5 / Conversation about the match

@ WillTheThird: Would you be so kind as to link to volleys instead of inserting the images? At least in my browser, it pushes the discussion so wide that it overlaps the list of “voices”, making reading quite awkward. Thanks.

Topic: Neil Duerden vs. Mathew Star Thomas 10/5 / Conversation about the match

Commentary & Scores

for the entire match

I’ll be commenting on each volley and assigning it a Likert scale value, from 1 (“OK”) to 7 (“Astoundingly fantastic”). I’m using this scale because everything was good but some volleys were better than others.

Volley 1: Neil Duerden. Likert-7: 5

Firstoff, Debbie, does one helicopter necessarily mean an Apocalypse Now reference? I see no Asian forests or rivers here.

Stylistically, it’s very busy, which is fine. The colors are pretty interesting, if a bit oversaturated. The blue cityscape is a nice touch.

But the left side contains way too many elements that have nothing to do with anything. It’s ridiculous. Where’s the message? Why is the laptop upside-down? Why’s everything so small? Why is the Thinking Man only partially whited out, but the iPod Girl completely so? Is this a collage of everything The Thinking Man is thinking? As for him, it’s interesting to note he is the only one with a white outline around him, suggesting perhaps that he is the focus and is indeed thinking of everything. I can accept that, though it is a bit weak for a theme. Perhaps it’s reflexive and shows Neil’s own thoughts as he prepares the first volley from a blank slate. Alright. The theme is “anything goes,” and that’s reinforced through the hodgepodge of clip art and grab bag of hues. Still, I’d prefer a coherent message and some unity.

The best thing about this volley is it gives us plenty of material to work with and is at least interesting. The worst is that it gives more questions than answers as far as a theme. As such, I’d give it a 4, but the possibility that Duerden is the Thinking Man bumps it up to 5.

Volley 2: Mathew Star Thomas (Couscous Kid). Likert-7: 7

Here, Mathew (or Couscous as everyone refers to him) provides some of the unity I’d been looking for. Visually, his theme is black and white objects, specifically stripes; that’s obvious, at least. The colors, and indeed most of the previous volley, are behind the new jailhouse-stripe objects, suggesting Couscous has imprisoned Duerden or at least his work. I would agree.

The piano, it has been said, makes little sense. Not true. Look closely and you will see that it has been dropped onto Neil’s monogram. Badass. (Look for the motion-blur-esque white on top of the girl. It helps to flip between #1 and #2.) Furthermore, it is black and white (and black keys suggest stripes again), so its position adds the visual unity that was missing in volley #1. (Millman, who needs type when you can so powerfully integrate the previous volley and visually own it without words?)

The message? Well, with the prison/building upon/piano-dropping of Duerden’s work, it’s pretty clear that at least some of the message is simple boasting. It’s Photoshop smack talk. The stars, zebra, squiggly doodles, and floating bowler’s cap suggest a fantastic theme, as well. The brain in the Catwalk Girls could also convey a theme like what I supposed #1 had: Is she (are they?) imagining these things? “I look like a zebra.” “This outfit would go well with that cap.” “My parents still wish I played piano instead of modeling.” And she could be thinking of the Negative Glamour Lady, as well; is that her own face? A role model’s?

A really nice touch is outlining the Catwalk Girls in the same white border as Thinking Man was. I also like how his new pink theme fades perfectly into the purple, then blue, then cyan/yellow/green of the first image.

No complaints. Unity. Continuing the obscure theme of #1. Taunting Durden (piano, prison). Perfect score of 7.

Volley 3: Neil Duerden. Likert-7: 4

“Dost thou mock me, Kid?” asks Neil. “Alright. You got it,” he continues, lobbing the head off the zebra. Score. (But why is there a rainbow coming out of the zebra’s decapitated neck?)

“Why the floating hat?” he further taunts. “Put it on the girl.” And it does fit her well. That’s good stuff too. Perfect angle.

