NBA 2K20: An Alternate Universe (Raptors logo update; Sacramento Kings 4/36)

[Whittier S]

I have been trying since September 2016 to put together a 36-team league with alternate-universe identities in NBA 2K, but faced massive bugs in 2K17 and 18 that kept me from doing so. Along the way, I've created logos, and recreated many of them, as I faced multiple dying computers (Dropbox and Inkscape used to be incompatible with each other.) Now, finally, I have a somewhat functional version of the game, albeit I had to find a way around a bug to make it work.

So now I'm ready to unveil the first part of a massive multimedia project. The plan is to integrate images and recording from the game to tell the story of this alternate universe in video and blog forms. The mods needn't worry, as I'm not going to delve into the history here on the boards. You've seen bits of this project already, as I've sought advice for some of my logos here, and I will mention and link those at the appropriate time. But now I can put it forth in a slightly more appropriate form.

Bear in mind that NBA 2K has some uniform limitations. You'll notice, for instance, that my numbers on the back of this first set of jerseys are a bit misaligned. I can and will fix this; it is simply a challenge that the alignment system for each uniform element is totally different, and it took me a bit to get the hang of it again. A few more caveats:

*I am looking for advice, but a lot of it is more for smaller details. For instance, I'm not sure I have the size and placement of names and numbers very good on a lot of jerseys.
*I'll say up front that I'm generally not keen on arched wordmarks on the fronts of jerseys. I know that it's the norm, and the idea is that it helps to make the wordmark bigger. But I find that it makes the chest look narrow, and a narrow chest doesn't look especially athletic to me.

*All of the uniforms will have the same model. That's part of my bug workaround.
*I'm not aiming for a flashy presentation. These are just screen captures, unretouched beyond some cropping.

*All team names and locations are carved in stone, and have been for over three years.

*Remember that this is an alternate universe. Some identities and even aesthetics might not align with those in our own history.

 

With that mind, I present to you my first entry from the International Basketball Association, from the Northwest Division of the Northern Conference, the Vancouver Grizzlies:

 (And, yes, I got that update taken care of...)

[neo_prankster]

Vancouver looks pretty good so far.

 

I am looking forward to seeing this series to its completion.

[Whittier S]

I did notice that the back number on the away jersey somehow ended up blue and not teal. I'll fix that, as well.

[Hawkeye15]

On the white and black uniforms, maybe you'd consider moving the round logo to the other side (and maybe lower on the shorts) to let those stripes breath a bit. The shorts seem a little bit unbalanced as is. I would give that round logo a chance to stand out as it is, because it's so unique. I'm also a bit distracted by the big Grizzlies wordmark on the teal shorts. Maybe that wordmark could go underneath the number on the teal jersey?  Is it possible to put the same font that's on the uniforms on the court? Maybe consider changing the sleeves/socks from blue to black/white for presentation purposes.

 

I like your usage of the colors though. Everything is well-balanced. The black and teal stand out, but the red accents work well.

[Whittier S]

It's not possible to match the court wordmark to the jerseys. 2K only offers a limited set of fonts you can use for the court. It's one of the ways the game kind of forces you to suspend your belief a bit.

I suppose that putting the logo inside the V is taking away from the fact that I'm riffing off the Canucks' Flying V of the 1980s. I can shift the logo around to the other side.
 

I like the graphic element of the wordmark on the alternate shorts, but I think I can get away with shrinking it some.

I also realize that I have the names too low and the numbers too small on basically all my jerseys, so I'm going to fix all that as I go now.

[Whittier S]

I'm working on correcting the Northwest Division uniforms and posting them here, but it's going to take a little time. Just so you can understand how deeply broken the game is for me, this is what it looks like if I go into MyCareer: 

If you don't want to watch a video, here's a screenshot:

[Hawkeye15]

Also note that with a teal boundary line and a teal key (with no space in between), referees would not be able to identify the boundary underneath the basket. A small thing, but just thought I'd pass it on.

[Whittier S]

Good point! I'll correct that!

