Sita T-shirts: help me choose colors

Funny how I have all these Sita Sings the Blues Tshirts, but none with a picture of just Sita herself. I want to remedy that. The question is, what color should the “Sita” shirt blank be? Colors I’m considering are: black, pink (“raspberry,” according to the Bella shirt co.), or creamish-tan. Which color should I choose?

As always, click the thumbnails to see larger images. Also: I put the “Sita Sings the Blues” logo on this design, but I don’t have to. Would you rather have a shirt with the logo, or without? So far none of the shirts I sell have the logo anywhere, making them kind of artsy and mysterious. Should I continue that trend?

Here’s the design superimposed on the photo of a model wearing the Bella scoopneck “raspberry” colored shirt:

In related merch news, I’m finally going to produce some “Shiva Natraj” shirts. These will be blingy gold foil on beautiful shades of purple that I know are awesome: women’s “currant” and men’s “eggplant.”

But do please help me choose a fabric color for the “Sita” shirt. Thanks!

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Correction, again

I’m reposting this (originally posted July 2009) because misinformation continues to spread all over the interwebs. Maybe I’ll post it every month.

correction

Dear Journalists Dear Journalists, bloggers, commenters, etc.,

Some of you are writing that I was forced to choose the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license because the film is violating copyright. That is completely untrue, but has become the dominant motif of stories I read about the project. The confusion is understandable, so I attempt to sort it out below.

Sita Sings the Blues is 100% legal. I am free to release it commercially, which is why the film is gaining a number of commercial distributors in addition to its free sharing/audience distribution, which is also legal, and wonderful.

Sita Sings the Blues is in complete compliance with copyright regulations. I was forced to pay $50,000 in license fees and another $20,000 in legal costs to make it so. That is why I am in debt.  My compliance with copyright law is by no means an endorsement of it. Being $70,000 in the hole reminds me daily what an ass the law is. The film is legal, and that legality gives me a higher moral ground to stamp my feet upon as I denounce the failure that is copyright.

Having paid these extortionate fees, I could have gone with conventional distribution, and was invited to. I chose to free the film because I could see that would be most beneficial to me, my film, and culture at large. A CC-SA license does not absolve a creator of compliance with copyright law. The law could have sent me to prison for non-commercial copyright infringement. I was forced to borrow $70,000 to decriminalize my film, regardless of how I chose to release it.

Note that in some ways the film is not, and never will be free. For each disc sold, distributors must pay $1.65 to these faceless money sinks.  Transaction costs raise that amount to about $2.00 per disc. That is why my own Artist’s Edition is limited to 4,999 copies. I’ve already bled $50,000 into their vampiric maws; I have no intention of paying more.

Thank you for your attention.

Love,

–Nina

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Frederick Douglass is always relevant

“Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” — Frederick Douglass, August 4, 1857 (via Terry Hancock)

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