Wildcomet

Here is the last team I have lined up for this series; the Southern California Sun!

I didn't do too much with updating the main logo, I added some points to the purple center star so that it has more of a radiating out look to it, and outlined the edges so that it would stand out better against a variety of backgrounds. This team had one of the more unique wordmarks in the original WFL, so I mainly kept it as-is; I added a sunburst effect inside the U, worked in a white-to-purple gradient and thickened the lines and spaces. The secondary logo is a football shape based off the U in the wordmark.

I decided to try something I never have on a uniform before and give it a gradient effect; I don't often go for gradients on uniforms or helmets but for a team with this branding it just feels like the right place to use it. The jerseys both start with orange on the bottom and fade into the purple or white tops. The pants also feature the white-to-orange gradient on the legs. Gradients aside the uniform keeps the general color schemes of the original uniforms. The sleeves and pant legs both end with a partial version of the main logo (inspired by the sun rising on one side and setting on the other). The helmet features the main logo on a high-gloss purple shell (changed from white since multiple teams use white shells) to reflect as much light as it can. 

I will give some time for comments and critiques to potentially improve this or any of my other designs, then I'll be posting some graphics putting all the various logos/helmets together to see how they look as a collective group. This will include wordmarks for every team, including those first ones I hadn't done any for. Thanks again to everyone who's been following along or checking these out, hope you all enjoy!

Congratulations on winning!

Thanks @maxwasson and @BengalErnst for weighing in. Since Option #1 is my first design, I decided to share a full concept here with Option #3.  C & C will continue to be welcomed on the design.

19 hours ago, BengalErnst said:

I hope to see you take a stab at another league soon. Enjoyed what you did here. 

19 hours ago, maxwasson said:

Really liked this series Wildcomet! Is there you a chance you'd ever do an NFL expansion thread? 

Thanks! I really appreciate hearing that there would be interest in seeing more from me on these boards.  It has been a while since I did something that was wholly my creation so I'd have to put thought in but another league or NFL expansion could be interesting, especially with a possible international component.

Regarding finishing up this series, I have a couple options to compare for the shoulders on my Wings uniforms. Any and all input is appreciated. The top is what I did initially (just here for ease of comparing), the middle recolors the sleeves, shoulders and piping to simplify the design but not really change it, while the bottom scraps it and puts the alamo on both sleeves with an outline.  Both are rough drafts basically so they would be cleaned up a bit before a full release. Please let me know which you like best, or if none are worth using lol.

It was interesting to see you work through the various iterations of the Bulls, and I like  where it ended up. The updated helmet also turned out nicely; good job on that.

Thanks to those who've commented or reacted. I can see this team's design is not fully working; the comments on what did or didn't work were especially helpful. I took a bigger swing on this one, and sometimes those swings don't connect right (or at all). I'm going to take a 2nd swing at these uniforms (haven't gotten any comments about needing to change the logos at all so I'm keeping them as is).

What's in my head now for this one is losing the split numbers and either simplifying the Alamo-wings design on the chest & sleeves or or losing it altogether, and doing something simpler like the alamo shape on the sleeves. I may work up a couple options and post them here before putting together another full team sheet for the Wings.

Aside from refining this one, I do have a surprise 9th team (any guesses?) that I hope will be a good, strong end to the series. I'll probably also share out some graphic sheets with all the teams' logos or helmets grouped together to view as a whole once that's done and gotten whatever C&C it may get. Thanks again for checking this out!

If anyone has thoughts on the Philadelphia concept about the changed logo or in general feel free to share, but today I am going to go on the next team up, the San Antonio Wings.

The logo and helmet are not much different, but the uniforms got some changes. I'm not sure if the logo was actually beveled or if that's a result of old photocopies, etc, but if it was I removed it. Some of the line work and spacing was changed slightly in the process to make lines easier to see when the logo is smaller. The main change to the design was that I used the Alamo outline for the center of the logo.  The new secondary logo was derived from the negative space in the primary logo; I extended the ends out a bit to make the W shape more distinct and give room for some winglets along the sides. I also gave the logo a split between the colors to carry that theme from the primary logo. The wordmark uses the feathers and the silver-top, navy-bottom color patter from the primary logo. I found a Western-style font to use, and gave the numbers as well as consonants in the wordmark the same vertical split the secondary logo has.