Coloring the hummingbirds is a nice touch, as is the idea of adding the piano keys. Remember how the black keys only suggested stripes, but didn’t actually show any? Here, Duerden may be asking, “Didn’t you forget THESE?” However, it’s more likely that he is simply continuing the theme of music introduced by Couscous’s piano. (It would seem that he missed the point that it was dropped on him, as it’s still there. Yet, when you look closely, he reciprocated; Couscous’s monogram is now obscured by the piano keys!) The music theme, however, falls apart with the bawdy 3D notes. They are so out of place. And the shadows? “Default filters are for chumps.” Nothing else is styled like the notes, yet they aren’t the focus of this (overly) busy image, so that’s a fail. (“A failure,” I should say. Damn 40chan meme-hackers for influencing my grammar!)

Nice jabs with the zebra, hat, and key, but not enough to pull out of relative mediocrity. 4.

Volley 4: Mathew Star Thomas (Couscous Kid). Likert-7: 5

It’s busy. It’s cool, with the revived city and what is becoing Couscous’s trademark palette, with the missing body of the Sitting Woman, and the stylish doodles around the hummingbird (who is about to drink from a lightning-bolt flower?).

Not so much of a discernible message here, but seeing as most elements are from previous work (notably, Duerden’s work, such as the lightning bolts from #1), it’s impressive nonetheless. I would like to see a real theme, but nice work. 5.

Volley 5: Neil Duerden. Likert-7: 6

• the bull reminds us of the god from last week
• the bull is looking/firing eye rockets at “Porn? Girl”. Well, Porn Girl’s boobies, really – are breasts “for milk only,” or “for [fun and] profit”?
• the bull cannot be milked… only the lady-cows, man. This makes it very clear he’s really talking about Porn Girl’s bosom.

I’m not at all sure what is behind the cow. It’s weird. What are those?

I like how the girl now thinks, “Porn?” as the “idea” suggested by #4’s lightning bolts (brainstorm) and dollar signs (how can I make money?). Good return.

Visually, it’s a bit weird/unfinished feeling, without terrific unity, but it’ll do.

Thankful for the bull and Porn? Girl as thoughtful reply, I’m giving this a 6 despite being not fabulously styled.

Volley 6: Mathew Star Thomas (Couscous Kid). Likert-7: 6

Remember when Duerden asked, “Is this what you meant with your piano? You meant it like this?” Well, as a reply to #5’s weak visual appeal, Couscous took the clouds and made it rain. “Is this what you meant?” So that’s points.

Again, the trademark palette, this time with yellow (for the lightning bolts, sunflowers, and Stripper’s hair), plus grey. Very nice. The only exception is the read of the dollar signs and of the zebra’s eyes, which is an amusing reply to the bull’s.

I absolutely adore the man sitting on his lonely sofa. There’s totally room for the girl he’s clearly thinking about, but she’s not there. So he’s lonely, of course, as already shown by his posture. We know he’s thinking about the girl not only from the Female sign on his face, but also the arrow pointing toward her with a brain in it, which by the way keeps the same two colors as his pink-on-white face-with-girl-thoughts. Nice.

Amusing is “I can see your bra strap,” and then the “bra strap” which Duerden drew on turns out to be part of a stylized breast squirting heart-milk droplets (“for milk only”). Funny, and it also continues the Boobies&Porn? theme that Duerden began, as does the Stripper. (I say Stripper because of the money sign, posture, and lack of clothing.)

All the doodles are very nice too, and keep the color scheme very well.

The random evergreen has been made into part of an Abercrombie & Fitch logo, which is clever, I suppose!

It’s a solid play, not dumbfounding, but flawless: 6.

Volley 7: Neil Duerden. Likert-7: 6

Mat’s last volley featured a stylized breast/nipple in the right, so here Duerden calls out Couscous on the nipple: “You want it like this?,” Duerden seems to ask. “Don’t chicken out. If you want a nipple, here’s a nipple.” He’s also asking what the difference between art and porn is, exactly. This is art, right? But if it’s porn, surely #6 wasn’t, though, right? I like how the concept is really driven home by Janet Jackson’s nipple decoration thingamajig: It’s there, stylistically, right between The Guy’s Lips and Her Nipple.

Furthering the concept is the Tiny Little Guy at the bottom left oogling Her, and The (Big) Guy has on those reflective check-her-out-without-getting-caught sunglasses. Oh and you know what? The Little Guy is Couch Man with a face! Brilliant. Of course he turns to (borderline) porn when Porn? Girl refused to sit on his couch.

