Buc's action templates RELEASED!

[tBBP]

Y'all been asking for them, I been fine-tuning them...as well as scouring for a file-sharing site to host these jokers rather than emailing everybody and they sister-baby-daddy-cousin-best-friend-brother...and finally, by (overwhelmingly) popular demand, I now present to you my collection (or, at least, some of my collection) of templates, for public use!

Click here to get the templates.

Included in this pack are the football action templates you've become accustomed to seeing me use, as well as a styleguide football uniform layout--which, by the way, includes (for now) that profile-view 3-D helmet that's included in the headliners of my brandONE concept layouts.

A couple notes before y'all go concept-crazy with this stuff here:

- I do all my work in Adobe Illustrator CS2; however, all these files have been saved down to the Adobe Illustrator CS format. If you work with a legacy version of Illustrator than that (AI 10 or older), get @ me and I'll see about hooking you up with whatever file format you need.

- For you Inkscape users out there, the templates that you've seen me use are also available in SVG! Now, bear in mind I have no clue how Inkscape works, and as such, can not guarantee that those files will work right, or at least the same way they would with Illustrator (chiefly with the layers, blending modes, and such), so if any of you SVG users run into issues, let a brotha know and we'll see if we can work out the issues.

- All files except the defensive back action template (football db) are layered, so if you're unfamiliar with how to utilize layers, do yourself a favor and find a tutorial online and/or familiarize yourself with layers. It helps, especially for the action templates.

- You'll see that I use a pretty good amount of advanced features, such as clipping masks and various blending modes, so, again, do yourself a favor and familiarize yourself with how those features work. Trust me...you'll be glad you did!

- I've worked diligently to make these files as user-friendly as possible. In fact...most of the major work is done for you! On the action templates, the jersey numbers are already pre-warped, the mesh details are already included, AND...changing colors is a simple as clicking on the Magic Wand tool in Illustrator, or its equivalent in Inkscape (presuming there is one). You'll see what I mean. One caveat to this, though: if you have not yet downloaded eriqjaffe's font pack, do so before using these files...at least get the varsity block fonts, anyway...otherwise, the pre-warped numbers won't show up right. HOWEVER, by playing with the kerning and scaling of the numbers, it should be relatively easy to get your numbers to look right on these templates. Not all fonts will work for it, though.

- Currently no raster temps are available, however, for those of you who use raster, let me know what format you use and I'll see about hooking y'all up, too.

- Right now, I only have football stuff in that folder, and not even all of it, but, over the course of time, more stuff will be added, and I'll post when those updates are available.

If any of you have any other issues, questions, concerns, or comments, feel free to post them up in here and I'll see if I can help you out (or, invariably, someone else might if I can't). Other than that...enjoy, have fun with this stuff...and happy concepting!

~Buc

[mania]

The style guide is absolutely incredible, Brandon.

I'll play with the other ones in a bit, but.. wow.

[ShinyHubCaps]

I heard you were making sports other than football. Maybe a future update?

In the meantime, I'll need to recreate these in Flash if I ever hope to use them effectively, or learn some new program. Can anyone post the .png files?

[tBBP]

I heard you were making sports other than football. Maybe a future update?

In the meantime, I'll need to recreate these in Flash if I ever hope to use them effectively, or learn some new program. Can anyone post the .png files?

Can you work from .png's? If so, I'll add them to my folder when I get a chance. I'll have to strip out all the colors and some of the finer details, however.

[Jigga]

'Preciate it, big dawg.

I'm glad you're finding some free time over there and keeping your head up!

[tBBP]

'Preciate it, big dawg.

I'm glad you're finding some free time over there and keeping your head up!

Good look, Greg.

To answer your question, SHC, at some point in time I do plan on dabbling into other sports as well...I've already started work on some stuff for other sports, and when/if I ever get to finish any of that stuff, I'll get around to sharing those, as well.

In the meantime and between-time, one update for y'all: that styleguide template of mine is now available three different ways...three different jersey cuts. The one is the most common these days; #2 is the "Seattle Seahawks" jersey cut; and #3 is the "traditional" cut.

Hope y'all have fun with those!

[AHcreative]

Brandon you never cease to amaze me. I'm going to learn how to use Inkscape just because of these templates. Wow, these are incredible.

Thank you very much sir!

[Shumway]

Man, these are incredible. I haven't done anything as far as working with them, but I checked out the layering and techniques and whatnot. The best part is that you pre-scaled/warped the numbers...I was expecting that to be a pain to do, but you've done it for everybody. Again, awesome work.

[Drew22]

Holy these are awesome.

For .svg, you just need to ungroup the objects and they work great. Only you can't change the numbers or names, but that's alright.

[tBBP]

Holy these are awesome.

For .svg, you just need to ungroup the objects and they work great. Only you can't change the numbers or names, but that's alright.

Help me out here...ungrouping the objects. Whatchu referring to here, exactly? And it won't let you change the names? That's a hurtpiece...gimme some more info to work with here and I'll see about eliminating those issues going forward.

[scottysprings]

these are awesome dude, bravo

[Chief.]