The helmet is silver with the wings on the front, pretty similar to the original (maybe was white? hard to tell in some game photos I saw), but with the new version of the wings from the primary logo. A monochrome version of the secondary logo splits the single vertical stripe along the pants. The chest and shoulders are split using the wings from the primary logo and piping in the opposite color of the jersey (blue or white). The sleeves are hemmed with the same color as the piping. Overall these are one of my bigger departures from the original uniforms (the usual triple stripe patterns basically), but a goal in this series was to give the teams more unique identities on the field so some were going to need bigger changes to do that. Part of me is reconsidering the split font for the numbers (I maybe took that theme too far), what is everybody's thought on that? Otherwise I think I gave them a new look that fits their brand and will let them stand out from the rest of the league. Feel free to share your thoughts though.

Here's what I came up with for Philadelphia's new secondary logo. It's basically a monogram, since the B and P look pretty similar to each other.  I thought it worked pretty well. I carried the crack theme from the wordmark into this design, and used the darker colors for the part that makes it into a B, with the lighter colors for the P part.

Once I read the history behind it (really interesting, did not know a lot of that), a good sized part of me really loves this idea and design, but a small part of me wonders if it's too "Disney" for the modern NBA. It feels like something that would have fit in amazingly well in that 90's era of the Magic, Angels, Mighty Ducks all embracing their Disney connections, but it could be a bit out of place today. Or it could be a welcome renaissance; I wish those teams would go back to those looks generally haha.

Those thoughts aside, I do really enjoy how the logo embraces that 1920's proto-Mickey Mouse style of art, and the city edition uses those old time cartoon colors. The one thing I can critique is that the wordmark is a bit hard for me to read on the Home jersey, maybe try it without the outline? The letters being a bit thinner may make the difference. Overall really nice!

17 hours ago, stumpygremlin said:

On your Philly one, I would've never read that secondary logo as a "P" if you hadn't told me. Not sure how to fix that, 

 

For Chicago, that secondary logo is so good, I'd promote it to the main.

Thanks! That Chicago secondary does seem to be a winner among this series so far, I'm glad it's been well received.

I did have some concern about the Philly one.. I could see the P easy enough, but it was also my idea so I better  be able to lol. That is a good note though. My concern was it feeling too different from the rest of the brand despite carrying the bell crack theme. I think I'm going to try something different, I have another secondary concept for a monogram that I moved on from because I wasn't sure it was dynamic enough. In retrospect though it may be a better fit, and it should be easier to see what it's intended to be. Will put the finishing touches on it to share later.

This site looks really cool, never heard of it before! I signed up and voted for you. Not just for introducing the site, haha.

I  really like the logo you came up with. I'm trying to think of helpful feedback from yours, but aside from maybe lightening the lightest shade a bit more (not to be white, but just a tiny bit to help it pop a little more), or maybe adding a jewel to the crown, I can't think of anything. Looks good!

The other logo isn't bad to me, but 'Kings' is a bit hard to read with that font and it feels more like a soccer crest than a basketball logo in my opinion. I see it has a basketball in the crown but it's small enough that I didn't see it until after looking for a bit.

11 minutes ago, Skycast said:

I understand the current iteration of the Maulers going to black and gold, but I don't care for it. That purple and orange is pretty unique in pro sports and stands out I think.

 

Anyway, just a quick postscript to say thanks for continually posting these, I've enjoyed the work and banter here alongside your website league updates.

I'd agree with this. I get why the IRL Maulers would make the change they did but I'm glad your version is staying as-is. It's a really underrated color combo that the Maulers did- and you do- use well.  Framing the logo inside a Keystone is a great idea in my opinion. Awesome work as usual!

I'll continue to welcome any further C&C on the Stars, but I have a couple other things to share today. 

First, here's an update to the Chicago Fire. The helmet/uniforms are basically untouched, but I simplified the primary logo around the face and facemask while still keeping a more modern style of facemask, and added a wordmark.  I don't know if I found an actual wordmark for them or if it was just a stylized version of their name for what looked like a magazine or program cover, but I drew inspiration from it for the font choice.

I also have a new concept, for the Philadelphia Bell. The primary logo only received some small changes; I introduced darker shades of the blue and yellow in a manner similar to my Vulcans concept, reshaped the bell slightly, and made the crack part of the outline of the logo instead of having it be inside of the outline. The secondary takes the shape of the crack and adds the angled piece to make a P shape. The wordmark I created uses a classic style of font, and I added the crack from the primary logo to the first letter of each word. Many of the teams appear to use similar fonts in my research on wordmarks (or the company that made their pennants or program guides just chose to use the same font repeatedly) so to give each a unique wordmark I'll need to take some liberties with some teams.