[Whittier S]

So I've cleaned up the Grizzlies, and the advice here helped. I moved the Grizzlies logo to emphasize the V and to balance the shorts. I've corrected name/number size and position (and am going through and correcting that on all my uniforms.) On the alt shorts, I shrank the wordmark a little, and put the player number in a similar font on the opposite side for balance, though I am going to go back and hit that number with a black outline to thicken it up and have it more closely resemble the wordmark. I also corrected the color of the out-of-bounds line.



I've finished my screen-capturing of the rest of the Northwest Division (some surprising team names and not-so-surprising additions here), and hope to roll out one of them, the Utah Raptors, on here later today.

[Whittier S]

Here are the Utah Raptors. The footprint is the old Toronto Raptors alt logo and was posted in-game by another player, which is why the purples don't match, yet if I darken the purple, the footprint really wouldn't show on the alt jersey.

[TheRoman]

1 hour ago, Whittier S said:

Here are the Utah Raptors. The footprint is the old Toronto Raptors alt logo and was posted in-game by another player, which is why the purples don't match, yet if I darken the purple, the footprint really wouldn't show on the alt jersey.

Did Toronto move to Utah in this scenario? Or did the Toronto Raptors never exist and the Jazz became the Raps when they moved to Utah?

[Whittier S]

In this universe, the Toronto Huskies persisted from their founding to the present day, one of the "Original Twelve" teams. The Utah Stars were one of the four ABA teams to join the NBA. They traded their name "Stars" to the Orlando Astronauts in one of the strangest player trades in history, so that they could adopt the name "Raptors," after the discovery of the Utahraptor and the gigantic success of the novel series "Cretaceous Park."

I told you this was a different universe.
 

Also, I'm just realizing the half-court line needs to be teal.

[Edubdesign]

There's an awful lot of teal in this series and I'm fully on board.

[Whittier S]

There is a LOT more purple than teal. Or, more precisely, purple and indigo.

[Whittier S]

If there's no more commentary on the Raptors, I'll move on to the Portland Lumberjacks. The Portland team still has a minimalist red-and-black logo, but that's about all that's the same. I created the pattern at plaidmaker.com .

[Whittier S]

Since there's no commentary on the Lumberjacks, I assume they're fine. Next up in the Northwest Division is the Sacramento Kings. Yup, that's the right division in this universe.

I remember distinctly when the Kings' '90s-era logo was first announced and displayed on TV. My first thought was, "So, their logo is an explosion?" I've always thought that logo a great idea but very poor execution, so I've tried to capture the spirit of it in something much clearer.  The swords are modified from a Pixabay file on the account Clker-Free-Vector-Images.

Speaking of execution, I'm a little unsure if I've pulled off what I want in the alt uniform, and I'd love some advice.

[vtgco]

I like the plaid side paneling for Portland, but the squares are a bit too big and the diagonals are a bit too small. Also, the logo is WAY too simple to be recognizable. You might be able to incorporate it into a circular saw ala Ottawa Redblacks?

 

Utah is a really cool idea, and the primary logo is quite good. However, it feels a bit all over the place, because there's no clear color hierarchy. I'd go for just green with white and copper accents, personally. That way the one-color alternate logo doesn't feel so out of place.

 

I'm down for that Grizzlies Flying V, but I'd stick with one color for the numbers, front & back (teal numbers on the home & road, black on the alt)

 

I like that Sacramento logo update! The crown is missing something though (jewels?)

[Whittier S]

I'm chipping away at this, and will do most of the work this Saturday. I have a simple plan for the Portland logo without changing it radically, but that should make it an actual logo rather than just a pattern.

 

I want to keep as many elements of the late-90s Kings logo as possible; I just wanted to remix them so that the result was cleaner. The original Kings logo keeps the crown unadorned, so this one will be unadorned, as well.

Aside from the two-tone white, Utah's palette and hierarchy are the same as the mid-90s Jazz. Not everything changes in this universe. But I get @vtgco's point about the hierarchy. I don't think the problem is with the uniforms so much as the logo and how the logo relates to the uniform and the court. It makes a lot more sense to make the outline of the state copper, so I've done that. If I keep the color hierarchy the same as the uniforms, I get this:



but I'm really not feeling the use of teal for shadows.

This is what I prefer: 


But which do you all prefer? Of course, some of it will come down to how they work on the court and the uniforms, but logos also have to be able to stand on their own.

[sportsfan7]

I like the second one