The 2014 Creamer Awards

[drdougfresh]

Going to roll these out gradually over the next few hours. Let's kick this off with the Best New Template and best C&C Giver!

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Best New Template // New Baseball Template // Jayjackson3

This is a category where need might have played a factor. A competitive category with quality nominees from top to bottom, Jayjackson3’s New Baseball Template is The Creamer Academy’s choice for the Best New Template of 2014. Let’s face it, there are a wide variety of quality football and hockey templates at the disposal of CCSLC artists. But this is one of the first quality templates attempted for baseball, which will hopefully lead to more baseball concepts showing up on the forum. In addition to being a baseball concept, this template also has a plenty of features with several jersey cuts, pants sizes, and sock designs... saving time, effort, and providing almost everything designers need for presenting that perfect baseball concept.

-GFB

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Best C&C Giver // Brandmooreart

This was one of two unanimous selections from the panel, and a well deserved one at that. Brandon consistently provides both critical and positive feedback, and does it in a way that both experienced designers and laymen can understand... all while remaining humble and level-headed. I'll be honest, I have no idea how he does it sometimes. Any time I post in the concepts forum, I hope I get something from Brandon, because I know it will help guide me to a better finished product. His style is something I hope we see more of on the forum in the coming years — not only does it help the artist receiving the feedback, but it sets a bar for those providing the feedback. I can't think of anyone more deserving of the first Best C&C Creamer Award than Brandon.

-drdougfresh

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Congrats to our first two award winners — stay tuned! We'll be announcing two more in about an hour.

[drdougfresh]

The next two will now be announced!

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Rookie of the Year // Daniel_Ramone93

Daniel showed up and provided us with a delightful look at what would happen if Nike were to take over the MLS. It wasn't a revolutionary concept by any means, but what convinced the panel here was the technical execution and creativity of the concepts. Special attention was paid to presentation and detail, and for that reason, we decided that Daniel was our Rookie of the Year. His series and first year of work on the CCSLC is a perfect example of quality over quantity.

I would like to note here that nas1787 also received the same number of points, losing by one first place vote. Hats off, and an honorable mention to you, sir.

-drdougfresh

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Most Improved // CAB

CAB has been around the boards since 2008, but he made a giant leap forward in 2013 in both his craftsmanship and quality from his MS Paint days. His NCAA Minimalist Logos series showed some of the strongest use of symbolism and minimalism found anywhere in the Concepts forum, while his NCAA basketball concepts display a serious understanding of uniform design. The Creamer Academy has big expectations for CAB in the future and are looking forward to watching him try his hand at bigger and bolder projects.

-GFB

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Two more coming soon, congrats to CAB and Daniel_Ramone93!

[CAB]

Wow, thanks so much! I know I'm not as active around here as I used to be, but I may consider either working on some more college basketball concepts or starting a new project. Congrats to all the other winners as well! This is a great thing to have in the concepts forum.

[drdougfresh]

Two more before the big finale!

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Best Individual Concept // Navy Midshipmen Logo // mcrosby

Mark made great strides this year with a nice little run of college mascot refreshes, including Wisconsin, Tennessee, Notre Dame, and Florida State, but this one stuck out to our panel as one of the best things we've seen all year. In 2006, Mark took a very dated Navy logo and cleaned it up a bit, but by his own admission, it was still pretty rough. He took another stab at it and moved Navy's mark from one of the worst in college football to a look that would be one of the sharpest (unfortunately that wouldn't make the team play any better). Crisp line work and great movement earned top marks from our panel. [side note: the bandwidth is exceeded on Mark's image hosting, so you can see the progression on his Dribbble here]

-drdougfresh

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Best Concept Series // US Soccer 2030 // raysox

Who ever said size doesn’t matter? Well, raysox definitely has a big, bad... concept.

Let’s look over the spec-sheet for raysox’s US Soccer 2030 project: 72 teams, full faux-backstories on each team, uniform concepts, logo designs, AND it’s fully playable in a video game? Yeah, that’s award-worthy.

For me, the real joy of the project was reading the wonderful backstories (future-stories?) presented for every team. With each bio, you can see, smell, and practically taste the vision raysox had while recreating all 72 teams.

On the artistic side of things, raysox does an amazing job in two specific areas: knowing when to show restraint/flex his creative muscles and succeeding in the fine details. For example, if something is working design-wise, raysox leaves it alone (Sounders, TFC, Chicago Fire), he also recognizes when the idea is good but tweaks need to be made (DC United, San Jose Earthquakes), and when a team need needs to head in a completely new direction (Columbus Crew, Boston Revolution). And even when he has nothing to work with, he shows that he has the ability to create great designs all on his own (San Francisco, California, & New Orleans).

The other area raysox where excels at in the little things... Take choosing a sponsor, for example. Not many people would notice that he chose Meijer as the primary sponsor for the Detroit City concept; but someone who lives in Michigan would instantly recognize Meijer as their stores are a staple throughout the state. San Francisco FC is sponsored by Twitter. Buffalo Athletic is sponsored by Rich’s Products. Even the conscious decision to use a wide variety of apparel manufacturers helps sell the realistic nature of the project; and for that, the US Soccer 2030 project is deservedly wins the 2014 award for Best Concept Series.

-GFB

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Coming up, the final award of the 2014 Creamer Awards... Best Overall Concept.

[JayJaxon]

I have not been here as much as I once was so this will be lengthy. I just want you guys to know how much being recognized here means to me.

