MLB Color Rush - Pirates

I wanted to break up these concepts to different posts.

Anyway, I'll start with my first one. I've wanted the pirates to do this for YEARS. I think white lettering with a thick black outline makes the white pop on colors like yellow and orange. This is the same idea for the Buccos. Nothing really crazy other than that outline pattern. I created a stirrup with yellow stripes, and thought the current Pirates cap was good enough to use to balance it all out.

MLB Color Rush

Flash back to 2009. My late grandmother was in town, and we decided to take her to Tropicana Field to see a World Series rematch between the Rays and the Phillies. Two things I remember about that day is that we got a baseball card made with her picture on it, and she could not for the life of her make out what teams were which sitting in left field because the grey is really really light.

Baseball teams play 162+ games a year, they have throwback games, and some teams wear their colored alts more than their regular uniforms. So let's have a little fun, and go all the way.

I started a group text chat with a couple young professional designers a few months ago, and over time we titled ourselves the Neat-O Gang. We always talk about doing a collaboration, but this is the real first one we do. You'll see my concepts, but you'll also see ones by my buddies. They'll link their twitters when they post their concepts.

Pretend Nike signed a deal with the MLB for next year. Let's just say they're for weeknight games where the crowd might be smaller than normal. We're going to post some colorful alternate uniforms for all 30 teams, no matter the history. The colored uniforms can be worn as a road team against a white team, or as a home team forcing the other team to wear their Color Rush uniforms. 

So put on some sunglasses and sit back!

Quick shout out to MJD7, I had this idea for a few months but they just completed their color rush concepts and I didn't want to steal their thunder.

Sunshine Motorsports Park

Just north of St. Pete, there is a tiny quarter mile track. It was always known as Sunshine Speedway, and then it closed for a few years. Almost razed, the site reopened as "Showtime Speedway". The site has a small drag strip, the figure 8 quarter mile, and a small BMX course. I felt like this would be a good change from my normal tracks, and add more to the whole thing

So that brings us to below. I would turn this whole area into a functioning facility. Repaving the track, I would do a concrete, higher banked track with asphalt infield. The stands would wrap around the front stretch and turn 4. Installing lights to the outside would improve sight, and To help fans and sell ad space, 

The stands would stack to a plaza area with concession and a 360 degree commentary booth high above the drag strip and track. On the other side of the plaza us small stands for the drag strip.

With plenty of parking available, competitors have their own parking lot with immediate access to the garages. My plan is having as little of a carbon footprint that a race track could have, while still becoming the premier motorsports park in the Tampa Bay Area.

5 Flags Speedway

So before I start, My roommate is a finance major here at Florida State, and our good buddy who we go to races with has a hospitality degree. I have a Sport Management degree, and I joke that we're going to go into business together. So here is the logo for when we buy all these tracks to flip. Trademarks be damned!

But it's back! We could call this the second season of this series. In Pensacola, there's a historic short track. Every year, they host the Snowball Derby in the winter, which is a big late model race. The track surface is abrasive, and I think it would make a nice edition for NASCAR. So to flip this, a lot of it had to do with the infield. Currently it has a small pit lane and a bunch of random roads in the middle. I paved over it all and built a garage to host the cars. I expanded the seating, with a lot of bleachers, just because I wanted to keep the general admission policy for weekly racing series. I did some amenities to help make this track more modern. That includes a scoreboard and a video board. 

Pensacola is known for being under 5 different nations, hence the name. So with that, I would make the 5 flags flying over the west turn more prominent. 

Pretty basic stuff, but I wanted to play with patterns and shading more and more.

Sit tight, I will post another tomorrow!

Two more F1 Liveries

Had these two on my list after thinking about it after posting my last set of 3. So here are two more!

Haas F1 - So with the ties to Ferrari, I think a red livery would be nice. They've sort of carved their own market with white and gun metal, but I decided to make this look a lot more sinister. Not too many sponsors, so I used the team and company logo several times. Finally, to remind everyone that they're american, I put a flag on the side wing.

Sauber F1 - I remember when Sauber released their royal blue livery. It was so different than everyone else's that it shot to the top of my list. After being generally awful, and teaming up with Arial Bold, the look is stale. Since Ericcson and Nasr both are from countries with blue and bright yellow, I wanted to make a statement. I did lightning bolts on the body and a yellow strip on the side pod. It ties in with the Banco do Brasil sponsor, which would become more prominent.

Also I'm so mad at my McLaren livery now, because it's essentially the same Marussia had in like 2011.

Puerto Rican Soccer League

So a little background into this project. Football Manager is a great game, and the Editor program that comes with it is also great. Last winter, I figured it out, and created a mod where I could do Promotion/Relegation in the US leagues. I picked Puerto Rico FC for the sole purpose of using the youth system to make Puerto Rico a better national team. Bayamon FC was a semi pro team that was in the lower leagues, so I could use them to get first team minutes.

It is really hard with 2 teams to do this. The in-game editor lets you pull up any player, and edit them to your liking, essentially. This includes moving to other teams. I not only was a successful manager, but basically acted as a pimp/commissioner trying to get players to places where they could actually play. There were a handful of independent teams in Puerto Rico, who weren't attached to a league. I used them to try and keep players for 3 years to gain citizenship. I didn't play long enough to see many players not on my team gain citizenship and get called up to the national team.