I...... LOVE THIS! Once I figure out how to utilize this to its full potential, my NFL Revolution concepts will be converted to this template.

You've managed to steer my evening away from Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe.

[crashcarson15]

If you could make one for MS Paint, that would be great.

[chestnutz]

Thank you so much bucco!

Any way to download all of the files at once from mediafire? Don't feel like going through 16 individual files and downloading them, wondering if there's a simple shortcut.

[ShinyHubCaps]

I heard you were making sports other than football. Maybe a future update?

In the meantime, I'll need to recreate these in Flash if I ever hope to use them effectively, or learn some new program. Can anyone post the .png files?

Can you work from .png's? If so, I'll add them to my folder when I get a chance. I'll have to strip out all the colors and some of the finer details, however.

If I make a template in Flash, the only way I know how is to trace from a viewable image file like a .png. If you could post the .png files, that would be very much appreciated -- I have no way of viewing the others at the moment.

[Drew22]

Holy these are awesome.

For .svg, you just need to ungroup the objects and they work great. Only you can't change the numbers or names, but that's alright.

Help me out here...ungrouping the objects. Whatchu referring to here, exactly? And it won't let you change the names? That's a hurtpiece...gimme some more info to work with here and I'll see about eliminating those issues going forward.

In Inkscape, some of the objects got grouped together, like parts of the helmet and the hair. Then the gloves got attached to the jersey. It's really easy to ungroup them in Inkscape. It just leaves lots of small details by themselves.

I'd ask GBM about the numbers and names, I'm not very good at Inkscape, so I have no way of knowing how to change the name issue or the grouping situation.

[gingerbreadmann]

Holy these are awesome.

For .svg, you just need to ungroup the objects and they work great. Only you can't change the numbers or names, but that's alright.

Help me out here...ungrouping the objects. Whatchu referring to here, exactly? And it won't let you change the names? That's a hurtpiece...gimme some more info to work with here and I'll see about eliminating those issues going forward.

In Inkscape, in most cases with a converted .AI file, it starts out as just the image as one big group. No layers(I think layers are retarded in Inkscape, but this is a problem with helmet shading because they all look weird -- it looks better by lowering the opacity but it's still not too good), just a group. (Or a few groups). Once you ungroup them all, you can edit them. Like I don't know what a Magic Wand is in Illustrator but in Inkscape it is really easy to change the color of the jersey etc., which is mostly the ultimate goal, so for the most part it works great. There are two major problems however. First is as far as I know, you can't keep text from AI as true text; it is all converted to objects. And there is no way to warp objects in Inkscape, much less text while keeping it text; the best thing that I can think of is a shabby perspective tool, as well as rotation and shearing (which can occur while keeping text text). So while that won't look as good as what you did, unless an Inkscape user is using the numbers you put in with that font, which could still occur as I don't know why anyone would care about changing the number and the font is commonplace, the best thing possible that is a viable option would be relatively inaccurate but still pretty darn good, and I think the template itself being so incredible makes up for that. And I don't remember what the second thing is . But basically the numbers and the helmet shading are the real awry things in the conversion process, which isn't bad. I think if you can find some way to make the shading look right without blending modes and layers it would look better, or even if you saved as an EPS would it still look right? I can convert to SVG from EPS pretty well and I don't think shading would get lost that way. But in no means does the template not work; I can very very ably use this well. I just have no idea how to preserve the text,and it might not be possible.

Well I hope I helped you understand Inkscape at least a little. Sorry for the blab and yeah I know it's inferior to Inkscape but it's the best I can do. Seriously though, I am forever in your debt; these are so incredibly awesome I can't thank you enough.

[tBBP]

Thanks for the insight, GBM.

I ain't even think about the .eps thing...I suppose I'll get to trying that out when I get back to my machine. As for the helmet shading...I presume you're referring to the screening and darkening effects. If that becomes too much of an issue in Inkscape, I can eliminate them altogether. As for the grouping, several objects were grouped when I saved them...such as the facemasks and some shadowing details. Now, here's a question: how is the order of the objects in Inkscape--that is to say, bring-to-front/move-to-back type arrangement? Is that aiight for the 'Scapers out there?

Whoever it was that asked for an MS Paint...I can't say it'll look like the vector temps, but I can try my bestest at it. (Obviously the shading effects ain't gon work all that good.) What file format you need? (I would presume .bmp, but there may be others.) I would guess I'd have to strip all the color out of them, as well. We'll see what's good.

Anyone got any other questions, concerns, or comments? Let me know...like I say, we'll see bout working them out up in here some kind of way.

Glad those of y'all who done got your mouse cursors on this stuff here is enjoying it...now y'all got what I got! (well...a little bit of it, anyway... )

[mania]

Just the small request, that if you get the chance/time... to work on making the DB set layered. There's just so much stuff there, and the layers make things worlds easier.

[tBBP]

Just the small request, that if you get the chance/time... to work on making the DB set layered. There's just so much stuff there, and the layers make things worlds easier.

Working on that currently...but being that that was the main one people was asking for, I went on and put it up.