That crack in many ways became the focus of this design. Like the other teams in the original league, Philly had basically the same 3-stripe pattern on the sleeves, helmet and pants as the other teams so I replaced those stripes with the crack on each of those locations (uniform reference here). The crack is also used on the bottom of the numbers on the jerseys. Since I already have a few teams using yellow helmets and/or pants, I decided to recolor the original yellow pants and helmet to gold, and use the yellow as a trim color on the uniforms. This helps gives them more of an unique identity in the league, and I think a historic city like Philadelphia fits a shade of gold that to me at least conveys a sense of age to it, over bright yellow.

I hope you all like these. We are coming up to the end of this project, with the San Antonio Wings coming up next. The C&C has been and will continue to be appreciated.

19 minutes ago, neo_prankster said:

Which areas do you think I should fix?

A couple things that you could try would be going for a bit more consistency in the thickness of some of the lines; I noticed some variance in the thickness around the ear, mouth and eyes. One thing to consider may be adding back in the black from the original- or introducing a darker red or green- inside the mouth to help separate the tongue from the lips.  Something about the perspective of the inside of the mouth seems a bit off to me, and I think the lack of a clear tongue or separation of it from the lips might be why.

I agree with the others that this is looking better than the first you shared for sure. Tweaking those couple of things could put it over the top.

On 5/27/2023 at 9:28 PM, Bomba Tomba said:

It's one tradition that I hope dies already, but hey, it's your concept.

 

On topic tho, perhaps the number font need to be changed to something with more consistent thiccness? Not sure matching the wordmark font is the right call here

If I was making a league from scratch I'd be more open to the idea, but since this is based on a league that did exist and did it that way it feel fitting to keep it. I did decide to do an alt with the idea you had which you can see below.

I appreciate the note on the number font; I didn't replace it entirely, but I did thicken the thinner parts of the numbers a decent amount. It's still recognizable as similar to the wordmark font I think, but also easier to see the entire numbers.  The updates below show the updated number style and a new secondary logo (a remake of the original primary using the wordmark font and no rounded ends on the points of the star), and on the 2nd panel there's a black alt. jersey with gold pants. While I didn't draw them here, this would open up the possibility of additional gold Color Rush or Blackout (all-black) alt. uniforms also. I also gave the wordmark by itself an explicit spot on the sheets, I have started working on those for all the teams. Thanks for looking; hope you all enjoy!

11 hours ago, Bomba Tomba said:

Why not a black home for the Stars, with yellow pants, then a yellow away with black pants?

I've generally stuck with white away jerseys; it's one uniform tradition I don't mind keeping.  Also, I kept the black pants in part because multiple other teams in this series have yellow pants in some way, while none have black other than New York. Black jersey/yellow pants could make for a cool alternate uniform though...

Going from one of the teams I have changed the least, to probably the team I will change the branding for the most...here's the New York Stars.

This team lasted in New York for about a month, before moving to Charlotte and becoming the Hornets.  From my research there were plenty of reasons the team struggled in New York; the owner was given the team, and seemed to have invested very little in it (bad playing conditions, stadium, etc) and the original logo fits that trend in my opinion.  A star with NY in it with a fairly basic font just feels kind of low-effort to me. I also felt trying to work with it as is would veer to close to USFL Philadephia Stars territory. So I decided to reinvent this brand and embrace what I think of when I think of "Stars" and "New York" together - Broadway. Feel free to tell me though if I veered too far. My primary logo is an homage to Hamilton (I used a pic I took at a Packers training camp years ago for my player outline), and I used the Broadway font on my computer for the wordmark and uniform numbers. The secondary I would definitely welcome some C & C on, I like how it looks on its own, but part of me thinks a New York letter logo is not right without both the N and the Y and I can't think of a good way to put a Y in there.

I kept the general color schemes of the original helmet and uniforms (reference link here). Some references were more yellow than gold, but I preferred my reference logo's gold shade, especially for a more Broadway interpretation of the brand, and it stands out more among the teams in the league, so I went with that. My big changes are replacing the triple stripes on the helmet, sleeves and pants with a single wide stripe with a row of circular "Broadway lights"  down the middle. I moved the sleeve stripes to the shoulders so they would fit better than on the smaller modern sleeve style. It also frames the sleeve numbers under the 'lights', which I liked. I then added "Stars" and "New York" scripts on the jerseys and added the lights pattern around the socks in the thickest stripe.

C&C continues to be welcomed and encouraged. Hope you all enjoy and thanks for checking it out!

Welcome to posting here! It's a fun, insightful community that can definitely help someone get better as an artist.