I want to say thank you to those who nominated and voted for me in this category. It really means a lot after all the work I have put into creating a good template for my baseball uniform project. This tall, lanky pitcher will be the center of my life's work. Sharing it with this community is something I always had in mind. I see this thing everywhere now and it makes me proud. This community has helped me so much and I am happy I can use my love for baseball to contribute as well. When I add new layers and jersey types, you can bet I'll be right back here to give them to you guys. I have a long way to go with this project and the support is greatly appreciated. Thanks again and congratulations to the other winners!

[raysox]

I wanna thank everyone for the nod on the award. This particular category was probably one of the toughest ones, and i'm glad some quality people in the community thought highly enough of my project to award me this.

Just wait until you all see my next big series!

[BrandMooreArt]

i really like these awards, its cool to see some of the best stuff recognized by some of the boards best members. and even cooler to be a part of it. thanks for the nominations and selection. during my time at college we used critiques to better understand design and how to communicate to make it better. critiques have been as much of a focal point for me as a designer as anything else so im very glad its appreciated by you guys. same for my Redhawks project. thanks again and keep up the good work. i really think its great for the whole site

[GFB]

Looks like I'm the lucky one who gets to make the big announcement! Here we go...

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Best Overall Concept // NCFA Media Guide // drdougfresh

Was there ever any question as to which Best Overall Concept nominee would take home the 2014 Creamer Awards’ biggest honor? Apparently the judges didn’t either, as the NCFA Media Guide by drdougfresh won the category by unanimous decision. But let’s take a deeper look as to why the NCFA Media Guide was such a dominant force.

The first thing you notice about the project is the size of the undertaking. This media guide is HUGE, clocking in at 150 pages, with almost no “creative fat”. No, this guide is healthy and loaded with all kinds of entertaining information and articles: from team media guides to rivalry games previews to fake advertisements for apparel companies to NFL Draft reviews. Just imagining having to write all these articles makes my palms sweat.

However, the NCFA Media Guide not only acts the part, it looks the part with custom uniform templates, photoshop uniform swaps for the star players of every team, field designs, fake trophies, customized Nike apparel, and much, much more. Heck, this thing looks better than most actual season preview magazines and programs... and this league isn’t even real!

Lastly, we want to recognize the board-wide aspect of the project. While drdougfresh obviously led the charge and spent far, far too much time on this project, he wasn’t the lone artist responsible for every design in the guide. Scottysprings helped layout the template, TheOneAndOnlyMau was responsible for the Nike Pursuit program, and the guide contains logo designs from CCSLC studs like mattwilcoxx, (dp), and missouritigers. The wide range of CCSLC members contributing in some way helps create the diverse and realistic college football universe that the guide embraces.

All these factors make the NCFA Media Guide the runaway Best Overall Concept of the 2014 Creamer Awards and an automatic 2014 inductee into The Creamer Academy.

-GFB

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I speak for the whole panel when I say we are looking forward to seeing all the great designs everyone has up their sleeves for 2014 and we can't wait to do this again next year.

[sparkychewbarky]

Well done guys.

The entire "evening" was very pro.

The announcements were very informative, thoughtful and well written.

The personalized Creamers logos were a nice touch.

...And above all else, it was entertaining. Heck, it's way past my bedtime, but I had to hang in there 'til the end.

Congrats to all the winners and to the ones who put this all together.

Again, well done.

[oldschoolvikings]

Congrats to all the winners!

Sorry to get in here so late, but I do wanna say I was honored and surprised to see my name pop up. A "Rookie of the year" nomination at my age made me smile.

[nas1787]

So close.

Congrats to all the winners. Well-deserved.

This was a lot of fun guys, great job all around. Will certainly lead to many people upping their games in anticipation of next year's awards.

[drdougfresh]

Thanks for the wonderful write up, Matt. Big thanks to all those who helped on the NCFA project as well!

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I wanted to bring this year's awards to a close by thanking everyone who has stopped by to check it out, and those who have taken the time to comment, as well. It's important that we recognize the efforts of those who go above and beyond for the craft they are passionate about, and I think we're hitting the tip of the iceberg with this. Many thanks especially to Matt (GFB) who basically came up with the whole idea of an 'Oscars-esque' award system for the concepts forum. And to our panel, thanks for taking the time to wade through everything to come up with the best work for the past year.

It's my hope that these awards inspire others to step their game up and produce quality work. Knowing now that we have another awards show coming up in 2015, we'll be keeping an eye out throughout the year taking notes -- it should be a lot less daunting when awards season starts back up next year

Thanks again everyone, and congrats to our winners and nominees!

[mbannon92]

I haven't been on the boards much over the last few months, and when I got on today I was really pleased to see this undertaking. It should make the concepts board a much better place and bring back a lot of the great talent that has slowly disappeared over the last few years.

Also, I'd like to thank y'all for the nomination. Throughout my N(A)FL series I was bummed at the lack of feedback I got, so it's great to get a little recognition.

Congrats to all the winners! I'm sure there were some tough decisions made, as everyone was deserving.

[DeFrank]

WAIT. I got nominated for a CCSLC award??!?! How did I not know this????

[Jordy_shore]

I need to improve for next year win at least a rookie of the year

[mcrosby]

As long as Jordy_shore is bumping this:

Holy balls, I won a thing!

Thanks guys. The Navy refresh was one of my favorites. I'm happy to be nominated for most improved as well. Sorry for the very late gratitude.