Again, I have palette problems: Yellow bird-swoop trails? ehhhh. At least Duerden’s (more geometric) doodles are pink & grayscale! Nice. And those doodles really are tight. Sort of 30s/40s retro, if I have my decades of graphic design straight.

Everything is so superficial and tongue-in-cheek. It feels just a bit Warhol. Sweet.

So all together, I’d say this post has the best-defined theme message we’ve seen yet from Duerden, and possibly overall. Terrific. If not for the birds etc. being so totally out of the palette, I’d give this a 7! But as-is, it gets a 6.

Volley 8: Mathew Star Thomas (Couscous Kid). Likert-7: 5

This one’s pretty good too. I’m pretty confused on the “Teletubbies” angels (those are wings I see), though angels and love totally go together.

As for the font, no one likes it. Well, I do. It’s quietly a bit academic, sort of journalistic or modern – perfect for an article probing the lines between art, porn, and love. It’s a more love-related font than the font used back in #7 (which was modernly artsy) and both fonts were very modern-feeling, which totally jives with the medium, the twittering, the style (a semiretro photo collage with undeniably Photoshop semitransparent vectors; that is, completely modern with a mild retro flavor), and the superficiality (the font is not a sincere handwritten one – not oldschool, romantic love – but rather aesthetically pleasing and perfect, like girls in pornography, like physical love).

The contrast between the superclean Innocent Girl and the dirty Nipple Girl is interesting too.

Still, I’m a bit confused and not completely impressed, so I’m giving it a 5.

Volley 9: Neil Duerden. Likert-7: 5

I had mixed feelings on this one.

1. It’s very symmetric. That’s a plus.
2. It does use doodles from previous volleys, such as the dither & Cous Cous’s heart-milk droplets, which are totally appropriate here. Plus.
3. It lacks a terrific color palette á la Cous Cous… Without the stripes & heart in the middle, I would love the palette usage. But since he didn’t stick to it, it doesn’t quite work. Minus.
4. The people clearly are really smiling underneath. Weird. If there is a point I’m missing, then plus… otherwise minus! Oh, and pasted-on expressions were 90s. Not new enough to be cool and not yet old enough to be retro. Minus.
5. I like the square background, which is new, especially with the stripes going from photoshop “clear” to photoshop “clear”. A tip to the medium and to the sponsor? Plus.
6. The skateboarder has nothing to do with love or anything, does it? Only tie-in thru “sk8r boy” or pop culture skate punk/emo music combinations, right? Is that what he’s going for? I don’t like it. The whole stripes & skater thing is out of place. The heart isn’t, but it’s too red for all the pink and steel blue going on. Minus.
7. The whole “modern love” is a very valid continuation of the theme.

I really love the corner doodles and background… so much so that I’m going to give this a 5 when it probably deserves less.

Volley 10: Mathew Star Thomas (Couscous Kid). Likert-7: 6

Last one!

Couscous makes a strong statement by putting Duerden’s brain on a stick. He also complains about the beheading of the zebras by resurrecting them.

But still, I don’t know about this volley… It feels weak. The white in the upper right rather bothers me. Is it really anything new? Or is that its strength, re-using various elements?

A big plus, however, is how the stripes, which were so out of place in Duerden’s #9, here fit in perfectly. Perfectly with respect to the composition, it fades in and out behind those mystical clouds (from #2). Perfectly with respect to the palette, its colors shift toward grey and pink.

As for the palette itself, we’ve seen it before, which is fine since he’s tying up the match. Still, I wish instead of grey, Cous Cous used the steel blue (slate grey?) from #9, to continue that. At least the square background pattern is still there.

Peace font? Ehhhh, I’m no fan, but it’s decent. I also hate how the final “e” is so obscured. I do like the word “peace” itself though, as it has two meanings: Peace as in peace & love & grazing zebras, and peace as in “seeya, match over”.

It’s solid. Not incredible, though, so I’m giving it a 6. That’s a low six, though, as it doesn’t feel splendidly clever.

And all things considered

Let’s add up the points!
Duerden: 5, 4, 6, 6, 5. Total: 26 (out of 35)
Couscous: 7, 5, 6, 5, 6 Total: 29 (out of 35)

That’s a lot narrower than a lot of people seemed to be saying. Still, I agree, the Couscous Kid wins; he also had the only perfect score, with #2. Very nice jobs by both contestants! Thank you!

