Two concepts from a novice that could use some work - Honolulu Nenes/Guatemala Quetzals

[yuazda]

Hi all,

I just got back into OOTP earlier this year after a years-long lapse (used to log waaaay too many hours between OOTP 6 and 12). I've heavily borrowed from a ton of the great work on this forum for a 96-team North American Pro/Rel league, but two of my team concepts have uncommon names so it's been hard to find jerseys/logos for them. I decided to try to take a crack at creating them myself with the ootputilities Jersey and Cap Creators. I am decently satisfied with the results, but I think the logos look terrible in-game.

I have zero artistic ability and probably even worse technical skills. I pretty much used the Preview app in Mac to create transparency and used PowerPoint to try to make the logos, in what took me hours to create what would probably take most here five minutes

If anyone would be interested in helping make these look more professional I'd be very thankful.

Honolulu Nenes

Both of these concepts are bird mascots which I am a sucker for. Nenes are the state bird of Hawaii, and I really didn't want anything beach, water, ocean, sun, etc. related.

I used this keychain as my base, and a font I found online called Musubi.

Logo attempts, none that I'm happy with in-game (I've settled on the third one for now, which has a white outline that can't be seen in this post):







Jersey/Caps:







Guatemala (City) Quetzals

The quetzal is not only the national bird of Guatemala, but is also the name of its currency. It also is just a cool-ass bird!

I based these off of this brand concept on Behance: https://www.behance.net/gallery/6503027/QUETZAL-BRAND

Logo attempts:





Jerseys/Caps:









I prefer clean, minimalist uniforms but it just feels like something is missing on everything I created (the text probably could use outlines, for starters)

I think I've reached the ceiling of my abilities on these...if anyone is down for some cleanup work, I'd appreciate any help! Thanks all.

[Curve Ball Dave]

Novice? There are very good.

[yuazda]

Originally Posted by Curve Ball Dave

Novice? There are very good.

Thank you - but all I did was take other people's art and play around with it in Powerpoint/Preview (and downloaded GIMP but just stared at my screen slack-jawed not understanding how to use it...my next initiative is to learn how). This is my first time trying to do this...I like the overall concepts I put together but I figured someone might be able to pretty them up to match the rest of the awesome work I've stolen from these forums!

[kjb023]

Logos look great! Love the names, well done!

[cephasjames]

First off, great job with all of it! You worked those images to turn them into some pretty nice artwork.

My thoughts on logos and uniforms.

Honolulu:
I like a combo of the 2nd and 3rd logos. I like the use of two colors for the city and team name from the 2nd. But I like just the head from the 3rd. Though, I don't like the gold trim from the 3rd. The gold from the neck and cheek should be enough to connect it with the gold for "Honolulu." Also, though the whole bird is cool in the 2nd, there are a lot of colors on it - three of which are not incorporated into the uniform at all (black, green, brown). That being said, just the head removes the best (and main) color from the logo, the aqua-ish color. If I had to choose from the three that exist, I'd go with the 2nd.

As for uniforms, I'd just make sure to incorporate more of the logo colors into them. Maybe a black hat.

Guatemala:
Very slick logo. Great font. Not sure how to improve upon this one. The only thing logo-wise that pops into my head is to flip the bird image and use it as a "Q" for Quetzals, leaving Guatemala completely off.

The uniforms look good. I'd maybe do a red hat with a green(ish) Q that has a thin white outline.

[cephasjames]

Originally Posted by yuazda

Thank you - but all I did was take other people's art and play around with it in Powerpoint/Preview (and downloaded GIMP but just stared at my screen slack-jawed not understanding how to use it...my next initiative is to learn how). This is my first time trying to do this...I like the overall concepts I put together but I figured someone might be able to pretty them up to match the rest of the awesome work I've stolen from these forums!

If this is your first time, then you are well on your way to making some top-notch stuff. Especially once you figure out GIMP or some other graphics program. You have a good eye and the ability to understand how to use software to make things look nice. That is a great start.

[Eugene Church]

Very nice work for a novice... darn nice work.

Good luck... I hope some of the talented designers give your project a go.
We've got about 10 really good talented designers here on the Graphics Forum.

Sadly, most of them only do projects or themes that they are personally interested in.
It's hard to get personal requests these days.
But every now and then someone gets lucky and the good designers do it for you.
Hope this happens for you.

Wish I could help you, but my logos are just borderline average at best.

[BBGiovanni]

Originally Posted by yuazda

Thank you - but all I did was take other people's art and play around with it in Powerpoint/Preview (and downloaded GIMP but just stared at my screen slack-jawed not understanding how to use it...my next initiative is to learn how). This is my first time trying to do this...I like the overall concepts I put together but I figured someone might be able to pretty them up to match the rest of the awesome work I've stolen from these forums!

That's all you need to do to populate some pretty great teams/leagues!