Just in case you aren't familiar with it yet, I'll let you know that when you are typing a post or reply, there is a button that allows you to add links to your posts; along the top when typing a post or reply you should see a little chain-link button (between the center align and quote buttons). When you click that there's a line to paste your link into and a line to type whatever text you want people to see. Also, if you right click on the actual image there should be a "Copy image address" option; if you paste that image link in your post the image should actually appear in your post.

I'm adding a link to your design here so others can get to it more easily: LINK

Regarding your designs, I think you've got some good stuff here and for being done on MS Paint the uniforms look really good. I think the Chiefs font works well for the numbers. It's big enough to be easily read from a distance and fits the brand obviously, so I like that change as well as the resistance to add black just to do it.  One thing I'd consider is making the KC monogram either monochrome white/red or have the letters both be one color and have a drop shadow like it does in the arrowhead logo be the 2nd color. On the red jersey the two-color monogram works pretty well, but on the white and yellow jerseys it's hard to see the non-red letters. 

I like it, it's a good start for sure. If I were to suggest possible changes to try, perhaps thicken the lines you have inside the ears and nose a bit to show that they're holes rather than just creases like the wrinkles above the nose, and possibly fill in the yellow triangle inside of the back cheek with green to make that area a bit less busy and cleaner for when the logo is smaller.

1 hour ago, VampyrRabbit said:

I would go with A, I think it looks cleaner without the football laces.

1 hour ago, neo_prankster said:

I'd go with A.

Thanks! Here's the complete team brand sheet with the updated primary logo design.

1 hour ago, VampyrRabbit said:

Also, if you've got the time, wordmarks for each team would be nice.

Thanks, good to know there might be interest for more in this series; I'll keep this in mind for something to maybe go back and update once I finish up my 8 teams. I will say my next team- the New York Stars- will actually include a wordmark component in its main logo.

I couldn't find much info on wordmarks for most of the WFL teams so it would be less updating them and more creating them like with the secondary logos. I don't mind this of course, but it wasn't my main focus on this project starting out. Something to perhaps look forward to though once the main work is done.

Thanks again for everyone who checked this out and contributed feedback!

36 minutes ago, neo_prankster said:

 

Should I put the black back on the logo?

I'm not missing it, so I think it could stay without personally.

1 hour ago, neo_prankster said:

The football laces on the muzzle look forced. Sorry.

All good, specific feedback like that helps! The nose is something that I can adjust quickly so I put two options together. What do you all think looks best, old, a, or b? Option b has a slight tweak to the nose, while A is a noticeably larger change.

I have never been a big fan of the Ducks' new look, it comes off like they're trying to pretend they're something they aren't, and the color scheme they used to have and what you've used here was such a unique and good look for them. I'd much rather see them using these.

Thanks for the feedback so far! I did decide to take another pass at the primary logo; since nothing else is changed thus far I thought I'd give a chance for people to weigh in on whether this 2nd attempt is better or worse than the first one I did.

Changes include: rounding off some edges on the front legs, ears, and orange depth lines around the head, and adding lines separating the front legs and chest instead of small gaps in the outer edge. The new version I think does give the bear a smoother, cleaner profile, but what do you all think? Should I redo the helmet and uniform set with the new logo, stick with the old or scrap both and try again? lol. Thanks for checking it out!

Thanks! Here's my take on the next team on my list, the Memphis Southmen!

Bit of a history lesson from what I learned, the reason they have a bear mascot and the Southmen name is because they were originally the Toronto Northmen with a polar bear logo. Things didn't work out for the team to play in Toronto though, so they quickly moved to Memphis before the season started, changed the bear color, and changed North to South.

This logo design isn't that dated in my opinion, so I just made some tweaks. The Milwaukee Bucks current logo was an inspiration for this one, especially for the mouth and nose. I decided to make different parts more distinct by using orange to show changes in depth (such as where the head separates from the shoulders, or eye brows) and white for features like claws, eyes, nose, etc. I also altered the head shape and opened the mouth a bit more so that the bear makes an M shape. The secondary is based on the steam wheel behind the bear on the primary, putting it front and center to make a bear print with the claw and toe marks.

This team probably has the fewest changes from original design to mine. Here's the Gridiron Uniform Database entry to look at. The helmet keeps the same shell and stripe pattern, just a larger, updated logo and the orange facemask. The home and away jerseys also keep their color schemes intact, including the triple stripes on the sleeves and pants. The updates are more modern number fonts, stripes around the collar inspired by the new secondary logo along with the claw marks under the collar, and an end of each triple stripe has a set of bear claws on them, as if the stripes are made by the scratches.

Hope you all enjoy; the C & C is as always appreciated.  My next planned entry in this series will be the New York Stars, but like with the other teams I am open to making changes here based on feedback.