Fast forward to last week. I was playing a different save and wanted to check editor for something. I ended up looking to see how many teams were based in Puerto Rico. The answer is 25. That's not entirely too many for one league. I moved Bayamon FC to the league, who were marked as a US team since they're in our pyramid. I figured a super league consisting of the 14 Liga Nacional de Fútbol de Puerto Rico, the 7 independent teams, and any other team that I could find. The teams play everyone once, then the league splits, and the two sets of 13 plays another round against each other. The total of 37 games is around the amount most leagues play.

I started adding to the logos that already existed in a massive logo file someone put together. There were teams with blurry logos, there were teams with bad logos, and there were teams where I couldn't  even find logos for.

My goal in this save is to become the Puerto Rican national team manager, just to remain impartial. The job opened in 2017, but I wasn't considered because I didn't have experience. One team fired their coach 4 games in, I took over and finished 3rd in the league. So the league is in it's offseason and I'm thinking that there are a lot of really bad logos. In previous FM saves, I've had my concepts as the graphics in game, and it just didn't feel as immersed. But I felt that if I replaced them all, I could really make the game better.

Here are the current logos in order

Quintana, Bayamon, Maunabo, Roosevelt, Rio Piedras, Spartans, Vega Alta, Puerto Rico United, River Plate PR, Criolles Caguas, Carolina Giants, Fluminese, Huracan, Sevilla PR, Tornados de Humacao, Atletico San Juan, Guayama, Yabucoa, Brazilian Soccer Academy, EFBR, Isabela, Leones, Koricanacha, Universitarios, Fenix, and finally Yabucoeña.

As you can see, there isn't a lot of great logos here. I wanted to place them on a map, and ended up making little icons for a google map. I based my logos after of Spanish teams, mostly. Their logos are so simple and wording isn't necessary. So without further adieu, here is the league.

NO CHANGES

Couple of teams with logos that would hold up.

Bayamon

 River Plate

 Roosevelt

 Sevilla

Quintana

Then the rest

Criolles de Caguas - My team. They have an Italian style crest now, so I deleted some initials, and put a fleur de lis in because Criolles translates to Creoles

BSA - A mash up of Manchester United and Chelsea, with a little bit of Brazilian national crest.

Gigantes de Carolina - The city's flag has some of those shapes featured in the flag of Brittany, so I matched the flag, and put a crown on the top.

EFBR - There isn't much about this team I can find out, other than the logo having a sword on it.

Fenix SC - I love these colors together, and it was just a matter of making a phoenix logo to throw on a crest.

Fluminese - I made this crest the same as their "parent" club, but with the C as a G.

Guayamo FC - For the team whose name is spelled wrong on the game, their crest is pretty simple with a badge and their initials.

Tornados de Humacao - The crest of the city has a bundle of arrows, and the flag is the same pattern as the crest. I threw an H and the year on for good measure.

Caguas Huracan FC - My favorite logo. I used a free font I found on a diamond, and threw some geometric hurricanes on there. 

Isabela - Their crest features a lot of gradients, a rooster, and stripes. I did a similar look to Bradford City using the rooster that is on the city's crest.

Koricancha - The only thing I could use for this team was their city's flag, so I repurposed an Adelaide United concept I did featuring it.

Leones - Ponce is the 2nd biggest city in Puerto Rico, so I wanted a big mean crest for them. I used a lion head from an Orlando City concept I did before.

Leones de Maunabo - Had to use a different lion, so I did a regal lion on the best colors in the league.

Puerto Rico United - I absolutely used the QPR lettering for this, but I wanted simplicity for a team representing the whole country.

Atletico Rio Piedras - This team had a blurry city crest as their logo so I made them rock some yellow and black checkers. This logo was from my American Premier League series.

Atletico San Juan - Used the cute little sheep on the city crest as the main part of this logo.

Spartans - Their current logo is pretty good, just simplified it a little.

Universitarios - I could not find anything about this club online, but they were orange on football manager. The placeholder logo I used was the Universitarios logo for the team in Peru. The logo is a circle with a red U in the middle. I made it orange and called it a day. I changed it slightly and made it a U in a hexigon.

Vega Alta - In what could be the worst logo in the league, I made a logo similar to Real Betis with the city flag and a VA that is the same shape.

Yabucoa - This city's flag is this weird abstract flag in cool colors. I did a look similar to Villareal's crest, featuring the lime green in their logo.

Yabucoeña - From the same town as above, but with more purple in the form of  Grenada's crest.

That is it! here is a map to bring it all together. I will post screenshots of the game when I upload them all.

If by some chance a Puerto Rican club is reading this, hit me up we might be able to make your team look better.

Formula 1 Liveries

Finally had some time to play around with this F1 template I have. Just wanted to make some livery concepts for teams who really don't look their best currently.

First is Force India. They used to have a bold memorable orange and white look, but has since been grey scaled out. I wanted to make orange more prominent, then add an accent of a puke green to throw in a bright color to separate the two main colors.

 Second is McLaren. It's a mix of current and classic. Gun metal grey with the red stripes that the Marlboro sponsorship in the 80s and 90s rocked. I feel like it's a classic look that the team can rock because it's simple enough to be replicated. I made chrome stripes to separate, and chrome decals on the black, including the boomerang shapes they have now.

 Lastly, the one I did for Toro Rosso. I HATE how similar they look to their parent team. I wanted to go to a different Red Bull brand, so I did some light blue that the sugar free cans have. I moved the bull to the wing, which isn't where it is on Red Bull.

Those are the 3 that were screaming for some concepts in my mind, but I might do more!