Your Nene thing is fabulous, sometimes I use a Hawaiian League and I never know what to do with HNL so this is a great idea!



My personal tastes, and that's all it is: I prefer arched or slanted wordmarks on jerseys. Also, as you get going you can play with outlines on the wordmark to give them a little more zing... these are great for an old-fashioned look if that's what you are going for but the font looks more modern to me and would look good outlined. I always try to find existing wordmarks, especially for the city, but "Honolulu" and "Nenes" are probably not easy to find

[micropterus58]

I agree with the above posts. Nice clean designs. If you go with GIMP there are many tutorials on the web and on yootoob. Plus a number of forums members can provide assistance. I always use posts here to recreate a design and for inspiration. I have very little creativity (unlike many here) but I do know how to use my graphics program.

[yuazda]

Wow - thank you to everyone for the encouragement and kind words. I wasn't fishing for compliments but I appreciate it...I legitimately just want these to look better!

Originally Posted by cephasjames

I like a combo of the 2nd and 3rd logos. I like the use of two colors for the city and team name from the 2nd. But I like just the head from the 3rd. Though, I don't like the gold trim from the 3rd. The gold from the neck and cheek should be enough to connect it with the gold for "Honolulu." Also, though the whole bird is cool in the 2nd, there are a lot of colors on it - three of which are not incorporated into the uniform at all (black, green, brown). That being said, just the head removes the best (and main) color from the logo, the aqua-ish color. If I had to choose from the three that exist, I'd go with the 2nd.

This is all great feedback, from a legend on here nonetheless. I kept playing around with the logo because none of them looked very good in-game. I've settled on that one as well but it doesn't scale very well when shrunken down. I will try to keep playing with it. A traditional circular logo would probably look the best but that is probably outside of my current skillset.

Originally Posted by BBGiovanni

My personal tastes, and that's all it is: I prefer arched or slanted wordmarks on jerseys. Also, as you get going you can play with outlines on the wordmark to give them a little more zing... these are great for an old-fashioned look if that's what you are going for but the font looks more modern to me and would look good outlined.

I definitely agree with this, and I think this is the modification I was most hoping someone might be able to help me with. This may be embarrassing but I didn't even install these fonts, I used the "preview" mode on the font sites, cropped it, then ran it through Preview on Mac to make them transparent and change the colors...

[yuazda]

A kind designer on the forum sent me a DM (thanks EdamameTommy!) recommending Affinity Designer so I downloaded it, watched a lot of videos, and made some tweaks to the Honolulu concept -- it definitely made a big difference.

Logos (tried to use CephasJames's advice as much as possible, especially for the version with different font colors):





The logo looks better but still doesn't look great shrunken down and in dark mode...any suggested tweaks there would be great:



Wordmark:



Jerseys:





In-Game:

[the_mad_monk]

Cool font. Thanks for the ID. I'm not a fan of Jersey Maker's shading/textures so here's a basic set. Looking into alternates.

[cephasjames]

Everything looks so much better! I like the second one. I actually think it looks fine in-game. Obviously, the more detail in a larger logo the less it translates into the shrunken logo.

Not sure how well Affinity Designer works with layers, but my one blog post (under my name) has jersey/hat templates (neither of which I created) that you could use also. The Jersey Maker is an amazing tool, but I agree with Mad Monk on the shading for the jersey maker's shading. The aforementioned jersey/hat templates offer quite a few shading options.

[yuazda]

Originally Posted by the_mad_monk

Cool font. Thanks for the ID. I'm not a fan of Jersey Maker's shading/textures so here's a basic set. Looking into alternates.

Awesome! These look great...thank you!

[BBGiovanni]

Originally Posted by yuazda

Awesome! These look great...thank you!

Nice job, you came a long way in no time at all!


I'm not sure I've ever seen a shoulder patch that big, but it looks pretty good. Kind of reminds me of old-timey little league uniforms where the patch takes up the whole sleeve! But it's an interesting choice and fits with the kind of retro feel you still have.



I might use these in my promotion/relegation setup if I ever finish putting it together, I had cobbled together logos from Na Koa Ika Ika Maui but I never worked up unis for them. Now I like the idea of the Fighting Nene too much

[Eugene Church]

Originally Posted by cephasjames

Everything looks so much better! I like the second one. I actually think it looks fine in-game. Obviously, the more detail in a larger logo the less it translates into the shrunken logo.

Not sure how well Affinity Designer works with layers, but my one blog post (under my name) has jersey/hat templates (neither of which I created) that you could use also. The Jersey Maker is an amazing tool, but I agree with Mad Monk on the shading for the jersey maker's shading. The aforementioned jersey/hat templates offer quite a few shading options.

Very nice work everybody.

Agree with you. cephasjames... simple designs show up much better in the game than beautiful complex designs and fancy fonts... especially at 50 x 50 pixels.

The bird is beautiful at 300 x 300, but when it has to be shrunk, it loses a lot in my opinion.