Topic: Neil Duerden vs. Mathew Star Thomas 10/5 / Conversation about the match

Cous cous got Duerden’s brain on a stick!

Definitely what I’m thinking too!

I don’t know about this last one… It feels week to e. Is it really anything new? The white in the upper right rather bothers me too.

A big plus, however, is how the stripes, which were so out of place in #9 (IMO), here fit in perfectly. Perfectly with respect to the composition, fading in and out. Perfectly with respect to the palette, being faded toward grey and pink.

As for the palette itself tho, we’ve seen it before. I wish instead of grey, Cous Cous used the steel blue or slate grey, whatever it’s called, from #9.

Peace font? ehhhh. I also hate how the final “e” is so obscured.

Topic: Neil Duerden vs. Mathew Star Thomas 10/5 / Conversation about the match

1. It’s very symmetric. That’s a plus.
2. It does use doodles from previous volleys, such as the dither & Cous Cous’s heart-milk droplets, which are totally appropriate here (plus)
3. It lacks a terrific color palette á la Cous Cous… Without the stripes & heart in the middle, I would love the palette usage. But since he didn’t stick to it, it doesn’t quite work. (minus)
4. The people clearly are really smiling underneath. Weird. If there is a point I’m missing, then plus… otherwise minus!
5. I like the square background, which is new, especially with the stripes going from photoshop “clear” to photoshop “clear”. Plus.

Millman:

My favorite element in this entire match, hands down, is the skateboarder on the wave in this piece. Almost easy to overlook, given the amplified, hammy people that have shown up, it is these discreet subtleties that I love most about Duerden’s work.

I don’t know. The skateboarder has nothing to do with love or anything, does it? Only tie-in thru “sk8r boy” or pop culture skate punk/emo music combinations, right? Is that what he’s going for? I don’t like it. The whole stripes & skater thing is out of place. The heart isn’t, but it’s too red for all the pink and slate grey going on.

Topic: Neil Duerden vs. Mathew Star Thomas 10/5 / Conversation about the match

...as in, physical love, not romantic love. That’s how the font matches the style. Does that make sense?

Topic: Neil Duerden vs. Mathew Star Thomas 10/5 / Conversation about the match

the font choice is lame

Whoa, how is the font choice in #8 lame? It’s a more love-related font than the font used back in #7 (which was artsy IMO) and both fonts were very modern-feeling, which totally jives with the medium, the twittering, the style (a semiretro photo collage with totally Photoshop semitransparent vectors; that is, completely modern with a mild retro flavor), and the superficiality (the font is not a sincere handwritten one – not oldschool love – but rather aesthetically pleasing).

My two cents

Topic: Neil Duerden vs. Mathew Star Thomas 10/5 / Conversation about the match

#2 is still my favorite so far because it really had a super-strong visual “zebra stripe” theme; adequately responds to the first post (the brain thing), etc.; and it completely toned down the palette of Deurden’s first post, which was definitely cool but perhaps a bit too meaninglessly busy.

I feel Couscous is trying to build on Deurden’s volleys… Couscous is still well ahead for me

Agreed.

Topic: Neil Duerden vs. Mathew Star Thomas 10/5 / Conversation about the match

This feels like a pre-designed motif, hardly a response to the previous. bq.

I don’t think so, well perhaps, but certainly not entirely. #6 features a breast/nipple, stylistically, in the right, as I’m sure you noticed; the hearts are stylized “milk” (“for milk only”).

So this #7 calls out Couscous on the nipple: “You want it like this?,” Duerden seems to ask.

Topic: Neil Duerden vs. Mathew Star Thomas 10/5 / Conversation about the match

So how about #7 by Duerden? The implied first part of the question is “porn” right?

I like how the concept is really driven home by Janet Jackson’s nipple decoration thingamajig: It’s there, stylistically, right between The Guy’s Lips and Her Nipple.

Furthering the concept is the Tiny Little Guy at the bottom left oogling Her, and The (Big) Guy has on those Reflective CheckHerOutFearlessly glasses.

So all together, I’d say this post has possible the clearest message we’ve seen yet.