Designers love creating homages to their favorite Disney characters (e.g., turning the iconic princesses into zombies and hipsters), but if they ever tried to sell those designs they would be faced with a foe scarier than Cruella de Vil — Disney’s legal department.

The crowdsourced T-shirt manufacturer Threadless is trying to help both parties by hosting a series of contests that allows their army of 220,000 talented community members to create shirt designs using Disney’s treasure trove of IP, but get formal recognition and cash for their efforts.

Threadless started sponsoring these competitions just three years ago and have since held contests for Disney brands like Iron Man and The Muppets as well as non-Disney characters like SpongeBob SquarePants, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Monsters U., Pixar’s newest release, is the latest project to get this treatment, and the winners of the competition were announced last week. The competition yielded 487 designs that earned 247,730 votes, leading to 16 Monsters U. t-shirt designs in production (to go with 40 Threadless Iron Man contest design shirts, among others).

It’s a win-win scenario. Media brands get access to an outsourced creative department of almost a quarter million artists spread over the globe, as well as exposure to the Threadless community, who provide feedback and a sense of what’s hip. Artists get to combine their love of superheroes and Jackson Pollock and get paid for it. Over the last 13 years, Threadless has paid out $7,120,000 to their community of designers, though the grand prize winner of this competition only pocketed $2,500.

These competitions also help make Disney’s characters, usually reserved for the preschool set, relevant with young urbanites who have a touch of nostalgia and plenty of disposable income. “Adult male products sell best on Threadless, but a lot of the licensed product makes a strong showing in the toddler and baby categories as well,” says Wilson Fong, the Vice President of Partnerships/Business Development at Threadless. “Design submissions can be cute, funny, ironic, edgy, beautiful, intricate, simplistic, or anything in between, so there’s something for every fan of a given property.”

Despite the positives, there is a delicate balance to be struck. Disney has become synonymous with family friendly entertainment, but Threadless is known to produce shirts featuring fornicating unicorns and a surprising amount of zombies. “Brands evolve and weave in and out of trends,” Says Fong. “By connecting to Threadless’s massive global artist community, Disney can encourage artists to come up with creative interpretations of beloved characters that are culturally relevant, fresh, and never before thought of.” says Fong. To keep things from getting out of hand, editorial discretion is applied — this Monsters U. inspired design is a clear reference to psychedelic poster art from the 60′s, but a more overt drug reference would be banned.

In addition to accessing new design talent, crowdsourcing is also an emerging marketing channel. Instead of relying on a highly centralized team of “Imagineers” and marketers, Disney ends up getting a legion of designers to spread their designs through social media profiles and through the Threadless network. “When our designers post a design on their social pages asking followers to vote, it builds amazing organic connections with partner brands,” says Fong.

So far these designs have only been sold on Threadless.com, but Fong is excited about seeing the designs at traditional retailers, and with a little luck, maybe the next winner’s design will win a trip to DisneyWorld.

All images courtesy of Threadless

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A group of Kansas City high school students and their mentors have electrified a Karmann Ghia, modifying it so that it will only run when it gets mentioned in social media. If that sounds like a publicity stunt, that’s because it is. And it’s for a good cause.

Minddrive has taken kids who have fallen through the cracks and developed an after-school program that matches them with mentors and gets them excited about learning through hands-on automotive work. Each year, the students’ final project is a road trip in the car they built.

“We want them to say, when it’s all over, ‘I can’t believe we did something like this,’” said Steve Rees, the program’s director. “It gives them the sense of being able to go back to school and do anything.”

This year, the team put an electric drivetrain in a 1967 Karmann Ghia. Next week, they’re driving it from Kansas City to Washington, D.C. for a chance to meet elected officials and raise awareness about education. To make sure their voices are heard, they’ve attached an Arduino to the electric drivetrain and programmed it to let the car move forward only when there’s social media buzz about the project. Minddrive calls it “social fuel,” and it provides an important lesson for students: If you want people to care about what you’re doing, you have to make sure they know about it.

The Minddrive team, including students and mentors

While there’s always been a communications component to the program, with one of last year’s students eventually going on to work in social media outreach for the MLB All-Star Game, this year’s Social Fuel Tour is thanks to an offer from digital marketing agency VML to work pro bono. In addition to getting the word out about Minddrive and the program’s corporate sponsors, students will also learn how to use social media in a work environment.

“They’re chomping at the bit to make little Vine videos, and to use Instagram,” said Linda Buchner, who directs the communications program. “It’s been a really great way to teach them how to use social media appropriately, and teach them to represent themselves and Minddrive as a brand.”

To move forward, the car will have to recognize either the hashtag #MINDDRIVE or mentions at @minddriveorg on Twitter, Facebook likes and shares, Instagram follows and shares, and YouTube video plays, follows and shares. Rees doesn’t think it will be a problem.

“Each of our major sponsors has … millions of connections on Facebook and Twitter and so on,” he said. “We’ve got plans with them, so we have an expectation that we’ll be able to glide right on through this. We don’t want to be stuck at some charging stop along the way.”

The Karmann Ghia is the third car that the Minddrive team has electrified, and its simple Volkswagen drivetrain makes for a great introduction to working on cars. It follows a Reynard Champ Car, a lightweight vehicle that was a great testbed for the team’s first chain-drive electric powertrain, and a 1977 Lotus Esprit, which allowed them to make some improvements and learn about working on a relatively rare vehicle. Now, the electric motor and batteries are still there, but the chain-drive is gone.

“We now have the motor driving through the transaxle,” Rees said. “We’ve taken a lot of internal components out. It has a frictional resistance that’s equal to or better than the Lotus.”

Twenty students will be driving the Karmann Ghia, with stops at schools and technical centers in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. The trip culminates with a press conference on Capitol Hill on June 6, where the students will talk about the need for more experiential learning programs.

While the nation’s capital is a great place to reach those who are in charge, these kids will have already shored up support from the public along the way.

Photos: Minddrive

What little boy or girl never wanted a hovercraft? Something loud that could travel over water, pavement, maybe even over a plowed field or through a swamp? Ben King obviously wanted one, so after he grew up and got his PhD in physics and found a good job, he founded Lone Star Hovercraft. Timothy Lord interviewed Ben at the Austin Mini Maker Faire, and we also found some video of Ben flying (is that the right word?) one of his hovercraft on a lake that we spliced into the interview to liven it up a little. Vroom!

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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